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On the Waterfront / Part 2

On the Waterfront / Part 2

02ON THE W NTOTERFRA : HERITTURE,CUL GA E AND REGENERATION OF POR CITIEST

SHOCK CITY: Professor John Belchem ON THE WATERFRONT: CULTURE, HERITAGE AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES AP GE 2

Liverpool’s ‘otherness’ has been upheld and inflated Outside the main narrative frameworks The ‘community’ mentality of the in self-referential myth, a ‘Merseypride’ that has shown of modern British history, Liverpool Scottie-Road ‘slummy’ – the prototype considerable ingenuity (and some self-pity) in adjusting has long been characterized as different, scouser – co-existed with a broader the proverbial exception within the culture, a seafaring cosmopolitanism to the city’s changing fortunes as it collapsed from the nation. In the north of but which made Liverpool, the gateway second city of empire to the shock city of post-colonial, not of it, Liverpool (and its ‘sub-region’ of empire, particularly receptive to post-industrial Britain. By exploring ‘sailortown’, the of ) was (and has continued (unEnglish) foreign ideas (syndicalism, maritime-urban interface immediately inland from to be) highly distinctive, differing sharply for example) and to American popular in socio-economic structure, cultural music. A cultural intersection on the the waterfront, this paper offers wider comparative image and expression, political affiliation, geographical margin,‘edge city’ perspectives which point to Liverpool as exemplar not health, diet and speech from the adjacent Liverpool is thus a critical site for as exception. A ‘shock’ city apart in Britain,‘sailortown’ industrial districts.The industrial investigation of northern-ness, Liverpool established many of the representational conurbations of the north grew out Englishness, Britishness and the of conglomerations of small towns and (pre-devolved) .1 clichés identified with transience, drink, prostitution and villages, augmented by short-distance foreignness that became universal in major port cities rural in-migration which tended to Much has been written about Liverpool’s throughout the globe. It is thus somewhat ironic that the reinforce their culture, character and exceptionalism within the British context. current regeneration of Liverpool privileges the waterfront status as regional centres. Long distance Repudiated by some as an external in-migration – the multi-ethnic, mainly imposition, a stigma originating from and city centre but has yet to extend to the sailortown celtic inflow – transformed Liverpool the days of the infamous slave trade which once occupied the crucial space in-between. and its ‘’ culture, setting it apart and/or the impact of the Irish famine from its environs. In Liverpool, competing influx, Liverpool’s ‘otherness’ has and conflicting inflexions of celticism been upheld – and inflated – in (Irish,Welsh, Manx and Scottish) have self-referential myth. been particularly pronounced, tensions (awaiting full scholarly investigation) at the very centre of the multi-national United Kingdom. Beyond the ‘inland’ Notes , Liverpool’s private celtic empire, 1. John Belchem, Merseypride: essays in Liverpool exceptionalism, 2nd edn, Liverpool: the great seaport looked to the oceans, Liverpool University Press, 2006. adding an external dimension to the Steve Higginson and Tony Wailey, Edgy Cities, city’s cultural life and its migrant mix. Liverpool: Northern Lights, 2006 ON THE W NTOTERFRA : HERITTURE,CUL GA E AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES PAGE 3

This ‘Merseypride’ has shown Paul Du Noyer has described Liverpool As Milne shows, Hugill identified In the early twentieth century, considerable ingenuity (and some as ‘a sort of sunless Marseille’, defiantly sailortown – an edgy place of relative Valparaiso’s worst waterfront bar self-pity) in adjusting to the city’s non-provincial, the capital of itself: liberation from the privations of work at was managed in succession by an changing fortunes as it collapsed It’s deeply insular, yet essentially sea – as a generic seaport phenomenon, Irishman and a West Indian; Kobe’s from the second city of empire outward-looking: it faces the sea a world-wide urban sub-type. He also China Dog tearoom was run by a to the shock city of post-colonial, but has its back