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 Christina Davis on
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The TCP (Tottenham Community Press) is supposed to be , and in the beginning definitely was, written by citizen reporters. If Anna or someone else offered to write a feature on this they would be hard pressed to say no I think. The editor is (or was last time I checked) Luchia Robinson - she has always been open to my contributions in the past.
I will also get hold of James who runs the Enfield Dispatch (sister paper) and see what he thinks - I communicate with him more regularly than Luchia. It will of course be probably too late in March to achieve anything concrete but if you want your objections noted for future posterity then it is an option.
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Permalink Reply by James H. on
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All of this simply underlines the need for a robust and respected local newspaper with the reporting resources to hold the Council leader's feet to the fire. Alas, no such thing exists round here. Thank goodness, at least, for HOL.
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Permalink Reply by BBL on
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I am also a resident of Black Boy Lane. I do not want a name change as I fear that residents would be subjected to much disruption.
To date, Haringey Council have never answered, even the most mundane query, without a second or third email having to be sent. Therefore the idea of having to deal with them on a range of changes fills me with horror.
Having worked in many departments within the Council, I have no confidence that they will deal with changes of addresses to various bodies in a competent manner. Then trying to get information from them to rectify matters, if past/current experience is anything to go by will be torturous and very very time consuming.
The most recent example I have is that I asked for a copy of the Council’s Culture policy in November 2020 and I am still waiting. I asked for it first in 2016 but heard nothing. I have ave too many other examples.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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If you didn't do so, can I suggest that if a polite initial request is not answered within a reasonable timescale, possibly with a gentle reminder, you repeat the request under the Freedom of Information Act and using the free website WhatDoTheyKnow - https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/
This makes the request and the reply freely available to anyone with an internet connection. And also puts the reply in the public domain.
Please ignore any warning by Haringey in its reply which says:
"This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential, may be subject to legal privilege and are intended only for the person(s) or organisation(s) to whom this email is addressed. Any unauthorised use, retention, distribution, copying or disclosure is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify the system administrator at Haringey Council immediately and delete this e-mail from your system."
This statement is legally incorrect. I and others have pointed out this fact to Haringey staff who, sadly, appear unable to challenge the culture of obfuscation and chilling of public information.
In 2018 I made an FOI request on WhatDoTheyKnow website asking for a copy of Haringey's bid to become "London Borough of Culture". This may give you some idea of their thinking.
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In 2013 whilst working in the Culture & Leisure department work was undertaken to produce a Cultural Strategy Sessions were set up at Alexandra Palace on several dates to gather ideas from local groups with an interest in or working in arts/culture. I remember folk being encouraged to participate in this site.
As I was involved in the organising of these meetings I had been interested to see what became of the policy. In 2016 Cllr Strickland passed my query over to Cllr Arthur I received nothing.
When the renaming of BBL arose under the Culture heading, I again asked for a copy of the policy on the 20th November. I have been sent an extract from the 2011 Core Plan. It.has always seemed to me that if LBH does not like the question posed, their response is to ignore it and hope the respondent goes away, which I did in 2016.
Whilst this is wildly frustrating, my main point is that this practice would be replicated many times over when dealing with the Council and issues relating to the name change.
Having worked there I know how they can obfuscate. It's one of the reasons I try to keep my contact or engagement to a minimum.
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As an elected councillor (until 2014) I also found it "wildly frustrating". My requests as a councillor with a legal right to know and a duty to ask questions were too often met by obfuscation and obstruction. So I began using What Do They Know website as a way to make my requests public and try bringing a little more pressure.
Unfortunately the current cabinet appear even more shameless and useless than the 2014 lot.
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I know this is probably already on the site but I don't have the time to go through the 50+ pages so am just posting it anyway just in case. From Daily Mail on 8th December.
London council is accused of erasing history with plan to rename 30...
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I'm not a big fan of the Daily Mail but this is a sound article highlighting that the local black communities oppose the change and reiterating the fact that there is no racial element in the name Black Boy Lane.
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I don't know how old "Love Lane" Tottenham N17 is. It's mentioned in a history about the mid-Nineteenth Century. It also gave its name to the adjacent Love Lane Council Estate.
I do know that our current Leader and his allies are colluding with property developers in wanting to rename part of a demolition and social cleansing scheme as "High Road West". A meaningless non-name airbrushing people's memories and history.
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@stephenBln
Your points are all well made, sum up very well the forum discussion and reinforce how sensitive the issue is. So many people are saying that the council is just not sensitive to how different stakeholders view the proposal. Once again the council is showing its ineptitude.
You also omit to mention the point that some have made that at the moment - our council and country are in an extreme health crisis that is having serious consequences on all sorts of vulnerable members of the various communities that live in the borough. The timing of the name change is not the best (my understatement).
Have you seen the dogmatic stubbornness with which the council leader has tweeted a comment on the issue? BBL is his the top priority for name change.
It does show a certain level of arrogance. I have spoken to him in the past about vision and 'ways of doing things' that any sensible person would find logical. The answer I got back was "I don't want my officers to think, I just want them to execute". I am sorry but that is the moment I moved from sceptic to serious critic. There wasn’t any attempt to discuss.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Point taken and agree.
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JJ B
A certain level of arrogance? Maybe a certain style of autocratic /authoritarian leadership. One of the sometimes fatal flaws in the "strong leader & cabinet" model. Especially when the cabinet is hand-picked by the Leader.
It's interesting that, when writing to you, Joe Ejiofor referred to "my officers". Although they are in fact not his, but senior staff of the Council, whose first loyalty should be to the borough and its residents. In one tweet he also referred to River Park House as "my office". It is the administrative headquarters of the whole Borough Council.
Ejiofor has also said he expects Haringey cabinet members to be: "my [i.e. his] representatives on earth". Another indication of the man's autocratic view of his colleagues.
This mindset also explains why Ejiofor regularly gets the formal sequence arse-about-face when it comes to consultation. In essence he expects to decide. Then for "his" officers or cabinet members to execute his commands. He gives little or no sign of listening; nor of any disposition to learn.
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