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History Rewritten: Myths Busted & New Truths Uncovered


The Glasgow streets named after merchants who had links to slavery should be changed, a senior council figure has claimed. Bailie Dr Nina Baker has called for a “symbolic renaming of selected streets” to coincide with Anti-Slavery Day in October.

Several streets, mainly in the Merchant City area, are named after the 18th Century Tobacco Lords who used their vast wealth made from slave-grown produce in the tobacco plantations of the US and West Indies to buy up land in Glasgow during the mid to late 1700s.

Merchants who had streets named after them include Andrew Buchanan, John Glassford, Archibald Ingram and James Dunlop. Virginia, Jamaica, Tobago and Antigua streets recall the locations of their estates and their western trading partners.

Dr Baker, a Green Party councillor, said she had been inspired by a move in Spain to rename streets named after figures from Franco’s fascist regime. She said: “Most of the streets in the Merchant City are named after the Tobacco Lords who made their money on the backs of slavery. “I think people are now reasonably aware of the story but I don’t think people walking down these roads will realise the streets are named after these people. “In France, you will see signs under street names telling you who they were named after. In this country, you generally have no idea because of the way the traditional streets signs have been designed.”

She said street names could be temporarily renamed after key figures in the Glasgow abolitionist movement as well as women such as Mary Barbour, a councillor and campaigner who led the rent strike of 1915. Dr Baker, in a motion to be put forward to Full Council last week, said: “Many of our best known streets bear the names of the wealthy slave owners from Glasgow’s past and that, whilst these serve to remind us to strive to avoid past horrors, there are few streets named to recognise those who campaigned against them and even fewer streets named to honour the achievements of women in the city.” Dr Baker, whose motion was not heard due to time contraints, called for the council “to implement a symbolic renaming of selected streets, to honour important women from Glasgow’s past and Glasgwegians who campaigned for the abolition of slavery for Anti- Slavery Day 2017 and also to review its policy on the naming of streets.” The ‘Tobacco Lords’ created vast wealth from slave-grown produce with the merchants quickly monopolising the trade. John Glassford owned plantations and 21 tobacco stores in Virginia and Maryland and ran a fleet of ships to move the product, for example. It has been reported that 47 million pounds of tobacco leaf passed through Glasgow every year, with the city overtaking London as its chief importer, with the bulk then being reshipped to the rest of Europe. The Merchant City is dominated by the wealth of the Tobacco Lords. The Gallery of Modern Art, on the western edge of the district, was the family home built for William Cunninghame whose family’s estate in Jamaica reportedly held some 300 slaves. Around 30 ships which left Glasgow during the 1700s were involved directly in slave voyages, it is understood. The figure rises to 5,000 for those ships leaving Liverpool.​
 
Is this actually rewriting history? AFAIK the idea is to do it temporarily to draw attention to the original name........
 
An old pub in Falmouth has just undergone a long refurbishment. It used to be called the King's Head, but from now it becomes just the Kings. Sad, I think. :(

The pub stands next to the church of King Charles the Martyr, and Charles was beheaded by the Roundheads at the end of the English Civil War. That's what the pub name referred to, but now it it is merely an unpecified group of Kings. At Xmas people will wonder if it's something to do with We Three Kings (of Orient are). :p

Pub article: http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/new...rmation__The_Kings_is_to_reopen_this_weekend/

http://www.kcmchurchfalmouth.org.uk/
 
An old pub in Falmouth has just undergone a long refurbishment. It used to be called the King's Head, but from now it becomes just the Kings. Sad, I think. :(

The pub stands next to the church of King Charles the Martyr, and Charles was beheaded by the Roundheads at the end of the English Civil War. That's what the pub name referred to, but now it it is merely an unpecified group of Kings. At Xmas people will wonder if it's something to do with We Three Kings (of Orient are). :p

Pub article: http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/new...rmation__The_Kings_is_to_reopen_this_weekend/

http://www.kcmchurchfalmouth.org.uk/

That really annoys me - a pointless change of name for the worse. I suspect the hand of corporate re-branding bollocks strikes again. What's wrong with tradition?
 