turned on England. set out a convincing chronology of its Malay; and Singapore had cafés run post-industrial Britain. By exploring There were local men for whom development, from the booming by Italian women. Names cloistered the maritime-urban interface on the Sierra Leone was a fact but London waterfronts of the sailing ship era visiting mariners from anything alien waterfront, this conference offers a only a rumour.They knew every dive through change and marginalisation in or unfamiliar: timely opportunity to consider wider in Buenos Aires, but had no idea of the age of steam, to the sanitisation of perspectives of cultural regeneration the Cotswolds. And Liverpudlians the dockland zone in the mid-twentieth and urban branding. A ‘shock’ city apart speak with merry contempt for their century. While Hugill sought to keep in Britain, was Liverpool similar to other neighbours, displaying all the memory alive, the regeneration great world sea-ports? Viewed in this the high indifference of a New Yorker industry has subsequently reinvented way, Liverpool may well appear as for Kansas.4 (and relocated) ‘sailortown’ in kitsch Notes exemplar and not as exception.2 fashion, adding ‘heritage’ cultural cachet 2. Owing much to the work of Franco Bianchini, the ‘Cities on the Edge’ programme,‘a unique This account accords pride of place to fashionable waterfront redevelopment. cultural exploration of six European port cities’ Liverpool can be incorporated into to ‘sailortown’, a distinctive space and which ran throughout Liverpool’s year as international comparative socio-economic culture – identified with transience, When they landed in foreign ports visiting European Capital of Culture, opened up some important comparative perspectives. and demographic analysis of port cities drink, prostitution and foreignness – mariners perforce ventured a short but commended by my colleague Robert replicated in major port cities across crucial distance inland, away from the 3. W.R. Lee,‘The socio-economic and demographic characteristics of port Lee with dependent labour markets, the globe.The term was first deployed dockland and commercial waterfront, cities: a typology for comparative analysis?’, long distance in-migration and exposure in impressionistic style by Stan Hugill, to an urban area of bars, brothels, Urban History, 25, 1998, pp.147-72. to infectious disease – in its case, one of the last mariners with memories boarding houses and other services. On the Liverpool-Irish, see John Belchem, ‘Irish fever’.3 Its distinctive cultural of British deep-water sailing ships. True to Du Noyer’s characterisation, Irish, Catholic and Scouse: the history of the Liverpool-Irish, 1800-1939, Liverpool: character is probably best captured Usually dismissed as a collection of they seldom penetrated beyond the Liverpool University Press, 2007. through more specific comparison nostalgic tall tales, Hugill’s book has familiar cultural and spatial boundaries with other ‘edge’ cities, de-centred been unduly neglected, but is now of this ‘sailortown’ area. In ports where 4. Paul Du Noyer, Liverpool: Wondrous Place: Music from the Cavern to the Coral, London: major ports like Naples and Marseille receiving the attention it deserves Europeans were recent arrivals, Virgin, 2002, p.5. with similar ‘second city’ pretensions through the exciting research of sailortown remained a European or 5. Stan Hugill, Sailortown, London: Routledge and picaresque reputations. another of my Liverpool colleagues, inter-colonial enclave. Bars, lodging and Kegan Paul, 1967. 5 Graeme Milne. houses and shops were run by expatriates What follows owes much to Graeme Milne’s from all parts of the maritime world. current research on ‘sailortown’. ON THE W NTOTERFRA : HERITTURE,CUL GA E AND REGENERATION OF POR CITIES T AP GE 4

