This is a topic that I have always felt very passionate about, but in recent events I think this sense of a Scouse patriotism has amplified. It has been difficult for me to personally feel much, if any, attachment to the jubilee celebrations, never mind the monstrous policies and behaviours being enacted by the current tory government. Since the 1800's the sense of an independent Liverpool identity has been extremely apparent, and I believe that in the past 30 years this collective notion of being an outsider group has become even more pronounced. Being from a younger Scouse generation, I don’t have any physical memory of the troubles faced by people in Liverpool throughout the Churchill administration, Toxteth riots and the Thatcherite era. However, I still feel a strong sense of disaffiliation with England and have a lot of anger towards the way Liverpool has been historically treated by those in positions of power, especially as we continue to experience these legacies play out in real time today. I’m going to give a quick low down on the historical context of Liverpool so that we can begin to understand why people feel the way they do about the current political climate we live in today.
Despite there already being established Irish communities in Liverpool throughout the 1800's and Industrial Revolution period, it was the mass migration of Irish people during the Great Irish Famine from 1847 that made the most impactful mark on the city of Liverpool. The relationship between Irish immigrants and those from Liverpool was highly contested, particularly in relation to the disproportionate levels of poverty and sectarian tensions between Catholic and anti-Catholic sentiments. Nonetheless, the arrival of the Irish émigré throughout this period has had long lasting changes in the socio-economic and cultural complexions of the city of Liverpool.
Today, it is estimated that around 75% of people in Liverpool have connections to the Emerald Isle, and so you need only spend a couple of minutes in the city to realise that there is a rich Irish culture that runs through the veins of Liverpool and its people. This Irish identity continues to flourish today, and since the emergence of Brexit policies, rising tensions between wealth disparities and the North/South divide, I would argue that it is only strengthening. As a city where Irishness was once highly controversial, Liverpool now has a strong historical and genealogical bond to its Irish heritage which continues to feed into the very distinctive contemporary Scouse culture. I think most people in Liverpool today find it almost impossible to separate themselves from their Irish roots, and it is no longer a case of being Scouse or Irish, but both at the same time. For this reason, it is understandable why Liverpool is often coined as the second capital of Ireland, and why its people often embody an anti-authoritarian sentiment towards ‘Englishness’, as we do not see ourselves as English, but as Scouse.
Moving on from Liverpool’s Irish roots to the deep hostility towards the British Establishment and Conservative Governments, I think it’s important to begin with the legacy of Liverpool’s Bloody Sunday in 1911.
In 1911, Liverpool came to a standstill in a peaceful strike against dire working and living conditions, inadequate wages, and for union recognition. However, the somewhat 100,000 protestors at St Georges Hall and the Walker Art Gallery were met with violent resistance from army troops and police officers acting upon the orders of Home Secretary Winston Churchill, where two men, Michael Prendergast and John Sutcliffe were shot dead. These events therefore culminated in what is now remembered as Liverpool’s Bloody Sunday. A couple of days later, Churchill sent up the HMS Antrim to patrol the River Mersey and intimidate strikers in an attempt to stop what was considered the closest the UK had come to a revolution at this time. These gunboats were sent to starkly threaten the Liverpool protestors, representing a willingness from the British Government itself to violently mortar the city if strikers refused to return to work.
In the words of Tom Mann, the Liverpool SolFed Union leader:
Churchill’s legacy in Liverpool, however, did not end here. The Liverpool Blitz of 1941 was the heaviest sustained period of bombing that the city ever experienced throughout World War 2, notably leaving behind monuments such as the Bombed Out Church.
Churchill then went on to rub salt into the wound when visiting Liverpool to evaluate the damage and loss of life following the blitz, where he led with blatant hypocrisy and ignorance by the following statement:
"I see the damage done by the enemy attacks, but I also see the spirit of an unconquered people."
