When this blog was in an unintended hiatus, it was possible to retrieve the posts through a reader’s feed reader. But this one comment that appeared at that time was lost – but the commenter, the blogger of Language Miscellany, has now been found. His interesting post was about the possibility that Tower Hamlets council might declare Cockney one of the local languages – for International Mother Tongue Day on 21 February (not long to go now). This was reported in 2023. Cockney in Tower Hamlets is the post:

On 15 March 2023, Tower Hamlets Council discussed a petition started by Grow Social Capital CIC and Bengali East End Heritage Society and signed by 31 people. The petition asked the Council ‘to ensure that the Cockney language, identity, and its unique cultural heritage related to the East End of London be recognised as a community language and be celebrated annually on 21st February on International Mother Language Day, and for Cockney to be included in any community language provisions by the Council.’

It does not seem to me that Cockney is a language, and even Estuary English is not. I should say I may be a Cockney myself, as I was born in the Mothers Hospital in Hackney, just before the NHS came into existence, but at that time the bells of Bow Church were not actually ringing for a few years after WWII, or so I was told. The exact dates and which bells were ringing is confusing. But new bells were ringing from 1961.

Further research on Cockney produced a photograph of Pearly Kings and Queens, including the Pearly King of Upminster (now deceased), from whose coat I took the photograph at the head of my blog. Some of us were doubtful as to whether Upminster could really have a pearly king anyway.

At all events, I did not grow up in Hackney, not did my mother live there – she was living in Archway, near the Whittington Hospital, at which location Dick Whittington is said to have heard the bells calling him back to be Mayor of London. When my brother, born in York,  was finally bedridden, he did call himself a Raspberry Ripple, but I wouldn’t say he spoke Cockney.

The petition for Cockney to be a Tower Hamlets language does come from an organization called Grow Social Capital, who also have a Modern Cockney Festival. Various initiatives are developed there – scroll down. There is much more.

Meanwhile, Tower Hamlets has a Young Community Languages project:

We are delighted to offer young people in the borough the chance to learn a range of additional languages, including their heritage languages.We are partnering with schools, Idea Stores and voluntary organisations to provide classes in:

• Arabic

• Bangla

• Mandarin / Cantonese

• Somali

(I haven’t researched Idea Stores). So there are no classes for them in Cockney.