Prophet
'suspect it is just a beginning,' wrote Jul 1983) in propheticllor vein. ( HeNotebook had drawno artte ntivo to Camden borough council's'
Street, inof Selous Street as Mandela in honour of the South African anti- apartheid hero. Rupert Hill, of Rhodesia !toad in Lambeth, now informs us that his 'inchincil, not to be outdone by its comrades
wCamden,has decided to rename no fewer ahn 22 of Lambeth's streets, beginning his own. Subject to the formality of ,-eDrovai by the GLC, Rhodesia Road will wheiclne Zimbabwe Road. The others, *et' are yet to be chosen, will be named after 'personalities in the black nationalist struggle', as a spokesman puts it. This is part of Lambeth's contribution to 'anti- racist year', more commonly known as 1984. Rhodesia Road contains nine houses: warned by a reporter from the South Lon- don Press that closed meetings of the town planning and the public services urgency [sic] sub-committees were about to make this decision (to coincide with Mr Botha's visit to Britain), the residents presented a unanimous written request to keep the pre- sent name. It did them no good. The sub- committees were not interested in the cost (they allocated £5,000 to changing street names), the futility or the inconvenience of their gesture. They did not mind that none of those directly affected by the change wanted it. People make way for ideology. Is there now any hope of keeping politics out of the A-Z Guide, or will Lambeth itself, perhaps, soon be known as Robben Island? Will local elections be fought in future on nomenclature? We suspect it is just a begin- ning.
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