The former Oakdale Arms pub, Hermitage Rd, South Tottenham.
Arsenal fan Keir Starmer has discovered Sue Gray’s Tottenham background
Sue Gray the former senior civil servant who was at the centre of Keir Starmer’s Downing St operation until 6th October was born and brought up in Tottenham.
This of course has nothing to do with her job and neither does the history of her family, although one does wonder if fervent Arsenal season ticket holder Keir Starmer had decided that Arsenal and Spurs could not easily co-exist at 10 Downing St.
Sue Gray’s North London background is not without some interest however. She lived initially in West Green Rd N15 and then in Philip Lane N15, quite close to where Foreign Secretary David Lammy was brought up. Subsequently it seems the family moved to Hermitage Rd N4 (a long road that runs between St Ann’s Hospital and Green Lanes in South Tottenham) and her mother worked at the Oakdale Arms pub.
The Oakdale I’m afraid is no more though I (as the then Secretary of Haringey TUC) and many others were involved in a long running campaign to save it. Of course Ms Gray’s mother was no longer working there- this was in the years before 2010,she died in 2003. In fact the pub had passed into the hands of Milton a Cambridge micro-brewery and was known for good cask beer and food. It was run by Tom Behan- who went on to run the Bumble Inn in central Peterborough-the 2020 Beard Friendly Pub of the Year. The Oakdale was overseen by Steve Early who also ran the Pembury Tavern in Hackney-now Five Points brewery tap.
The pub was owned by North London property developers C and S Shah whose aim was to build flats on it. The pub was a profitable going concern but flats were more profitable. They got planning permission after an appeal to a planning inspector claimed that there was an alternative pub nearby, the Woodberry on Seven Sisters Rd. It has not been a pub for a good while and last time I checked flats had not been built on the Oakdale site. An all too familiar story of C21st Britain.
All that being said Ms Gray due to family circumstances did not do a degree but entered the civil service direct from school and based on her ability rose to a senior level. I’m not sufficiently familiar with the 2024 Civil Service to know if it’s still possible to do that-but in the private sector where I work, there are management apprentice schemes designed to facilitate that. It’s world of which old Etonians like Boris Johnson have no conception.
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