Representations of Liverpool Exceptionalism in the Merseybeat Period, 1960-1965
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Representations of Liverpool Exceptionalism in the Merseybeat period, 1960-1965. Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy by David Kmiot June 2019 1 2 Acknowledgements The contributions of people who helped me with this project cannot be understated. I would like to thank Dr Graeme Milne for his unending support over the last five years, not just with the actual writing of the thesis. I would also like to thank Drs Laura Balderstone and Anna Bocking-Welch, my second supervisors, whose insights on oral history and a general understanding of whether what I was writing actually made sense were indispensable. I would like to also thank those who contributed to this thesis in the oral history interviews. Their willingness to talk, share stories, and entertain an inquisitive PhD student was invaluable. Personally, I would like to thank my mother, Nia, for her continued support in my attempts to squeeze just another bit of higher education into my life, my brother Huw for his support through keeping me amused, and Rachel Coombes, for being someone I could rely on when I was having thesis-related panics and being far more confident in my ability than I was myself. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to my late father, Wit, whose own frustrations at having not studied History were represented in bookshelves full of History books at home, and whose frustration I have now hopefully satisfied, in some way. 3 Table of Contents Abstract 5 Introduction 7 Part I 1. Literature Review 12 2. Methodology 51 Part II Chapter One: Britishness, Englishness and the problems of categorisation in defining collective Liverpudlian identity in the Merseybeat period. 67 Chapter Two: Cosmopolitanism and Merseybeat 115 Chapter Three: America and Merseybeat 164 Conclusion 215 Bibliography 222 4 Abstract This thesis takes John Belchem’s defined concept of Liverpool Exceptionalism and tests it by application to the years 1960-1965 in Liverpool and specifically to the Merseybeat period. It uses two main resources – a substantial review of music newspapers written in the 1960s and an oral history with Liverpudlian musicians who were in Merseybeat groups in the 1960s. This study of popular and/or collective memory suggests that any attempts to define Liverpool’s supposed exceptionalism in restrictive terms are bound to be unsatisfactory. By taking a three-pronged approach, this thesis suggests that the United States played a crucial role in the creation and sustenance of a unique Liverpudlian identity in the Merseybeat period, though the causes of prominence of the United States within this formulation are only partially due to the city’s port status. Liverpool’s depiction as a place of deprivation was a strong contributory factor in sustaining the Liverpudlian identity from both within the city and in popular press coverage. Finally, the Irish influence on any collective identity was starting to become of declining influence in this period as well as suggesting that cosmopolitanism was in some places a restrictive factor in creating a broad Liverpudlian identity. Overall, this thesis offers a suggested correction to the concept of Liverpool Exceptionalism and demonstrates the difficulty of applying academic rigour to certain popular concepts. 5 6 Introduction Post-war Liverpool is a place that underwent substantial change. The perseverance of a sense of ‘apartness’ is crucial in both understanding the city and also the central questions of this thesis. Manifesting itself through arts, culture, personal identity and, it being Liverpool, football, a sense of Liverpool’s existence as a place apart permeates through much of Liverpudlian life. In 2007, a group of Liverpool fans held up a banner in the Kop Stand at Anfield proclaiming “We’re not English, we are Scouse”.1 A display at Lime Street around the same time declared “Liverpool: in England but not of it”.2 In an academic context, this somewhat vague idea of ‘difference’ manifested itself in the concept known as ‘Liverpool Exceptionalism’. Liverpool Exceptionalism, a concept defined almost exclusively by John Belchem, relies on two key pillars: the city’s status as a port and, as a result, the influx of Irish people into the city. Belchem was by no means the first to identify these two characteristics but the general themes around which they are based have formed the roots of much of the writing on Liverpool in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and his description of the exceptional parameters that apparently define Liverpool have persisted throughout modern discourse of the city. As so much of the academic history of Liverpool has coalesced around defining it in exceptional terms, the issue of Liverpool’s supposed exceptionalism is a pertinent one. Belchem’s two main works on the topic, Merseypride: Essays in Liverpool Exceptionalism and Irish, Catholic, and Scouse: The History of the Liverpool-Irish, establish a framework on which