LIVERPOOL – A WELCOMING CITY.
Those of us in Liverpool who subscribe to the National Geographic (global readership estimates: 9.5 mn), may have read the November 2021 edition: How centuries of immigration has changed culture and communities of Liverpool.
It sounds like a dissertation title for a humanities degree, but the magazine’s write-up of Liverpool’s claim to be a world city – a city in which culture and communities have influenced hospitality accords well with critics.
Although Geographic’s metaphor of Liverpool’s citizenry being a stew – a scouse – of various ingredients does seem a tad patronising, we should remember that this Washington DC publication is teaching the non-UK world about Liverpool’s ethnic diversity through the various ingredients of a dish of scouse.
So we’d best cut Geographic some slack; after all viewing Liverpool as a stew of communities is, in fact, a good literary device.
Anyway, Geographic’s premise is that Liverpool’s immigration has founded the city it is today and quotes Stephen Yip, son of a Chinese merchant seaman, and himself a former councillor and mayoral candidate who states:
Our hospitality is second to none and as Scousers we all know what it’s like to be strangers in the room. We’re resilient.
(1)
Mr Yip has much history to draw upon from Liverpool’ s modest origin as a fishing village to a major port city in the space of a few centuries.
The start point of Liverpool’s wealth was the vile trade of slavery and no apologies can ever compensate for the human misery inflicted by bankers, MP’s, shipowners et al.
It is a total blot on humanity and should never be forgotten.
Still, the Slavery Museum at a Pier Head reveals the whole evil business confirming the city has at least confronted and apologised for slavery through public statements and communiques.
In contrast, the city of Bristol – the first port involved in the ‘Africa trade’ – had yet to issue a public apology to the year 2021, and unless news passes me by still has not done so.
But returning to the Geographic and the word ‘hospitality’ recurs often, so it’s best to figure out which context it’s being used; after all it’s nothing to do with booking a hotel room on Tripadvisor.com, for example.
It’s more or less interchangeable with the word ‘welcoming’ but again, not in the commercial sense.
Instead, hospitality is about free space where strangers can enter and become friends instead of enemy. It’s also the key to new ideas, friends and possibilities.
So the tourist website Lonelyplanet.com concludes that amongst buzzwords such as ‘vibe’ and ‘lively’ Liverpool is:
‘One of the warmest and friendliest cities in northern England.’
(2)
Quite a tribute to Liverpool and scouseness, but it still doesn’t explain how hospitality has been influenced by emigres – the largest number being of Ireland’s Great Famine of 1857 when 2 million emigres landed.
Most were in transit to North America and Australia, but others had no money to go anywhere else and stayed.
Which is the main reason why 75% of residents claim Irish roots – arguably the most iconic Scousers being the Beatles who all have Irish ancestry.
It was the first large wave of migrants soon followed by Chinese seafarers.
And the timeline of Chinese residents goes back almost two centuries to the Alfred Holt steamship company when Chinese crews settled from cities such as Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Sure they worked for low wages; in WW2 they went on strike to claim the same pay and war bonus as British seafarers – unfortunately as Chinese they were forced to compromise.
This is part of Liverpool’s rich tapestry but just as Irish culture was subsumed, Chinese culture altered the communities of Liverpool; lesser influences included Scandinavian, Polish, Somali and Yemeni.
These are a few examples, but again the city’s connection with the sea was underlined by hundreds of thousands of merchant seafarers sailing in and out.
Chinese men often married British women, had Eurasian children and mainly lived in what is now called Chinatown itself around Nelson Street. This Liverpool Chinatown is the oldest Chinese community in Europe. And although the original seafaring West African community predates Irish immigration, with some Gold Coast seamen partnering British women, the Somali and Sudanese communities are also the oldest in all of Europe.
The term intergenerationally-mixed seems a modern description, but many Chinese and African communities trace their own ethnicity, plus English, Irish and Scots in their respective family trees.
Some residents today describe themselves on census forms as ‘Liverpool/Black’ rather than ‘British/Black’ such is the desire for uniqueness.
