Last week, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, revealed that the Overground tube line would be split up and renamed to honour and celebrate “different parts of London’s unique local history and culture”. The newly renamed lines include Lioness, Mildmay, Liberty and, perhaps most controversially, Windrush. Announced just three months before the London mayoral election in May, only time will tell as to whether or not Khan will end up regretting this showy £6m project. My own feelings on the renaming are complicated.
The Windrush line connects two places I have called home for most of my life. I was born in Hackney, around the corner from the Claudia Jones Organisation, which supports predominantly African-Caribbean women and their families. I was brought up on the scent of jerk chicken wafting over Dalston, seeing “provisions” such as yam, plantain and sweet potato hawked at Ridley Road market, hearing the sound of steel pans leading performers down the streets for the Hackney carnival, and reading children’s stories in the radical Centerprise bookshop, which specialised in African-Caribbean literature and history. Since 2011, I have lived in south-east London, mainly Peckham – colloquially called Little Lagos because of the large west-African community that lives here, but where I’m also likely to hear the odd Jamaican twang in the mass of people who head down to Rye Lane on the weekend to pick up their groceries, hair products, a patty from Angels Bakery or jerk chicken from JB’s Soulfood.
