Plaques Unveiling Ceremony

Highlights of Simon’s speech at the Unveiling

We're here for three good reasons:
To Celebrate

(1) Penny’s Life
(2) the Pure Accident of History
(3) the Ongoing Community of the Streets

(1)To Celebrate Penny's Life

The first one is to celebrate Penny's life. I would like to say that this was her greatest, or most important thing that she did in her life. It happens that she campaigned along with others, Nic and other people who live around here, for this crossing for 15 years, as she saw it getting busier and busier, more people walking up and down here. And sadly, she succeeded, but it was actually the day that she died that they finally put it (the traffic light) in…

So that's why we called it Penny's Crossing.

But, it’d be completely wrong to say that was what we should remember her for, because hers was a life of political campaigning and community activity. I don't know the whole story by any means. I do know that she was involved from 1968 onwards, a famous year down in London, as a political activist around the LSE (London School of Economics), where I think she met Nic. And he moved up to Sheffield in 1973, year before me, probably for similar reasons, to study, but also because at that time, Sheffield was known as the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, and there were lots of struggles going on here which we felt were worth getting involved in.

And you moved straight into Harcourt Road, I think. We studied in University. Penny then went on to work for one of the early housing associations, when they were quite small, really, community organisations, before they became corporations. It's originally called North Sheffield Housing Association. Now it's called Arches (Arches Housing), and she worked there for a very long time.

(2) The Pure Accident of History

Speaking of globally. That's the second reason why we're here, really is because, by a pure accident of history, Harcourt Road shares the name of the principal street in Hong Kong. So it’s Clara and Gum’s idea, who are politically aware artists, to link up the Harcourt roads around the country. Even though, actually, our Harcourt is named after a different member of the ruling class from the one named after in Hong Kong. Navy admiral Harcourt obviously got around. There're a lot of Harcourts wrapped around the country, but we're lucky that you lived in Sheffield and so picked on us, and I think we're honoured to be in the same group of this street with so much immense political campaigning sacrifice, violence, oppression, which people are still suffering and still standing up to. So, our little struggles are tiny, but we're very grateful to be and you'll see on the scroll some of the work that's been done, by Gum and Clara and some other artists.

(3) The Ongoing Community of the Streets

The third reason we're here is just to celebrate our own streets and the ongoing community of the streets. I was thinking a little bit of adversity actually creates community. We certainly had a little bit of adversity. It's not life threatening, but life isn't always easy on Harcourt Road, but that brings us together to clean it up, to socialise, to welcome new members, and that's what we're doing today.