Antwerp, Amsterdam and Hamburg by among others,‘British Jack’,‘Loafing their own, that they have established a with portions of Pitt Street, the each had a bar called ‘Channel for Jack of the Stars and Stripes’,‘Spanish rule forbidding a “darkey” or coloured lodging place of Chinese cooks, Orders’, while Marseille and Liverpool Jack’,‘Maltese Jack’,‘Jack of Sweden’, man to pass thorough it – a popular stewards, deck-hands, firemen etc. both had a ‘Flags of all Nations’. Ports ‘Jack the Finn’ and ‘Dark Jack’. By the law, worthy of Charleston, or any who have been coming to Liverpool worldwide had bars with ‘Liverpool’ in mid-nineteenth century,‘cosmopolitan’ other slave town in America’.7 in increasing numbers for the last their names.The numerical supremacy Liverpool had become a favourite During the1860s, the Frederick Street 8 or 9 years.The African is still in of British mariners forced other stopping-off point for African-American locality, the epicentre of cosmopolitan evidence, some of the oldest seamen and foreign bartenders seamen, descended from victims of the Liverpool, was the scene of at least one inhabitants being of this race, and alike to learn English. triangular trade. Relishing ‘the friendly murder and of ‘numberless outrages’ their children and grandchildren reception extended to them’, they were against Manila seamen and other foreign flourish in the same quarters.9 Given the dominance exerted by able to enjoy what Herman Melville sailors, whose misfortune, the Daily Post British ships and mariners over the dubbed ‘unwonted immunities’. In the reported,‘seems to consist in having a international, deep-water shipping absence of factory employment, young darker complexion than the natives industry of the nineteenth century, Irish women in Liverpool developed of our “tight little island”.8 Down to the great general cargo and passenger a niche market in the sex industry the early twentieth century, Frederick was to the fore in observed by F.W. Lowndes, servicing Street continued to represent the this Victorian globalisation. As new ‘the numerous negroes always present cosmopolitan essence of seaport routes and markets opened after in Liverpool as ships’ cooks, stewards, Liverpool, as a newspaper report the abolition of the slave trade, ethnic seamen and labourers’ in a network of of1906 attested: diversity became increasingly visible in streets in sailortown ‘known by various In this short and narrow, but by no Notes Liverpool: significant numbers of Kru names, the least objectionable, perhaps, means dismal, thoroughfare dwells 6. Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller, 6 final edition, 1869, ch.5. Herman Melville, (from West ), Lascar (from the of which, is “Blackman’s Alley”. in concert a motley population Redburn, 1849: Penguin edn, London, Indian sub-continent), Chinese and of British, Chinese, negroes and 1976, p.277. F.W. Lowndes, The Extension other sea-faring communities within There were limits, however, to Scandinavians, coming and going on of the Contagious Diseases Acts to Liverpool and other seaports practically considered, and beyond the ‘black Atlantic’, were inter-cultural contact, not least their own mysterious affairs, lounging Liverpool, 1876, p. 31, and Prostitution and drawn to the port and its open ‘sailortown’ through the segregation imposed by and conversing on public house steps Venereal Diseases in Liverpool, London, culture, often more than temporarily. some of the foreign seamen when in and in their own restaurants. The street 1886, pp. 3-4. Here were services catering for the high port, as the reporter for the Morning has been successively ‘Little Africa’, the 7. ‘Labour and the Poor. Liverpool letter xv’, levels of mobility and unpredictability Chronicle discovered when he visited temporary home of natives of Manila Morning Chronicle 26 August1850. which characterised the long-distance Dennison Street in1850:‘This street is – who disappeared after the 8. ‘Brutal attack on foreign seamen’, commercial sailing ship industry, services frequented almost wholly by American diversion of trade caused the Daily Post15 December 1864 enjoyed (as Charles Dickens discovered) sailors, who look upon it as so entirely Spanish-American war – and finally, 9. Weekly Courier 6 November 1906 ON THE W NTOTERFRA : HERITTURE,CUL GA E AND REGENERATION OF POR CITIES T AP GE 5

