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 maladyboy on
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Still happens. In letters from the council and if I'm not mistaken the NHS, male children are still addressed as Master.
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My problem with this approach is that it actually does exactly the opposite of what it wants to achieve.
It is brushing away that actual history of what happened to (black) enslaved people. They were made to obey their masters under all circumstances regardless of what mattered to them as individual human beings.
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Certain estate agents are removing the wording Master Bedroom to main bedroom as people are offended. It’s time we put political correctness in the trash where it belongs. Someone somewhere will be offended by something, enough is enough
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Can a dog have a master then? Can I master the art of doing something?
We do need to be sensitive about how we use words to inflict hurt or how language can be hurtful but we should not lose ourselves and the richness of our our vocabulary to pc gone mad.
Already we are limiting vocab through the use of the web and the need to use computer shorthand
As such I would have very much prefered if Haringey Council had just put up plaques everywhere along Black Boy Lane to explain the possible originS of the name and highlighting.
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I shall confine my comments to the two names suggested. Stroud Green is in the London Borough of Haringey surely so I don't see too much of a problem there. I know New Beacon Books through my work as a book indexer for the publishing trade, and it's certainly worthy of respect and admiration. La Rose Lane sounds rather nice anyway to my ear. There is nothing in Jocelyn Barrow's potted bio to link her with Haringey (let alone Harringay).
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Black Boy Lane is in St Ann's, not Harringay.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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It's in St Ann's ward not Harringay ward. Unless of course you go back a few decades when it would have been in Harringay ward or Chestnuts ward or Green Lanes ward. So, the history of the names of political divisions offers a confused historical picture.
Beyond the convenience of electoral boundaries (which often conflict with actual recognised place names), historically, for the four hundred years or so prior to the twentieth century, the road would have been considered unequivocally to have been in the significant settlement of West Green. From the late nineteenth century it would have been considered by most to have been the eastern border of Harringay, but probably not part of it.
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Having written this, I was making a coffee and a great new candidate came to mind.
How about one of the first black doctors in the UK (1907) who worked at St Ann's Hospital and played in a cricket team with J.M. Barrie, A.A. Milne and other illuminati.
The journey to becoming a doctor as a black man at that time, would not have been an easy one. He was a trail blazer. Ernest Goffe sounds like someone who truly deserves to be commemorated and has genuine local links.
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why should the road be named after any Black person? I'm from an ethnic minority origin why not from my ethnicity? The best thing if the name has to be changed, it should be changed to a neutral name not associated with any one culture or ethnic group. We forget that there is a multitude of different nationalities in Haringey who their past help to build this community not just from a black origin.
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