any attempt to define Liverpool’s exceptionalism tend to depend. In these, Belchem effectively argues that the two main factors mentioned created a sense of ‘apartness’ within Liverpool. There are a wide range of identifiers that have contributed to any perceived sense of ‘apartness’ or exceptionalism in Liverpool and, in Belchem’s thesis, many of those factors have their roots in the two above. In the argument that Liverpool’s port created a sense of closeness with America as opposed to England, Belchem leans heavily on the idea that Liverpool was seen as the “New York of Europe” – a designation he expands upon by suggesting that “Liverpool 1 http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/uploads/2013/10/b_20100225093224_scouse_scouse_pride.jpg [Accessed 24-6-2019]. 2 http://www.hilaryburrage.name/hilary_burrage/2008/06/liverpool-in-england-but-not-of-it.html [Accessed 10-10-16]. 7 stood proudly above the ‘Coketown’ monoculture of adjacent Lancastrian textile and industrial towns”.3 In examining whether the Irish influx into the city created physical separation between English and Irish, Belchem promotes the idea that “in this distant and ever-irretrievable past before global trade declined, the empire disintegrated and the old slums were destroyed, the Liverpool-Irish ‘slummy’ was inscribed as the prototypical Scouser”.4 On whether the port made Liverpool more cosmopolitan than other English cities: “once the great commercial and human entrepot linking the Old Word and the New, Liverpool was a global port city with an ethnically diverse ‘cosmopolitan’ population”.5 On whether Liverpool’s perceived lower class status helped further the city’s status as a place apart: “immune from the enterprise culture, [the descendants of the Liverpool-Irish] have sunk further into economic depression and (ungrateful) welfare dependency, remaining working-class when all around have moved onwards and upwards. An anachronism elsewhere in Thatcherite Britain, the term ‘working-class’ retained a residual pejorative relevance”.6 Belchem’s work has been crucial in creating this framework for the city to be understood. This ‘apartness’, though incredibly difficult to precisely explain, exists as much in the collective identities of people from Liverpool as it has (to a degree) outside of it. Ramsay Muir’s A History of Liverpool set the course for much of Liverpudlian historiography, by elevating the port as the Liverpudlian characteristic super omnia - per Muir, “the chief causes of [Liverpool’s] ultimate victory were no doubt beyond her control – the discovery of America, the transference of the main English trade-routes from the North Sea to the Atlantic [and] the rapid development of the cotton industry by the great inventions of the eighteenth century”.7 The wealth of writing done on the city (both pre- and post-Belchem) has tended to prioritise Belchem’s above two factors in one way or another. Tony Lane’s City of the Sea did exactly this. Lane’s work, the first edition of which was entitled Gateway to Empire, makes no secret of attempting to explain how, in his view, “Liverpool is the only city in Britain (apart from London) upon 3 J. Belchem, Merseypride: Essays in Liverpool Exceptionalism, (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006), p. xxvii. 4 J. Belchem, Irish, Catholic, and Scouse: The History of the Liverpool-Irish, 1800-1939, (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 2007), p. 322. 5 J. Belchem and D. M. MacRaild, ‘Cosmopolitan Liverpool’ in J. Belchem (ed.) Liverpool 800: Culture, Character, and History (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006), p. 311. This was followed by a recognition that the contemporary city is not quite so cosmopolitan, however. 6 Belchem, Merseypride, p. 56. 7 R. Muir, A History of Liverpool, (London: Liverpool University Press, 1907), p. 4. 8 which Britons have definite opinions and it is seen as a city of problems where the people themselves are reckoned to be a part of the problem”.8 By attempting to explain the city of the 1980s through the port(s), Lane identified a number of the themes that would be built upon by Belchem later, particularly the manner in which the port influenced other perceived Liverpudlian behaviours, such as casual labour. However, in the realms of identity formation and maintenance the degree to which one can say that these theses apply to the more modern city is slightly more questionable. Within the context of the post-war city, Belchem’s ‘Liverpool Exceptionalism’ idea raises a number of problems. Belchem’s thesis, by its very definition, relies heavily upon evidence collated from before the Second World War. Whilst he has written persuasively on the city in other contexts and other time periods, his specific claim of exceptionalism is based necessarily within the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If Liverpool’s exceptionalism is rooted heavily within the experiences of immigrant Irish to the city then the degree of Irish influence in a city where Irish immigration fell substantially has to be questioned.