Liverpool City of Radicals

Uncontrollable, anarchic, separate and alienated from mainstream England, the Liverpool of popular imagination is a hotbed of radicalism and creativity. But is that reputation really justified? Starting in 1911, a year which saw a warship on the Mersey suppressing near revolution in the Liverpool Transport Strike, the remarkable exhibition of paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne and the European avant-garde alongside works by local artists at the Bluecoat, and the opening of The Liver Building, the first major building in the UK to use reinforced concrete in its construction and crowned by two liver birds that came to symbolise the city’s resilience, this fascinating book looks at one hundred years of radicals and radicalism in Liverpool.Ranging widely across a century of politics, music, football, theatre, architecture and art, Liverpool: City of Radicals concludes with a look at the contemporary city and asks what role radicalism can play in the future of Liverpool.

“"The reader will come away from this book with a rich understanding of "Mersey pride" and a wish to visit this remarkable city".--The Historian”

This is a book that Liverpudlians will deeply appreciate. Most of the rest of us can appreciate the idea of it but probably not enough to want to look into it very closely. A worthy civic endeavor, it is too parochial to be of deep or abiding interest to those of us who live nowhere near Merseyside. But as a collection of essays that celebrates a city with a strong sense of itself, those of us who hail from cities with attitude-Philadelphians, Baltimoreans, Chicagoans (like this reviewer)-can selectively dip into this volume and come away with an appreciation for why Scousers love their town. The book was published as part of a centenary for a confluence of radical events that hit Merseyside in 1911: a general strike, the opening of the beautiful landmark Royal Liver Building, and a controversial postimpressionist show at the Bluecoat Gallery. The point of this book, a century on, is "to assess Liverpool's subsequent credentials and reputation, deserved or not, as a city of radicals" (4). Scousers love a good argument. So it is no surprise that different contributors reach different conclusions on the main issue. In an interesting essay on the epochal labor dispute of 1911, John Belchem concludes that it marked a rare moment of solidarity for a Liverpool working class that was divided both before and after the event, chiefly on confessional lines. In a no less interesting essay that chiefly focuses on contemporary activism, Kenn Taylor argues that radical socialism remained central to the city's social identity in the decades after 1911, peaking in the 1980s with the battle between a local government dominated by Militant Tendency and the Thatcher government over spending policies. Militant lost, municipal socialism died, and Liverpool became a byword for urban blight. But the city has enjoyed a renaissance over the last two decades, one that was acknowledged and accelerated by being christened a European Capital of Culture in 2008. Extensive redevelopment has transformed the waterfront and beyond, bringing in luxury hotels, condos, and a thriving restaurant and gallery scene. It is also pricing humbler folks out of central neighborhoods and in doing so is prompting a resurgence of community activism. So while Liverpool's once distinctive look has been giving way to yuppie homogenization, the city maintains some of its old communitarian assertiveness. That assertiveness is perhaps most noticeable in the two things for which Liverpool is best known to the rest of the world-football and music. In the book's two most appealing essays, John Williams provides us with an intimate history of Liverpool football fandom, while Paul Du Noyer traces the story of a remarkably rich Mersey pop scene that centers on, but extends far beyond, the Beatles. The reader will come away from this book with a rich understanding of "Mersey pride" and a wish to visit this remarkable city. The reader will come away from this book with a rich understanding of "Mersey pride" and a wish to visit this remarkable city.

John Belchem, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Liverpool, is acknowledged as Liverpool’s leading historian, whose many publications include editing the Liverpool 800 book, published on the city’s 800th anniversary. He recently contributed to the Peterloo Massacre bicentenary programme. Bryan Biggs has worked at Bluecoat, Liverpool’s contemporary arts centre, for over four decades, curating numerous exhibitions, and live art programmes. In 2017 he directed Bluecoat’s tercentenary year. He writes on contemporary culture and is co-editor, with Julie Sheldon of Art in a City Revisited (Liverpool University Press, 2009) and, with John Belchem, of Liverpool City of Radicals (Liverpool University Press, 2011).

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