The cosmopolitan complexion was Given its proximity to the central stole elections, and became the world’s Down on the waterfront, discrimination enhanced by development of the commercial districts, sailortown most notorious slum’.13 Liverpool, intensified in the1890s against ‘Lascars emigration trade, where too Liverpool, Liverpool was not hidden from however, seems not to have matched Adrift’, exploited sailors from the Indian the flood-gate of the old world, stood view: unlike in London, there were such ‘syncretic’ fusion between Irish and sub-continent forced to accept lower pre-eminent. Some groups of moving no boundaries for flaneurs to transgress. black culture, although it was always wages and harsher conditions by Europeans, such as the Mormons from Hence the fear among social reformers receptive to the latest fashion from ‘Asiatic Articles’, and often left sick Scandinavia en route to Utah, kept of moral contamination given the across the Atlantic – boys as young as or incapacitated in port to be tended by themselves insulated and apart in area’s ‘unenviable pre-eminence in the seven took to the cheap concert room the diminutive English Muslim community, their own mission and accommodation unnecessary superfluity of its moral and stage to perform clog dances ‘à la Juba’.14 led by W.H. Quilliam, a Manx migrant houses in Liverpool, while other groups material temptations to wrong-doing’.11 and convert to Islam. fell victim to the notorious ‘sharpers’ Beneath the licensed theatres and music For Edwardian guide books and ‘booster’ who practised various costly deceits halls of the city centre, sailortown offered publications at the time of Liverpool’s upon unsuspecting emigrants awaiting ‘entertainment’ in a number of public, beer 700th anniversary in1907, cosmopolitanism Notes trans-shipment. A pleasure zone of and refreshment houses, nearly 50 in total was Merseyside’s unique selling point. 10. John Belchem and Donald M. MacRaild, cultural contact, sailortown Liverpool in1866,‘low places’ catering for the vast Ramsay Muir’s specially commissioned ‘Cosmopolitan Liverpool’, in John Belchem, ed., Liverpool 800: culture, character and history, was a place of danger for the unwary. floating, migrant and casual population. history was duly infused with cosmopolitan Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, Disoriented by lack of funds for further In these dubious premises various acts pride, noting that ‘there is no city in the 2006, pp. 311-91 travel, poor Irish migrants, Jews and lured the unwary into drink and other world, not even London itself, in which 11. ‘Liverpool’s Character’, Porcupine 30 June1877 others found themselves unexpectedly dangers through device and deception: so many foreign governments find it 12. See the evidence of Head Constable Greig stuck in a ‘curious middle place’, forced risqué tableaux vivants in which necessary to maintain consular offices to ‘Report of the Select Committee on into poor accommodation close to the participants cross-dressed or wore for the safeguarding of their exiled Theatrical Licenses and Regulations’, Liverpool docks. Gateway to the empire only flesh-coloured tights; and the subjects’. Underneath the rhetoric, PP1866(373)XVI, qq.6943-7199. and the new world, sailortown Liverpool ‘hideous’ blacking up of musicians and however, a different set of attitudes ‘The Amusements and Literature of the People: Labour and the Poor, Liverpool, was what historical geographers term a dancers such as Mr Nozzle (‘a nigger was emerging, increasingly xenophobic letter xvi’, Morning Chronicle 2 Sept.1850; ‘diaspora space’, a contact zone between singer with blackened face, striped shirt, and racist, the origins of Liverpool’s ‘The Free Concert Room’ in H. Shimmin, different ethnic groups with differing tight trousers, and top boots’) and Mr deeply troubled racialised relations Liverpool life: its pleasures, practices and needs and intentions as transients, Banjo Bones, a favourite who, as Dickens throughout the twentieth century.15 pastimes, Liverpool, 1857, ch.4; sojourners or settlers.10 observed, could command a considerable Dickens, Uncommercial Traveller, ch.5. fee.12 In areas like this, with a floating 13. Tyler Anbinder, Five Points, New York: population of transients, sojourners and Plume, 2001. settlers, Liverpool was more akin to Five 14. Shimmin,‘Free concert room’. Points,‘the19th century 15. Ramsay Muir, A History of Liverpool, neighborhood that invented tap dance, London, 1907, p. 305 ON THE W NTOTERFRA : HERITTURE,CUL GA E AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES PAGE 6