That really annoys me - a pointless change of name for the worse. I suspect the hand of corporate re-branding bollocks strikes again. What's wrong with tradition?
Political correctness. Revisionism.
 
That really annoys me - a pointless change of name for the worse. I suspect the hand of corporate re-branding bollocks strikes again. What's wrong with tradition?

Renaming pubs always pisses me off.

A dockland pub in Hull had a façade made of green bricks, so it was always known as 'Green Bricks', even though its real name was the Humber Dock tavern. Bought out by a chain who immediately changed the name and sign to Green Bricks. It's wrong! It's taking tradition and using it for commercial purposes. :(
 
The Three Horse Shoes was renamed simply as, The Shoes. The new signage depicted a red pair of ladies high heels. It wasn't the classiest of places to begin with but that really did look trashy.

Years ago I remember a Kings Head that suddenly became the Post Chaise. They kept hosting the weekly 'Heavy Rock' night but installed bouncers on the door who wouldn't let you in if you were wearing trainers or jeans. To a Rock do. I think it lasted a couple of weeks before they cancelled them altogether (which was the new owners intention in the first place).
 
Renaming pubs always pisses me off

I agree with your thrust, but there seems to have been a micro-trend (in the wilds of Kent at least) of returning to original names (often they lost them at some point between the 70s and the 90s), which, I suppose, is a form of re-naming (or re-re-naming), of which I approve.
 
why is it PC?
Yes, exactly, I don't really see why it's political correctness, if the name amendment isn't a 'correction' of some supposedly-inappropriate title.

Unless you mean PC in some oblique way, such as pandering to the lowest common denominator (in terms of pub names having to physically-display the local/traditional 'insider' name of a pub).

There's a few layered nuances out there, I suppose:
  • bowdlerized names (a common PC trope eg The Cock and Sparrow becoming rebranded as The Two Birds);
  • bawdyfied names (a common local residents' rename trend, where eg 'The Ball & Chain' is unofficially known as "The Balls";
  • revisionist names (where "Winston's Victory" becomes 'Mandela's Parlour', an inarguably-PC change;
  • reductionist names (the "Three Horse Shoes" above is a good example of historical abrasion. The gripping inference of a cast shoe, and a lamed horse overnighting at an inn, whilst a messenger dashes on ahead on foot, parchment in hand.., is flushed down the modern toilet-bowl of too-long-not-understood marketing 'experts'. And changed into a cheap stilleto. Hang 'em, I say, from a tree. And then name a pub after them....how about "The Hung Marketeers" or "The Executed Executive"?
The only people that know the official names of pubs AND the locals' names for pubs, are taxi drivers, locals, and bouncers. Taxi drivers will take you to the actual pub you're looking for, but at cost. Locals will tell you where the actual pub you're looking for is, but they're either drunk, asleep in bed, or wrong (due to being ill-informedly too young). Bouncers know, but won't tell you, because you've got the wrong shoes on. Move along sunshine...wait, the lady gets in, but you need to go home & change those jeans for other jeans....
 
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Hull also has The Black Boy ( a great little place, real ales and a haunted front room). I would have thought it a prime candidate for a PC renaming but I don't recall hearing of any pressure to do so. Thankfully!
 
Hull also has The Black Boy ( a great little place, real ales and a haunted front room). I would have thought it a prime candidate for a PC renaming but I don't recall hearing of any pressure to do so. Thankfully!
I thought I'd heard of a Black Buoy pub in Dorset, but a web search didn't find it. However, it did turn up a Black Buoy pub in Wivenhoe, Essex, by the river Colne, a place I once knew well. But one web page on it says it was formerly The Black Boy, so I guess that one did get PC'd!

