Call to to rename streets after city’s women
A COUNCILLOR has proposed that some of Glasgow’s most famous streets should be renamed to honour the city’s important women.
Baillie Dr Nina Baker put forward the motion to be discussed at a Glasgow City Council meeting on Thursday.
Ms Baker proposed the idea after seeing that Spain has chose to replace street names from the era of the country’s wartime fascist dictator, Franco, to famous women’s names. This spurred the Green councillor to ask the council to consider having Glasgow rename some streets, currently named after the city’s famous sugar barons and tobacco lords, who used slaves to grow their businesses, to those of women who stood up for abolition and civil rights.
Dr Baker said: “People walk down the streets named after these famous merchants who built their fortunes, and the city’s, off the back of slavery without really realising who these people were.
“My proposition is to rename streets like Ingram Street, Argyle Street and Cochrane Street after women who were part of abolition movements or the suffragettes. Women such as Mary Barbour, Lady Isabella Elder and Jean Roberts would be good examples of this.
“This would be extremely difficult to do but it’s something I would like to put in to the city’s public eye.”
Mary Barbour led citywide protests against unscrupulous and opportunist private landlords in 1915 while philanthropist Lady Isabella Elder, wife of John Elder, one of the city’s foremost shipbuilders had a high profile around a century ago.
Dame Jean Roberts earned a unique place in history when she became Glasgow’s first woman Lord Provost in 1960.
Sue John, the Enterprise development manager, for Glasgow Women’s Library said: “When we look around our civic landscapes the celebration of Scotland’s great men is apparent through statues, buildings and street names in their honour.
“This isn’t so much the case with women whose achievements go largely unrecognised. So naming streets after some of Scotland’s heroines is a great idea.
“Part of the work of Glasgow Women’s Library, as the only accredited museum dedicated to women’s history in the UK, is to tell their forgotten stories.”