I find this narrative of an ‘unconquered people’ quite sinister considering 30 years earlier Churchill himself had threatened the city with a very similar fate. However, despite the bomb sites and damage, the people of Liverpool continued to persevere in the conditions they were forced into – which can I add had nothing to do with the efforts of Churchills government and empty words of insincerity. And so, this begs the question, is it any wonder that Liverpool has little affiliation with those in positions of power and authority considering the inhumane treatment in which the city was subjected to throughout this period?
I think this sentiment is wholly reflected by the remarks of former Labour Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell who called Churchill a ‘villain’ with regards to Liverpool, and stated that for many of the working class, Churchill was not “not someone who they looked up to as a result of the actions when he was home secretary.”
Okay, so now we have the Irish migration and Churchill fiasco covered it’s time to move on to what I think it’s the most influential period – the Thatcherite period.
The late 1970s saw a major decline in the Liverpool manufacturing sector, shrinking by 50% due to dock closure and the introduction of austerity policies. Following the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Liverpool began to edge closer and closer to the political border of Britain, falling into a period of extreme unemployment and industrial unrest. The port of Liverpool was the life and blood of the city, and so without it, the life was kicked out of working class people who wanted and needed to work. Thatcher’s government was highly responsible for Merseyside’s rapid decline, rising unemployment and cuts in public services, inducing an extremely hostile environment towards both the British establishment and government.
The Thatcher period was underpinned by the ideology of monetarism - basically meaning that the government would not intervene if a business was suffering, and social security was taken away. However, despite forcing Liverpool into profound negative cultural, social, and economic changes, it is the Thatcherite ethos which I believe still persists today. By this I mean the way in which conservative governments continue to devalue Liverpool and its people, neglecting the city as a ‘lost cause’.
This rationale is particularly evident in the tory attitudes following the Toxteth riots of 19811, whereby the Conservative policies of managed decline which shortly followed.
Tensions in Liverpool’s inner city areas, such as Toxteth, continued to rise throughout the late 20th century particularly between the Black community and Police. People grew tired of police mistreatment, spending cuts, poor housing, sus laws, racial assault, and harassment. Then, in July 1981, the city of Liverpool exploded in response to the arrest of Leroy Cooper, propelling the already hostile environment into a period of nine consecutive nights of violence and riots.
The 1981 riots displayed some of the most extreme examples of urban disorder in the history of the UK. However, the government’s response to the uprisings were not to rehabilitate Liverpool and listen to the anger of its people, but instead, to tactically retreat from any form of regeneration for the city at all. The unrest in Liverpool throughout the remainder of the 1980s were a product the of urban policies designed by the Thatcher government which aimed to abandon the ‘damaged’ areas of Liverpool in an attempt to preserve the cities not yet ‘corrupted’ by such political unrest. The legacy of such extreme periods of instability meant that there was very little, if any, support for the Government throughout the majority of Liverpool in its entirety, and so, by pursuing a politics of managed retreat, the conservative government really had nothing to lose.
Geoffrey Howe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, was a leading name in the managed decline of Liverpool who worked to promote a conscious abandonment of the damaged parts of Liverpool’s body politic by pursuing policies of tactical retreat, economic erosion and encouraged evacuation. In this sense, Liverpool became invisible in the eyes of the Conservative government. Howes’ policy of managed decline in the wake of the Toxteth riots ultimately aimed to abandon Liverpool both economically and financially at the highest level of government. In the words of Howe:
The Thatcher narrative, however, does not end here. As if things couldn’t get any worse, along came the most disastrous event in Liverpool’s history, Hillsborough.
On the 15th of April 1989, 97 Liverpool fans were tragically crushed to death at the FA semi-final in Sheffield against Nottingham Forest. However, what makes this tragedy so devastating is that these deaths did not need to happen, and instead of respectfully honouring those killed, the media decided to villainise Liverpool fans and the city as a whole.