When I started sailing black buoys were used to mark the starboard side of a channel. But in 1980 starboard hand marks were changed to green bouys.
(More than you probably need to know here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_mark )

But I've never seen a pub called the Green Buoy! :D
 
I thought I'd heard of a Black Buoy pub in Dorset, but a web search didn't find it. However, it did turn up a Black Buoy pub in Wivenhoe, Essex, by the river Colne, a place I once knew well. But one web page on it says it was formerly The Black Boy, so I guess that one did get PC'd!

When I started sailing black buoys were used to mark the starboard side of a channel. But in 1980 starboard hand marks were changed to green bouys.
(More than you probably need to know here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_mark )

But I've never seen a pub called the Green Buoy! :D

Maybe there's a pub called the Green Bhoy in Glasgow.
 
There is a Black Boy pub in Caernarfon. It's named after a legend about a coloured lad who was washed ashore from a wreck centuries ago. According to legend he survived and, as they used to say, 'made good' . It's been there for six centuries...
 
Just a few miles up the coast from here we have this
http://www.sunderlandpoint.org/samboos-grave.html
We have visited it a few times and it is always looked after,
there are a few versions of the story one that he pined away and died
after his master went away on a trip, another is he drank himself
to death with the money his master left to keep the house going wile he was away.

This is near the doors of Martins bank in Liverpool some thing the bands round
their wrists are just bandals others thing they are shackles depicting how much
of the wealth was founded on slavery, I am sure members of the pc brigade
would love to rid history of such things.
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/martins-bank-and-its-slave-trade.html
 
In the Leeds suburb that I reside there's one pub which since opening, many moons ago, was named after the local land owning family the Gascoignes.

In recent years it's been bought by a major chain who renamed it "Lord Gascoigne", despite none of that family ever have being a Lord.
It infuriates me more than such a minor matter ever should, and is part of the reason I refuse to frequent that hostelry.
That and the awful food and worse music.
 
In recent years it's been bought by a major chain who renamed it "Lord Gascoigne", despite none of that family ever have being a Lord.
It infuriates me more than such a minor matter ever should, and is part of the reason I refuse to frequent that hostelry.
That and the awful food and worse music.

One has to uphold certain standards.
 
There's a lane here called "Green Dicks La"
It's been called that long before the green party
and I doubt if he was in fact green,
Though I suppose parts of him could have turned
green just before falling off.
 
On the pointless renaming of pubs, a local pub near here was renamed from The Four Mile House (which is its longstanding and traditional name) to "Fagin's". God only knows why, the place has no connection with Dickens or London.
 
There is a Black Boy pub in Caernarfon. It's named after a legend about a coloured lad who was washed ashore from a wreck centuries ago. According to legend he survived and, as they used to say, 'made good' . It's been there for six centuries...

Coloured? COLOURED? Holy shit man, report for re-training immediately, you evil white devil slaver! You should say "person of colo(u)r", didn't anyone tell you?

I refuse to use the new name of the "Saracen's Head" pub in town. In fact, I refuse to use the pub, sod 'em.
 
Coloured? COLOURED? Holy shit man, report for re-training immediately, you evil white devil slaver! You should say "person of colo(u)r", didn't anyone tell you?

I refuse to use the new name of the "Saracen's Head" pub in town. In fact, I refuse to use the pub, sod 'em.

Saracens are as entitled to get head as anyone else.
 
I'll raise your Inns...there's a village in Sussex called Blackboys.
 
Oh, "Saracen's Head" is a hobby...that explains a lot...:evil:
We had a pub called "Saracen's Head" it as now been converted to housing but it had
a large stone Saracen's Head over the door this was so heavy it started to pull the front
out of the pub t was removed a few years back and placed on the car park wall,
must look see if it's still there.
 
If you watch the Nazi blockbuster fantasy Baron Munchausen from the war years, there are black actors in it playing guards, etc. I wonder who they were? Were they not afraid for their lives? How were they in Nazi Germany in the first place? Just shows you there was diversity there, but damn it raises a bunch of questions.
 
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