Bid to name street in honour of Belfast scientist John Stewart Bell is rejected

Belfast City Council has rejected plans to name a street after Belfast scientist John Stewart Bell.

Bell overcame humble beginnings to become an eminent physicist who corrected Einstein.

Last month the council's health and environmental services committee followed its convention of not naming streets after people and voted against the request.

Only two people – both members of the royal family – have had a street named after them in Belfast in the past 50 years – Prince Edward Park in 1962 and Prince Andrew Park in 1987.

The parties who opposed the street being named after Bell voiced concern it would set a precedent for other proposals for streets to be named after people that might cause controversy. However, after meeting with Queen's University and Belfast Metropolitan College, Sinn Fein councillor Mairtin O Muilleoir took up the cause of reversing the council policy on a one-off basis.

He proposed at the full meeting of Belfast City Council this week that the committee decision be overturned and that a street be named after Bell.

"We are all mindful of the need to avoid more contention in the city of Belfast, so in proposing that we grant this application I am not suggesting we open the flood ates to a rash of street naming proposals which could foster division in the city, but I do think in this case that we should reverse the decision we took at committee," he told the council.

The former Lord Mayor revealed that he had been lobbied by "a number of prominent people" after the committee's decision.

They had argued that councillors had got it wrong, said Mr O Muilleoir.

The street in question would have been called John Bell Crescent and is in Titanic Quarter, where the new campus of Belfast Metropolitan College now stands.

Bell had been a past pupil of the Technical College, an institution that became the Met.

Hundreds of students pass through its Titanic Quarter campus every day.

But every party – with the exception of Sinn Fein – voted against the amendment tabled by Mr O Muilleoir.

It fell by 29 votes against to 16 votes for.

John Stewart Bell had been nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1990, but died unexpectedly of a cerebral haemorrhage that year. A Nobel can't be awarded posthumously.

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John Stewart Bell was born in Belfast in 1928 to a family from a poor background. He studied at the then Belfast Technical College and Queen's University before going on to work for the European Council for Nuclear Research, where he researched theoretical particle physics and accelerator design. He also investigated the foundations of quantum theory – and came up with the pioneering Bell's theorem, which famously corrected Albert Einstein. Bell was nominated for a Nobel prize in 1990 – but tragically he could not win it after dying of a cerebral haemorrhage in Geneva in 1990.

Why the parties opposed move...

DUP councillor Brian Kingston said the council should stick by its convention of not naming streets after people, adding: “We could get into situations where names are brought forward that could be politically contentious and we could be inundated with requests.”

SDLP councillor Tim Attwood said naming the street after Bell would set a precedent. He added: “People can give guarantees that we are not going to bring names forward, but we know across councils this can be a very divisive issue.”

Alliance councillor Mervyn Jones said: “I don’t think anyone in the council has anything against John Stewart Bell, but I have a concern and the Alliance Party has a concern about the precedent that could be set.”

Ulster Unionist councillor Jim Rodgers thought the council should stand by what it has been doing with regard to street names. “We have nothing against the individual — far from it — but if someone wants to call a building after him, fair enough,” he said.

Belfast Telegraph