By the Edwardian period, as fears Tensions remained in the labour market, (and women) away from demobilized Various vested interest groups – shipping grew that the ‘black gangs’ of firemen however, as employers continued to white workers denied the land fit for owners, trade union leaders, government and trimmers working in the heat and favour ‘alien’ Chinese firemen down heroes promised by the government. departments and local officials – struggled fumes of steamship stokeholds were in the boiler rooms, applauding their Race riots occurred in a number of to redefine British nationality so as to a new dangerous class,‘cosmopolitan’ superior skills (all the more vital during ports across Britain in1919 – London, codify and institutionalize racial hierarchy Liverpool was to the fore in calling wartime labour shortages) while still Glasgow, Hull, , Barry and Salford for their own advantage.The extent of for legislation to restrict in-migration, maintaining the racial wage hierarchy – but those in Liverpool were particularly documentary proof required by the to prevent what the Liverpool Review with its lower ‘Asiatic’ rates. At the end intense, reflecting tensions which Special Restriction (Coloured Alien described as the ‘wholesale immigration of the First World War (and again at extended far beyond ‘sailortown’. Seamen) Order in1925 was an to this country of dirty, destitute aliens’.16 the end of the Second World War), Following a hastily convened conference impracticable stipulation for thousands large numbers of time-regulated in the Colonial Office, a special of seamen born in Africa, the , The ‘unguarded dumping’ of 32 Chinese seamen in Liverpool were repatriation scheme was introduced, the Middle East, India and Malaya. Chinese in Liverpool in1906 without repatriated. Little attention was accorded offering various inducements to Their British nationality and right the guarantees of employment required to the distress which accompanied these ‘British coloureds’ to return to the of domicile were snatched away by the new Aliens Act of1905 prompted deportations.The focus of concern in colonies.The black community proudly by bureaucratic fiat. an hysterical ‘Yellow Peril’ reaction. Fears of labour and race relations in ‘sailortown’ and defiantly asserted the right to displacement by cheap ‘Ching-Ching’ Liverpool had shifted away from the remain.‘Some of us’,T.D. Aleifasakure labour were compounded by moral alien ‘yellow peril’ to the much enlarged Toummanah, Secretary of the Ethiopian alarmism, an indication of the way in ‘British coloured’ presence. Hall, declared,‘have been wounded, which inter-ethnic relations in Liverpool and lost limbs and eyes fighting for the tended to be refracted and racialized Black settlement had been growing Empire of which we have the honour through masculine competition and steadily in the late nineteenth century. to belong.’ His demand was both clear sexual jealousy. Following sensationalist Numbers increased significantly during and simple:‘We ask for British justice, press forays into Liverpool’s ‘vice-ridden’ the First World War, a time of critical to be treated as true and loyal sons Notes Chinatown, the city council appointed shortage in the labour market. Subsequent of Great Britain.’These British subjects, 16. Liverpool Review 7 March1903 a special commission. Its report demobilization, compounded by the rapid however, were soon to encounter the 17. 18 Report of the Commission Appointed repudiated allegations of immoral, collapse of the short post-war boom, full force of British institutional racism. by the City Council to inquire into the criminal and insanitary behaviour: had a disastrous impact on labour and Chinese Settlements in Liverpool, their penchant for petty gambling race relations.Wartime xenophobic Liverpool 1907 apart, the Chinese emerged as anti-alien fervour was now extended to 18. Laura Tabili, ‘We ask for British justice’. 17 Workers and Racial Difference in model citizens. colonial subjects, the ‘British coloured’ late imperial Britain, Ithaca: Cornell who were purportedly taking jobs University Press, 1994. ON THE W NTOTERFRA : HERITTURE,CUL GA E AND REGENERATION OF POR CITIES T AP GE 7

