Wetherspoons to keep ‘Black Boy’ venue after Greene King changes its pubs’ names

Chain says it believes the title is ‘historic name for a chimney sweep’

The company put the name to a vote in 2014 (Getty Images)

Pub chain JD Wetherspoon has confirmed it will not be renaming ‘The Black Boy’ pub in Wales after another brewery chain committed to changing the titles of four of its venues over concerns they had racist connotations.

Greene King announced last week that it would change the names of three of its pubs called The Black Boy and another called The Black’s Head due to a perception that the names were linked to racism.

Wetherspoon said its venue in Newtown, Powys, has never received any complaints and that name dates back to the 17th century.

A Wetherspoon spokesperson told The Independent: “The Wetherspoon pub in Newtown is called the Black Boy, which we believe is the historic name for a chimney sweep.

“There was a 17th century pub of this name on the same site. The name was chosen from a number of options by readers of a local newspaper in 2014. To date, we haven’t received any complaints regarding the name, but will keep matters under review.”

The pub chain had proposed changing the venue’s title in 2014, saying it was “not [the company’s] preferred name”. However, this led to backlash from locals, and two-thirds voted via a poll in by town’s newspaper to keep the original name.

The new names for the Greene King pubs were decided through online polling, which saw more than 7,000 respondents cast a vote. The Black Boy pub in Bury St Edmunds will be changed to The West Gate; the pub by the same title in Sudbury, Suffolk, will be renamed The Lady Elizabeth; the one in Shinfield, Berkshire, will be titled The Shinfield Arms. Additionally, The Black’s Head in Wirksworth, Derbysire, will be named The Quarryman.

Greene King’s managing director, Wayne Shurvinton, said that while there were concerns that the names had racist connotations, the origins were “obscure”. However, he acknowledged that the chain “had to take this step if we wanted to continue on our journey to become a truly anti-racist organisation”.

The move comes after the company’s historic links to slavery were exposed through a University College London (UCL) database of slave profiteers in June last year. The revelation led Greene King to pledge it would make “substantial investment” in black, Asian and minority ethnic communities as part of anti-racism efforts.  

Halima Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, welcomed the chain’s decision, but said the change did not go far enough.

Ms Begum told the BBC: “The company has made several symbolic efforts to address its founder’s legacy of oppression, not least by diversifying its hiring practices and through its work with the Slavery Museum in Liverpool – but is the renaming of a few pubs enough to make amends? No. Not in the slightest.

She said that people from ethnic minority backgrounds who walk past the venues “are essentially having the history of oppression rubbed in their faces on a daily basis”, adding that the chain should not be singled out as many other major companies have “profited from the unconscionable ownership and exploitation of black people”.