But what was Thatcher’s role in all of this? To be honest, it was never fully documented, however her silence regarding any form of independent inquiry into what exactly happened is pretty revealing. Thatcher’s press secretary at the time, Bernard Ingham, however, did express his feelings towards the incident in a letter sent to a Liverpool fan in 1996, where he wrote:
Let’s now move away from Thatcher and towards another enemy of Liverpool, The Sun. If you have ever been to Liverpool, you will be aware of the billboards, street art and Black cabs reading “Don’t read the Sun”. This is because The Sun printed on its own front page that Liverpool fans had "urinated on police officers" and "picked the pockets of the dead", whilst pointing the finger at “drunk and ticketless” fans for causing the death of their own people. Therefore, I’m sorry to say if you are an avid Sun reader (which if you are, it’s time to sort yourself out), you won’t ever be able to pick up a copy in any Liverpool shop, and if you do manage to find yourself one and are caught reading it, then you're on your own mate...
It wasn’t until 2012 that the truth regarding these shameful comments finally surfaced, when the former Sun editor, Kelvin Mackenzie publicly apologised to the people of Liverpool for blaming the fans for the Hillsborough tragedy. In his statement, MacKenzie said "I published in good faith, and I am sorry that it was so wrong”, however, this was all too little too late. The movement towards new inquests shortly followed, and it was confirmed by the HIP report that at least 41 of those who died might have actually been saved if responses had acted differently.
In 2015, David Duckenfield, the Yorkshire Police Chief Superintendent at the time finally admitted that his failure to close the tunnel that caused the crushing “was the direct cause of the deaths of 96 people". His statement concluded that this failure to consider the consequences of admitting thousands of fans into already packed stands at the stadium was ultimately what led to the unlawful deaths of 97 Liverpool fans. The inquest finally concluded what Liverpool had known all along, that the fans were not responsible for the deaths and instead, it was the fault of police failures, stadium design faults and delayed responses from ambulance services.
However, despite David Duckenfield taking responsibility in 2015, we still have not received justice for the 97, 33 years on. The Hillsborough trial concluded in 2019 that David Duckenfield was in fact not guilty of the manslaughter of the Liverpool fans. And so, in the words of Margaret Aspinall, chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, “We have got to live the rest of our lives knowing our loved ones were unlawfully killed and nobody will be accountable for that unlawful killing. That can't be right.”
96 people were killed, and there is still not even one person held accountable. People are unable to grieve and yet again, the people of Liverpool have been abandoned by a system that is morally wrong whilst Duckenfield continues to walk free.
Right, so I know that was a lot of information, but I think it’s necessary if you are to understand how deeply rooted these feelings of anger and frustration towards the tory government and British establishment are. It is guaranteed that if you sit at the dinner table with at least three generations of scousers, there will be an abundance of personal stories as to how the city and people of Liverpool have been mistreated and neglected by those in power. This is why people born in Liverpool, brought up in Liverpool or brought up by those from Liverpool feel such a disaffiliation with the conservative government, British establishment, and England itself as a nation. This historical sense of abandonment has culminated over so many generations that and periods in time that Liverpool has created its own sense of identity, one that prides itself on community and an understanding that we cannot rely on anyone but ourselves.
The Scouse entity and the cultural and social fabric of Liverpool is therefore entangled in a sense of Liverpool patriotism as a dilution of Englishness. It is bound in a frustration against the establishment of the Royal Family and governments that continue to discard Liverpool and its people. These insights into the Scouse mentality and anger towards the political climate and establishment continue to reveal themselves today and despite being treated badly and forgotten for decades, Liverpool still remains an outsider.
This is why made sure during the recent Jubilee celebrations I made sure that I was as far as possible from the showers of union jacks and street parties – seriously, I fled the country and flew to Sweden. It is also why so many Liverpool fans recently booed the national anthem at the FA Cup final in Wembley. We are sick and tired of the social and economic inequality along the North South Divide, continually being let down by the state and Conservative government, and we certainly do not want to relish in the spectacle of royalty and patriotism that tries so hard pretending we do not exist. There still remains a lot of scepticism in Liverpool regarding the governing of our country, and we are the only city in the whole of the UK that only supports the red seats of Labour. Despite being a proud sporting blue myself, I will always stand tall on the backs of the political red wall of Liverpool.
Forza Scouse Republic, and f*ck the Tories.
Comments