To compound matters, the notorious By this time, the growth of the black A similar pattern applied in seaports of Liverpool’s distinctive culture, extra-legal Elder Dempster agreements settlement was attracting the attention throughout post-colonial Europe. character and history. It is thus of the1920s and1930s allowed the of academic social scientists based at the What was formerly exotic multicultural somewhat ironic that the current shipping firm to engage and discharge University whose approach, however, contact space, acquired more problematic regeneration of Liverpool privileges ‘undocumented’ crews in West Africa differed little from the blend of sex, meanings: sailortown came to pose the waterfront and city centre but at discount wages and conditions. prejudice and economics favoured awkward questions about citizenship, has yet to extend to the sailortown Over time, Elder Dempster’s West by other interested parties, not least inter-racial marriage and employment which once occupied the crucial African employees developed an array Havelock Wilson’s seamen’s union in discrimination (although in Hamburg, space in-between.21 of resistance strategies against their defence of its white members. In his there was a shift to bohemianism and exploitation, acquiring British passports ‘Foreword’ to M.E. Fletcher’s Report on hedonistic tourism). Black communities in and/or marriage partners, entitling an Investigation into the Colour Problem in near waterfront zones inherited many of them to work (at union rates), relief Liverpool and other ports (1930), a frankly the defining myths of sailortown in terms and social services in Liverpool.19 racist condemnation of miscegenation in of crime, vice and foreignness and were Liverpool, Professor P.M. Roxby, chair of unable to disabuse such misperception Throughout the inter-war years there the Liverpool Association for the Welfare and media misrepresentation. Beyond were repeated ‘moral panics’ about the of Half-Caste Children, questioned the Europe, sailortown came to symbolise growth of black (and Arab) settlements value of temporary expedients short of western imperialism, provoking an Notes and the wholesale dumping of ‘coloured the ‘total exclusion of negro labour on ambivalent range of reactions. 19. Diane Frost, Work and Community among West seamen’.The Home Office sought to set ships entering the port’. Fletcher’s verdict African Migrant Workers since the nineteenth the record straight about its efforts to on inter-racial marriage with negro Viewed in terms of other major century, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999, pp.80-3. restrict immigration: seamen – promiscuous, ridden with seaports, sailortown in Liverpool was See also the special issue (edited by Frost) We have done what we can to sexually transmitted diseases, violent not exceptional but a formative example on ‘Ethnic Labour and British Imperial Trade: prevent the alien element increasing and contemptuous to their women – of a world-wide urban sub-type: indeed A History of Ethnic Seafarers in the UK’, but there is no power to deal with was damning. In most other contexts Liverpool established many of the Immigrants and Minorities, 13, nos 2 and 3, 1994. the British element. It is a penalty of inter-marriage has acted as a register of representational clichés that became 20. National Archives, Kew: HO45/25404 Aliens: being a mother country with a large racial integration: in Liverpool, however, universal. Sailortown, however, remains Colour problems and white slave traffic in Liverpool and other ports; police reports; mixed Empire.The most that we can it was stigmatized and condemned as the the crucial factor for Liverpool’s correspondence with the Association for do is to discourage coloured seamen ‘social problem’.The black community notorious ‘otherness’ within the the Welfare of Half-Caste Children from obtaining British passports, so retreated from sailortown into , British national context. A circumscribed 21. For the limitations of conservation that we can treat them as aliens, the ‘new Harlem of Liverpool’, seldom area on the maritime-urban frontier, and regeneration, see Dennis Rodwell, when they get here, and prevent to be seen in the city centre. sailortown has stood as metonym for ‘Urban Regeneration and the Management 20 of Change: Liverpool and the Historic Urban them remaining. the wider city, the critical influence in Landscape’, Journal of Architectural Conservation, representations (my own included) July 2008, pp.83-106. If you would like this document in a different format, please contact our Customer Services department: Telephone: 0870 333 1181 Fax: 01793 414926 Textphone: 01793 414878 E-mail: [email protected]

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