So not only did merchant seafarers and migrants build communities, but the port was soon classed as second to London in terms of prosperity.
But wealth was not shared equitably with emigres. Rich folks lived in Mossley Hill, but tens of thousands of Irish immigrants paid rent in cramped Kirkdale and Everton tenements; Chinese lived in city centre tenements, whilst African and Caribbean migrants resided mainly in dock areas and Toxteth.
All wanted to better themselves; certainly in Ireland starvation was enough incentive, and the Irish brought their own work ethic and sense of neighbourliness.
They stood up for themselves and social fairness, and the Gaelic Irish saying: Ni neart go cur le cheile (In unity is strength) was very relevant.
And, of course, as migrants do everywhere, the Chinese and Black people gravitated to their own diasporas, worked or developed businesses too.
The phenomena of social integration continued amidst socialist ideals and Liverpool was the first UK city to build public housing (in Vauxhall, 1860); the first Citizens Advice Bureau and the concept of soup kitchens.(3)
The roots of socialism began with two local Fabian Society members, but it wasn’t long before urgent agenda such as clean piped water was acted upon – this following on from terrible cholera outbreaks.
At this point, all communities fought for safe, non-privatised water, just as in later years campaigns were launched for nationalisation of gas, electricity and transport – an obvious example of citizens pulling together.
A socialist utopia? Not quite, and it would be naive to assume that all three components of integration, I.e. social, economic and identity integration, all came together easily.
For example, Irish faced discrimination because of their Catholic faith; Chinese were denied work on the docks and Black people were denied both job and housing opportunities in many places.
In what we now call ‘scapegoating’ – or blaming society’s ills on minorities – a Bermudan ex-Royal Navy seaman, Mr Charles Wootton, following a 1919 protest over job allocations, was chased by a mob.
Ultimately, Mr Wootton was lynched and thrown into a dock – no-one was ever charged with his murder.
IN MEMORIAM:
Mr Charles Wootton, a Bermudan seafarer murdered by a mob of white Liverpool residents in 1919.
It is believed that the murder was motivated by news of foreign workers securing employment ahead of WW1 returned servicemen. No evidence supported this – in fact in today’s world we’d probably call it ‘fake news’ – but the attack became a case of ‘scapegoating’, Mr Wootton was buried in a pauper’s grave without recognition until 2012 when a headstone to him was placed in Anfield cemetery.
Later persecution of Chinese seafarers occurred shortly after WW2 with mass deportations which was especially unjust as 20,000 Chinese had crewed UK merchant vessels throughout the Battle of the Atlantic. These men, with or without papers, were arrested and deported often in the middle of the night, the rationale being that they were deemed ‘troublemakers’ by shipping companies.
Whole families suffered with wives and children separated from husbands and fathers; indeed upon arrival back in China these seafarers dare not compromise their own safety by communicating with Liverpool. Such was the fear of the Chinese Communist authorities – in a land ironically alien and unfriendly to them.
So at this point amidst scapegoating and persecutions it’s easy to assume that this is a racist city.
But difficult as it is to quantify, post-WW1 scapegoating attacks on Blacks occurred in other UK areas including London, Manchester and Cardiff and there is no evidence to suggest that even today other ugly aspects of racism are more prevalent in Liverpool.
Of the unfortunate Chinese deportees, they were the largest group of Chinese merchant seamen in the UK and were expelled by Whitehall’s directive – not by Liverpool council.
In short had they resided in London or Cardiff, for example, their fate would have been similar.
But as years rolled on, the port moved from one upheaval to another. Following the social unrest of post WW1, came the Great Depression, thence WW2 and bombing rendered 74,000 people dead or homeless.
After WW2 came a short prosperous period, but with further recessions jobs were continuously being shed. At one point in the 1980’s there were 55,000 unemployed in Liverpool which would be approximately 10% of the population.
But when calculated as a percentage of working-age population it is clear that this unemployment figure would have been as high as possibly 16%.
