Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Council Decides to Rename Black Boy Lane
Following my consideration on the origins of West Green's Black Boy name back in the summer, Haringey Council has decided to rename Black Boy Lane in West Green.
The Council have called the exercise a 'renaming consultation', but the online questionnaire offers only the ability to choose from a shortlist of two new names. So it appears that the decision to rename has already been taken with only the choice of name left to be decided.
They have issued the following press release.
The council has launched a renaming consultation with residents and businesses located on Black Boy Lane, as part of the wider Review on Monuments, Buildings, Place and Street Names in Haringey – which was launched on 12 June 2020, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
The council believes that the names of our monuments, buildings, places and streets must reflect the values and diversity that we are so proud of in the borough. One of the street names that has been identified as not being reflective of this is Black Boy Lane.
Meanings change over time, and the term “Black Boy” is now most commonly used as a derogatory name for African heritage men.
As part of the consultation, the council is asking residents to consider new alternative names that celebrate some of the borough’s most notable influencers, and truly reflect the borough’s rich heritage.
The two names that have been shortlisted for residents to consider are, ‘Jocelyn Barrow Lane’ and ‘La Rose Lane’. The consultation will launch today, Monday 28 September and will run for a period of 4 weeks to Monday 26 October 2020.
Letters will be arriving on Black Boy Lane residents' doorsteps this week, who can respond to the consultation using one of the following methods:
- Online: www.haringey.gov.uk/renaming-black-boy-lane.
- Email:
- bblconsultation@haringey.gov.uk
- Telephone: 020 8489 3797
- By post: Consultation Co-ordinator, The Communications Team, River Park House, 225 High Road, Wood Green, London, N22 8HQ
If Haringey residents have concerns or queries about place, street or building names in the borough, please get in touch. Send your views to Leader@haringey.gov.uk.
Bios:Dame Jocelyn Anita Barrow (15 April 1929 – 9 April 2020) was a Barbadian/Trinidadian British educator, community activist and politician, who was the Director for UK Development at Focus Consultancy Ltd. She was the first Black woman to be a governor of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and was founder and Deputy Chair of the Broadcasting Standards Council.
John La Rose was a publisher, poet and essayist. He founded the Caribbean Artists’ Movement and publishing company New Beacon Books which has a bookshop in Stroud Green. In 1975, he co-founded the Black Parents Movement from the core of the parents involved in the George Padmore Supplementary School incident in which a young Black schoolboy was beaten up by the police outside his school in Haringey.
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Tags for Forum Posts: blackboy lane name change, review on monuments, building place and street names
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by James H. on
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Tambo was a highly respected anti-apartheid campaigner and high-ranking member of the ANC, which had a stated policy, I believe, of only attacking military targets. In practice, there was civilian loss of life (see Devon Williams reply below).
If you really haven't heard of Oliver Tambo I suggest having a read of his Wikipedia entry.
I have to say, that statue of him in the park is awful -- up there with Maggie Hambling's Mary Wollstonecraft monstrosity. Just my opinion, of course.
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Had anyone done a freedom of information request to see the responses (including the purported physical addresses of those submitting a response (to check if they even live within the borough) and the IP addresses from which those responses came)? It would also be useful to see whatever reports the Council must have produced to check whether the responses received were bona fide.
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I'd be very surprised if the council had made such checks. Of course they might do it retrospectively once it is publically recognised that noone actually wants a change in order to discredit their opposition.
I do question why the consultation should be limited to Borough residents. It is a wider issue of how England should respond to calls from groups wanting to change street names, statues and other public cultural assets. For example common guidelines or even legislation are needed to answer questions such as: what proportion of people are needed to agree a change before it can be made, what are the circumstances in which a change can be made (criteria), what cost limits represents value for money, what level of government should be responsible for decision making, what is the criteria for chosing people to be memorialised, what are appropriate levels of compensation for people whose street names are changed etc
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Yes, those are valid points and seem like a sensible way of creating a new system with proper checks and balances.
