Labour Gives Green Light for “Activist” Councils to Rename Streets With Links to Empire
Labour has quietly empowered activist councils to rename streets linked to slavery and the Empire without local consent. The Telegraph has the story.
The proposals were brought forward by the last Tory government to stop local authorities caving into campaigns by pressure groups.
Councils faced a slew of calls to rename streets linked to slave owners and the Empire following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
Online campaigns led local authorities across the country to announce that they were reviewing all such road names in their area.
Michael Gove, the then Local Communities Secretary, responded with plans that would have made councils hold a referendum to change a street name. Under the proposals, published in 2022, they would have needed to secure support from two thirds of residents on a road to go ahead with renaming.
The revelation that Ms. Rayner has dropped the plans was contained in a report by the Policy Exchange think tank.
Lara Brown, its author, said: “The Labour Government has quietly dropped legislation which would have prevented activist councils from renaming streets over the heads of local residents.
“They claim they wish to end the culture wars, and yet they are pursuing the politics of division, prioritising a minority of campaigners over the views of the public.
“Policy Exchange’s History Matters Compendium shows that action continues to be taken widely and quickly to reframe how the past is presented.”
The decision will provide councils with fresh licence to rename streets that are seen as controversial because of their links to the Empire.
It will also mean that no fixed definition is established for what constitutes the “necessary support” councils must demonstrate to change road names.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Forgetting the politics for the moment, who pays the costs for homeowners to update the new street name on their deeds? I’m assuming it’ll fall on them?
I expect there’s a land registry fee, definitely going to be a solicitors fee and I’m guessing there’s probably a fee to the mortgage company to anyone who has one.
How much will that be? £500? £1,000? More? Just the sort of bill someone who has no interest in identity politics needs…
Good point. Also map makers, bus route makers, anyone who needs to give directions to those locations, the signs themselves, et cetera.
And the councils who will say they don’t have money to repair potholes because of “government cuts”?
If the local government want to spend more money they should hold the required local referendum to raise the Council Tax rate. Even ostensibly ‘Tory’ councils complain but balk at this; for some reason or another they only want the central government to take the blame for more taxes. Can’t think why.
History – good and bad – is there to teach us. Making it invisible will not serve future generations well.
I think the purpose is not to make history invisible as such, but to erase anything that suggests mass immigration of people from alien cultures is not a great idea.
I think the purpose to to enable busybodies to waste lots of money while making a thorough nuisance of themselves. Nobody cares about street names except people seeking to name streets.
I would certainly care if my street or a street local to me was renamed for political reasons.
Allende Avenue in Harlow has been renamed “Zelenskyy Avenue”.
I wouldn’t want any street whose name I was forced to learn for some reason to be renamed for any reason. But assuming that there’s a Rhodes Boulevard somewhere, it’s a safe bet that most people whose daily lives are involved with it won’t even know that this was a guy and not just some word without obvious meaning.
Time to retell a story: Years ago, one of the local Spoons sported signs stating All our beef is sourced from the British Isles. This arose my suspicion as I knew that (at that time at least) the cheap beef usually came from Ireland and that Ireland is considered part of the British Isles. Because of this, I asked one of the serving girls about it. She then turned round and shouted the following question to her colleague in the kitchen: “Which part of Ireland belongs to England, the north or the south?”
This young lady was doubtlessly considered educated and a university student.
Great story. I think a lot of people are pretty hazy about the UK.
I would add that naming or renaming something for political reasons where there is some controversy is an attempt to restrict freedom of speech by stopping people using the old name, and an example of compelled speech by forcing people to use the new name. The naming of the various branches of the London Overground by the repellent Khan is an example of this.
And in the process wasting £millions of taxpayers money. Give the little Khant his sirdom and let him fuck off.
My first thought would be that Rhodes Boulevard was named after a Greek island.
🤦♂️
Why didn’t they just go for “Raytheon Way” or “Lockheed Road”?
There is often some history as to why a certain street has the name that it does. Hangman Lane. Whore Alley etc.
Yes we have or rather had Cutthroat Lane in Bedford named because that’s where the local Highwayman Black Tom (of which there is an area in the town named after him not because that’s where immigrants in the 60s lived) carried out his dastardly deeds. The local Sainsbury’s is there now they call it Sainsbury’s Fairfield Park but I like to call it Sainsbury’s Cutthroat Lane obviously.
History is neither good nor bad because life isn’t a superhero movie. In the real world, everyone’s cause is always good insofar his own convictions are concerned. Others don’t necessarily agree.
It’s a continuation of Labour wanting to rub peoples nose in diversity.
Sir George Downing travelled to the West Indies on a slave ship, so we need to rename Downing Street – maybe Nelson Mandela Street? Or Malcolm X Street?
What about Starmer’s Lair? Or Reeve’s Pen?
Up Yours Street.
Lunatic Lane?
George Floyd Street
Yasser Arrafat Street
Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini Way
or
Stompie Sepei Road
One End Street – there was a Famous Family from there, in children’s literature.
This is the sort of thing that happens after a revolution
St Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad.
Now St Petersburg again (anglicised). There is still hope.
Cans of black spray paint may be bought at Screwfix. Other merchants selling spray paint are available. And for those councils who use wooden posts for the streetname plates, they also sell a wide range of saws.
Just to point out that paint does not have to be sprayed.
Many plant pots in y area were damaged, not by vigilantes, but by people who can’t drive. Some old dude hit one plant pot and just said….”well it wasn’t there before”. I hope that’s not his excuse if he hits a cyclist LOL.
Pay in cash!
It’s slightly amusing to note that the place where my father was born in Lahore, (now) Pakistan is still named Empress Road after the colonial ‘Empress’ Queen Victoria. People may not like our history but if we destroy it we’ll never learn from it.
They will have their usual “consultation” that nobody knew about.
Was it in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’?
😄
A lot of streets near me are named after English naval heroes, or naval victories – Drake, Nelson and Benbow plus St Vincent. I wouldn’t object to them renaming mine after Trafalgar…
Another pointless “woke” exercise, people will still call it the original name as they should, you cannot change history, nor should you.
Undermining our country’s history because ungrateful immigrants and the children of ungrateful, arrogant immigrants, are upset at how advanced and clever we were compared to theor ancestors.
Sick of it. Push back. Kick them out. Remigration now!
So the Tories published proposals in 2022 but never troubled themselves to put them into law. But they know how government works, you know.
BEHOLD: This is Exactly what the officials in The Regime of Ayatollah Khomeini did in Tehran/Iran, starting right after the Islamic Revilution in Iran back in 1979…. Renamed ALL & ANY signs of History that could remind anyone of any History, whether of The Shah, His Father Ancient History or Foreign Political leaders… No Different.
Wow Labour is making such a difference here in the Uk by ALLOWNG councils to,change steeet names😂😂😂😂😂😂🤡🌏🤡🌏