Two years of Westminster cuts did nothing for people. And then came the 1981 Toxteth riots, a real show of anger against government apathy which continued beyond 2011 when reports released under the 30-year rule disclosed that senior Tories recommended the then PM Margaret Thatcher should abandon Liverpool to a fate of ‘managed decline.’
(4)
Plenty of moral revulsion abounds with words like ‘managed decline’ – how did Scousers feel about their city being left on the scrap heap?
Which meant that after paying taxes to central government all their lives, that the government would stop subsidies, disinvest in infrastructure and generally ignore decisions made at local level was monstrous.
But perhaps there’s a link with one of Thatcher’s acerbic quotes: ‘there’s no such thing as society.’
So as one war in Liverpool ended in 1945, another one – a propaganda war – kicked off.
If it wasn’t Thatcher or the lies of the Sun newspaper, it was political spite or the vicious myths of the BBC – consistently the one about high crime rates loomed large (Liverpool doesn’t even make the top10 of UK city crime tables, by the way).
(5)
Too bad though that BBC updates don’t mention the fact that Liverpool far right demonstrations rarely succeed.
An exception was the storming of a Knowsley migrant hotel in February 2023, the residents housed by the Home Office were terrorised by a large mob which ultimately resulted in violence.
There is a caveat however and to report from a local Knowsley newspaper which states:
‘few of those gathered represented Knowsley or local people’.’
(6)
Firebombing of this refugee hotel was shameful, but even if we conclude that the BBC didn’t over-report the incident to increase negative perceptions of Liverpool, the damage of scapegoating vulnerable people, ie, the asylum-seekers themselves, was already under way.
Nonetheless, Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram countered the next day: ‘our area has been a sanctuary for people seeking refuge for centuries. Hate is not welcome here.’
(7)
Many would support Mr Rotheram’s statement insofar as antifascism is a core element of Scouse uniqueness – one only needs to look at the 2019 election results to see that.
And if the BBC investigated attempted National Front rallies in Liverpool they’d find the NF are always countered by a bigger antifascist contingent, as witnessed through the 1990’s Rock against Racism movement.
Similar grassroots protests preceded WW2 for when (Sir) Oswald Mosley and his hateful speeches turned up at Walton in 1937 he was pelted with bricks.
He never returned to Liverpool.
August 2023 and immigrant workers in Liverpool: at various times of the day Uber and Deliveroo riders assemble near Bold Street to collect deliveries from McDonalds, Taco Bell, et al.
Just as overseas workers were compelled to do heavy and unsociable work in the past, these guys work hard in all weathers, have scant legal protection and often little recognition – to keep us all connected with our love of fast food.
Anyway, a strong Irish and seafaring immigrant sub-culture has given a sense of detachment and uniqueness from the rest of the country.
The uniqueness is used positively with good reason as a foil against the Londoncentric powers and culture of Westminster.
But noting that the word hospitality figures often, a common thread connects with that of adversity and this city has experienced plenty of that tough cookie.
Resilience is the child of adversity – a concept explored by the National Geographic and elaborated upon by the aforementioned Mr Stephen Yip that adversity breeds empathy and compassion too.
By learning support and kindness of others, we may feel the need to offer the same support to others in need.
For sure – and forty years on – Margaret Thatcher’s dismissive put-down of Liverpool (‘no such thing as society’) was misguided.
But by contrast, National Geographic accurately reports of Liverpool communities, but also determines they and it’s citizens have big, beating hearts too.
References:
1) National geographic.co.uk/01/12/21/ How centuries of immigration have shaped culture and communities in Liverpool (accessed 24/07/2023)
2) lonely planet.com/09/08/21/ Liverpool/ (accessed 12/07/2023)
3) en.Wikipedia.com/30/06/23/housing in Liverpool/ (accessed 12/08/2023)
4) London School of Economics/ blogs.lse.ac.uk/17/01/19/
The Leaving of Liverpool/ (accessed 05/09/2023
5) Simplisafe/09/05/22Crime in Liverpool (from police stats)/(accessed 07/09/2023)
echo.co.uk/ 11/02/23/ Knowsley hotel riot…/ (accessed 01/09/2023)
7) ibid