Backlash from anti-smoking campaigners as Bristol road renamed after tobacco brand
25 October 2022, 08:59
Anti-smoking campaigners have branded a council’s decision to rename a road after a cigarette brand "morally unacceptable", as a leading cancer charity said the move didn’t give off “'the most helpful message”.
Bristol City Council, who approved the change, came under fire after the road was renamed "Navy Cut Road" from its previous title “Crox View”.
Originally named after nearby Crox Bottom Woodland, the change coincided with the unveiling of a new 70-home housing complex, built on the site that was once home to the Imperial Group tobacco factory.
Picked from four possible names, it was chosen in a bid to celebrate the city's industrial past, with the tobacco factory, which dates back to the 1970s, employing an estimated 25,000 workers.
However, reports say the local Mayor's Office is now reviewing the name change following a backlash from campaigners, who claim the decision undermines public health messaging.
Noting "councils are often keen to acknowledge local heritage when naming roads", Cancer Research told the BBC that "celebrating a tobacco brand in this way isn't the most helpful message to give out especially to children and young people".
It came as Richard Eddy, a local Conservative councillor who reversed a previous decision to title the street Crox View, said a change of name would risk "airbrushing" the city's history and its ties to slavery.
"No one is proposing that we suddenly bring back slavery or any other [similar] activity,” said Eddy.
"But the reality is, a significant amount of Bristol's origins came from tobacco manufacture, trading, we even had participation in the slave trade and doesn't mean you airbrush history. You remember history, black, white and grey.
During the late 17th and the 18th centuries, Bristol and the surrounding areas became a processing centre for sugar and tobacco imports from the Americas.
Richard Eddy continued: "We are not actually a PC [politically correct] modern city, we are grey. We have got good things, bad things, we're a mixed economy and to be frank one needs to reflect that actuality of course."
Adding: "We don't take kindly to politically correct busybodies pushing their noses into our affairs."
