The London Overground That Wasn't
- 1 hour ago
- 7 min read
By Charles E.P. Murphy.
The London Overground is exactly what it sounds like, a regular train service like the Underground but not under the ground. Just like the Underground, it has expanded since it started, with branch lines across the Greater London area and its suburbs, spanning now from West Croydon up to Cheshunt, Stratford to Watford. Just like the Underground, it has a very fiddly map showing you all the many, many stations and what criss-crosses.
Unlike the Tube, however, it didn’t have that famous sprawl of multicoloured lines and evocative network names; instead, it was a confusing squiggle of orange, orange, and more orange, all lumped as just “London Overground”. Mayor Sadiq Khan made a commitment to fixing this in his 2021 election manifesto and in 2022, he announced he’d go ahead and give the branches names that reflected London’s history (rather than The Other Northern Line), in 2023 letting the public submit ideas for names that would go into the shortlist.
The cost was first estimated at £6.3m and was condemned as “nonsense” by Khan’s Tory opponent Susan Hall, “spending goodness knows how much on PR people deciding what to rename things”. She said she’d scrap it if she won the election. She did not win. And in November 2024, the new names and new colours came in, and… just became a normal part of London and nobody remembers the cost any more.
The final names were the Suffragette line, obviously named for the women's suffragette movement; the Weaver line, for the historical textile trade that operated on parts of its route; the Windrush line, after the Windrush generation, the first wave of post-war Caribbean immigrants that famously started with the ship Empire Windrush; the Mildmay line, for the pioneering HIV clinic Mildmay Mission Hospital in Shoreditch; the Lioness line, for the England women's football team who’d won the 2022 UEFA Women’s Cup; and the Liberty line, named for the historical Royal Liberty of Havering (where it passes) but also because it can be called Liberty and liberty is good.
And the question must be asked: could the lines have been named something else instead?
Thanks to Londoncentric’s research, we do have a list of various names under consideration! We also know that the Mayor’s Office and TfL made a decision after the shortlisting that they wouldn’t name the lines after historical figures. Speaking in February 2024, TfL’s Emma Strain said, “these names will be in use for decades”, and you can understand why you’d not want to name a line after an individual and risk people’s attitudes changing about them. It wasn’t too long before that questions had been asked about statutes of great historical men across Britain and how those great historical men had been knee-deep in the slave trade. But of course, the decision could have been made the other way, and that opens up a lot of possibilities.
So, the first obvious point of divergence is the Lioness line because it’s dependent on the ‘Lionesses’ winning the Women’s Euro so shortly before the names are divvied out. What if they don't? They could do worse in the qualifying matches, or they could lose to either Spain or Germany (both 2-1 wins) in the knockouts. A line going past Wembley is always going to cry out for a football name though and the list had one: the Cother line. Jack Cother was the first Asian professional football player in the country, who played for Watford in the 1890s. This would also have commemorated London's Asian communities as well as the sport. If the decision to not use people's names remains, another name sticks out: the Galtymore line, named for a famous dance hall in Willesden that became a hub for the Irish expat community.
A particularly iconic name on the shortlist was the Cable Street line, after the famous Battle of Cable Street in Shadwell. This may sound like a really good name, an obvious one, but the line going through Shadwell is in our world the Windrush line, as it runs through multiple places with ties to the West Indian community. There's very little chance Cable Street wins out here. Not only does it fit Khan’s desire for a diverse history of London, TfL wanted to honour the many West Indian staff who’d worked on the Underground. And Windrush is the word that most says "historical Caribbean diaspora" to a British audience.
You might therefore think, surely the Suffragette line (or maybe Suffragist) is going to make it through as well. It’s an obvious way to boast of London's history, right? Well, possibly not if individual’s names are allowed. One reason the line was called that is it passed through Barking, home of Annie Huggett, the longest living suffragette – and one of the rejected shortlist names was the Huggett line.