Within the current system, where the Council and its leader have de facto control over the names which should be given to roads and areas of grass, I think it’s important to see more detail about the responses received which supposedly helped inform their decision.
I take your point about not necessarily limiting responses to Borough residents. But would it change your view (hypothetically) if all the responses received were from far outside the Borough? Or if all of the responses received were from people overseas?
It would also be interesting to know how many responses are duplicates (either accidentally or intentionally by the same person). And it would also be interesting to know how many responses were sent from Council computers. Hence the suggestion that IP addresses are requested.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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William, Why wait for someone else to use Freedom of information requests?
The website WhatDoTheyKnow is independent of Ejiofor & his cronies. It's also public and free.
The Freedom of Information questions you set out are plainly helpful and reasonable. The official response may seek to redact the personal information. But otherwise, it must be fair that the tally of responses is shown to be bona fide. And that steps were taken to ensure the consultation was restricted to Haringey residents - especially residents in the neighbourhood of the park. Publication of such information on WhatDoTheyKnow website must be in the public interest. To refuse to publish would sow even more distrust.
Requesting links to or electronic copies of the reports produced by the Council for the Cabinet (i.e. "Joebinet") is also reasonable.
But can I suggest that the reasonableness cuts both ways. In other words, the confirmed tally of responses and the supporting reports may indeed support Ejiofor's proposal.
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Personally I'd be interested if the reports suggest how the statue will be kept clean. There are parks in Haringey which have a severe pigeon problem - usually because someone loves feeding them. Statues can also be a target of vandalism.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I don’t understand your point - What Do They Know collates freedom of information requests
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Michael, Initially my point was responding to William's comment about Freedom of Information [FoI] requests. I suggested he simply went ahead with his own.
Adding that there's a value in making FoI requests through this independent, volunteer-run website which anyone anywhere can use, search and use for research.
Over many years I gradually realised the value of doing it this way instead of relying on the internal processes where any misleading, or refusal, or obfuscation, or outright lying was less likely to be spotted by others. As you know most Haringey staff are honest. decent, people who care about the services they provide the public. They too don't like a culture of secrecy or lies.
Ideally I'd prefer to see more independent investigative journalists with resources. But that world has shrunk. We need to use what's there.
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You said
William,Why wait for someone else to use Freedom of information requests?
The website WhatDoTheyKnow is independent of Ejiofor & his cronies. It's also public and free........
What Do They Know simply publishes information requests made by people, it’s a very useful tool to view the results of requests made by others. Saying that it is “independent of Ejiofor and his cronies” implies that they in someway can get at information that I as a citizen cannot by submitting an FoI.
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WhatDoTheyKnow website publishes requests and also publishes replies to those requests which then become information in the public domain. Haringey's practice is to try and stifle that by falsely claiming/pretending that the requester is not permitted to share the information.
Of course the Leader of the Council for the time being and that councillor's appointed cabinet members have access to information not accessible to ordinary councillors let alone to ordinary citizens. I write this as a factual description; a matter of fact not as an opinion.
I do not make such statements lightly.
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Stav,
Your proposals are far too logical, thoughtful and far-sighted for the bunch currently pretending to lead the Council. And it is just a bunch. Please don't blame the whole council.
I'm hopeful that your attempt to bring logic, rationality and principle to the table means that you've been reading-up on the whole topic and picking-up ideas from other councils which haven't got an autocratic leader desperate to hang onto power.
If you have been at this reading task do you intend to share your findings? Aristides seems like a suitable name for someone to signpost a path out of this stubborn mule track.
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Permalink Reply by Sarah on
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you can't use a freedom of information request to get access to other people's personal information.
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You couldn't request an individual's survey content (ie. Their views) but you could legitimately request a list of how many contributions were received from each postcode and how many were sent from the same IP address because none of that is personal data.
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