[ad_1]
There are few modest things in Liverpool. As the cities go by, it’s a glorious sight: one spectacular building after another inviting you to admire.
Which makes it deeply sad, even unnatural, to walk along its beautiful promenade, in the middle of the afternoon, at the end of last week, and find hardly a soul to admire the sight. The river walk is made for a Liverpudlian walk, for the fun and lovely sound of city life. Instead, only the skaters came out: Covid-19 with its power to empty the streets of our city has been a blessing to them, if not to anyone else.
And if our collective destiny will be to increase the lockdown in the coming weeks and months, then Liverpool is already living our future: the city and its metropolitan area were the first to move to level 3 of England’s new lockdown system.
It is a familiar role, Liverpool as atypical. And the first starters to respond to the Level 3 decision played with a sense of Liverpool exceptionalism. It was “the 1980s again,” as the story went: a time of sharp economic decline and confrontation, as now, between a Conservative government and a local Labor authority, then controlled by the far-left Militant tendency.
Or if you were there, I was a schoolboy in Walton’s Militant stronghold, the memories converge on an absolute truth to which we adhere: the world, more easily embodied in the “evil Tory government”, was against us. That there was some truth to this position: in 1981 then-Chancellor Geoffrey Howe had circulated a memorandum to Cabinet colleagues suggesting that Liverpool be left to a fate of “controlled decline”; More trouble than it was worth, it didn’t always help.
Living in the city was like mounting one barricade or another every day, and the continuous opposition, and often pantomime, from the Militant took its toll. In the 1980s, few other than soccer fans and journalists looking for a political fight came to visit us. The city was challenging, ‘us versus them’, it felt closed and often seemed to like it that way.
The “new Liverpool” that has emerged in the last two decades has a different tone: “Come see us, let us entertain you.” Its own business model thrives on openness (tourism, conferences, the pursuit of pleasure (and education)), just when Covid-19 has made openness the most difficult. So while the parallels to the 1980s make sense in terms of the economic challenge, the city facing them is different. Now there is a clear sense of the future, you have a happy idea talking to politicians, business leaders, school children, but this future now feels vulnerable, fragile.
“Think of the Liverpool area as an emerging economy,” says Alison McGovern, a Labor MP from Wirral South, who is a “stakeholder” in the Liverpool city region. “Coming out of the 70s and 80s was like coming out of a trauma. [Liverpool lost no fewer than 80,000 jobs between 1972 and 1982] Being ’emerging’ has great advantages. Growth rates are higher, there is a lot of land, relatively cheap. Many people want to live here. But companies are young, they are less likely to have capital reserves; they need support. “
The differences from the 1980s also have something to say about the changing relationship between the national government and a major provincial city like Liverpool. “In the future, we could see this as a time when we realized that we could do things differently,” says McGovern. “A time when English cities and regions began to take more control – over the economy, over healthcare and more.”
An optimistic reading, in this sense, might suggest that if the 1980s were the end of something – the latest kick, say, of an old industrial economy – there is potential in misery for the starting of something new. If you felt romantic, you could describe it as the New statesman He did it last week, as the “revolt of the north”, with Liverpool this time joined by Manchester and others. Talk to Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, and you will feel his frustration with an incompetent center. But, in the spirit of city change, he has little time for 1980s-style bragging: “To be honest, it feels like an emergency. Our hospitals could be overwhelmed and I just wanted to focus on securing financial support so that we are in good shape to get out of it. “
McGovern credits the structure that comes with the subway mayors as key to Liverpool’s growing sense of self. “In my early years as a deputy, it made me cry that there was no platform to discuss ideas with local relevance. Now we have that: the structures, the civil servants, our own chief economist. “
In a calculation like this, how to build a city’s economy is intertwined with the means to do it. Liverpool’s confidence has seen a steady series of increases (its designation as European Capital of Culture in 2008 was pivotal), but without political and institutional structures, momentum can be lost. Also, the old “them versus us” has become a trust issue. “Refund is an important word for the question of who you want to take care of things,” says Rotheram. “Anyone in London or people you know?” This question becomes more urgent when health and livelihoods are at stake.
“Listen, let’s not be too conspirators,” conspires a local businessman, “but if you are in London, making decisions, it is easier to let things fail. up here. It’s not just a Liverpool thing, look at how parts of Manchester boiled over for weeks. “
However, whatever the levels of local control, in post-industrial “cultural” economies – consider Liverpool as the model – the future remains precarious. Liverpool remains a place of substantial poverty, with many people in jobs where they need to be in the place – they cannot, as many of us can, telecommute.
A waitress at my hotel tells me that she has only worked eight hours in the last fortnight. That feeling that I had, walking through the streets, that the city was closing has, for her, real implications. However, he is confident that “the slowdown will not stop completely … We have something to do here in Liverpool.” Which, unlike the old days, feels like kind of an appropriate challenge.