The other historical Londoners that may have got the nod are a diverse lot. They include Nicholas Winton, who ran the Kindertransport to save Jewish children from the Nazis; the cleric and scientist William Derham; the trade unionist Jayaben Desai who led the 1976 Grunwick strike; and the doctor Baldev Kaushal who, among other things, treated people at the 1943 Bethnal Green Station disaster. (Naming any line after Desai seems doomed to obvious newspaper headlines and photos when TfL staff next go on strike…!) Beyond that, there are numerous cultural suggestions that range from musical genres to specific black British community & arts groups to the Rom skatepark; specific bookstores or clubs; lines named for ecology; and most importantly the Malins line, named for the very first fish and chips shop in the country!
I can’t see Mildmay being changed as it links to LGBT history, not unless it’s named for another part of LGBT history. The other two options were the Polari line, after a carnie, fish-market, and theatrical slang that was adopted by the LGBT community to fly under the radar; and the Green Carnation line, after a covert symbol for gay men in Victorian times. If there’s a Suffragette line rather than a Huggett line, Green Carnation is out because the former needs suffragette green or purple and the Elizabeth Line has nicked the purple.
However, the Mildmay clinic is actually closer to the Windrush line. Could the two be swapped, as Mildmay goes through Hackney, another historic area for Caribbean diaspora in London?
We're also left with multiple options for the Weaver line. It could easily be the Winton line, covering Liverpool Street Station where the children arrived, or the Kaushal line, as it covers both Bethnal Green and Cambridge Heath where the doctor worked. As it passes through Walthamstow, it could be the Skylark line after the bird living in the Walthamstow Wetlands.
The Liberty line is generic enough that I could see it easily changed. While it'd be quite fun to have the Rom line and commemorate a listed skate park, the Fanns line, after the protected Land of the Fanns environment, is probably more likely. We could also see it named the Hops line, for Upminster saw the first hops grown there hundreds of years ago. Alas, the aforementioned immutability of the Windrush line means we can’t fit in the wonderfully named Lovers Rock line, named after a reggae subgenre started in Brockley. But can we get a Malins line? Joseph Malin set up his chippie near where Cambridge Heath station (Weaver) is now, so yes, we were robbed!
And thus out there, there’s a world where Windrush and Mildmay is joined by a Cother line, a Huggett line, a Winton line, and a Fanns line. Or maybe Windrush and Suffragette are joined by a Galtymore line, a Polari line, a Malins line, and a Rom line. Or maybe any number of configurations. Maybe someone at TfL is a huge lovers rock fan and they won't be silenced.
However, that’s in a world with Sadiq Khan. He promised to rename the Overground lines if re-elected and he pulled it off because he was re-elected a second time. If he’d never become mayor at all, would his original Tory opponent Zac Goldsmith have decided to rename the Overground or would it be left up to a subsequent mayor, delaying it further? If Khan had lost to his second Tory opponent Shaun Bailey, would Bailey have gotten round to it? If the Tories had won in 2024 by putting up someone who wasn’t Susan Hall, would that candidate change the chosen names or cancel the plan outright?
Khan and TfL wanted a diverse history of London and they didn’t want individuals. Another figure would have their own ideas of what history to celebrate and if there’s people they should lionise. A Conservative Mayor of London might have still gone with the Lioness and Suffragette lines (especially the Lioness line to celebrate sports), but Mildmay and Windrush could have been scrapped as being a bit too uncomfortable or ‘woke’. A different Labour mayor might have also worried their decisions looked ‘woke’ if they were too diverse. Derham, Winton, and other famous Londoners could have been the namesakes for every line, maybe leaving out someone like Desai, or we could have nice nature names like Ripple, Willow, and Fanns (Goldsmith was an environmentalist Tory) or lines after specific London landmarks to be apolitical.
We could also see some of the names that got abandoned early sticking around under a different mayor: a Colossus line, a Disco line, a Matchgirls line…
We could also still have a dull mess of orange. And what a boring alternate history that would be.
Charles EP Murphy is an author who, among other works, wrote the books Chamberlain Resigns, and other things that did not happen and Comics of Infinite Earths for Sea Lion.