Liverpool: The Making Of A Port & A Party (part I)

Liverpool's history dates back to 1207, but it was not until the end of the seventeenth century that the town began to grow appreciably in size and importance. From the construction of its innovatory wet-docks system in the early eighteenth century, Liverpool was soon to identify its prosperity with commerce. In the process, Liverpool was to become the great seaport and second city of industrial Britain. For instance, in 1709 it handled 14,600 tons of shipping, by 1800 this had increased fifteen times to 450,000 tons and by 1855 it grew nine times more to four million tons. However a plethora of trade figures can confuse. What emerges most clearly from the Liverpool statistics is the exponential growth in trade during industrialisation. With rapid expansion came an equally rapid growth in population. From roughly 7,000 inhabitants in 1708, population figures stood at 223,000, by 1841; whereby a fivefold increase in the seventy years before industrialisation, was followed by a sevenfold increase in the seventy years during industrialisation. In fact the population grew faster than houses and other necessary social amenities could be provided. So that Liverpool was soon to become one of the unhealthiest towns in the country, notorious for some of the worst slums in Britain. After 1800 investment was to become concentrated on trade and the port rather than manufacturing. Thus as England industrialised, Liverpool de-industrialised. Shipbuilding moved across the Mersey to Birkenhead, potteries closed down, salt refining moved upriver to Garston, and the cotton mills failed. So that by 1840 the occupational structure had changed dramatically; skilled craftsmen were few, and the Liverpool workforce had adapted to its nineteenth century port-orientated pattern. This was dominated by commerce, and serviced by an army of mariners and unskilled and semi-skilled workers. The absence of industry however was somewhat welcomed, many noting with relief that the curse of the factory system stopped short of the city and its independent workers. This ethos was to endure, preventing a wider and much needed industrial diversification. Eschewing the 'second industrial revolution', and adopting commercial complacency, Liverpool entered the twentieth century with a distinct and arguably distorted economic structure. For instance in the 1920s, only 37% of Liverpool workers were engaged in production, compared with the national average of 67%. Nonetheless the Corporation still expressed satisfaction in the absence of manufacturing and industrial blight. Yet from the start there was something insecure about such a rapid growth rate unsupported by other forms of productive industry. It was during the 1920s and 1930s; as Liverpool declined from a major commercial metropolis with a thriving port and related industries, that it became all too apparent that the local economy had failed to develop industry outside of the port. As the international restructuring of capitalist production took a profound effect on exports and productivity, high levels of unemployment struck the city, and the handicapped occupational structure meant that for men, there were limited opportunities for alternative work. Figures particularly confirm that the unemployed were concentrated especially in ship-building and shipping, and those concerned with transport distribution, and building. This also meant that jobs in industry for women were limited compared to other northern towns. For many thousands of women the only available work was domestic service in the homes of merchants. For instance, by 1921, over 31,000 women worked in some form of personal service, and by 1931, this figure was nearly 38,000. Casualism then had always been a way of life in Liverpool. It was however the abundance of unskilled manual jobs associated with such casualism, which culminated in the great increase in the population of Liverpool before 1850. Migration came from the adjoining counties of Lancashire and Cheshire, but Welsh, Scottish and Irish migrants were increasing in numbers also. Liverpool notably attracted significant numbers of both Catholic and Protestant migrants, particularly from Ulster and its adjoining counties. It appears that it was the significant numbers of Ulster Protestants, who were to form the necessary catalyst which activated the latent anti-Catholicism of the native workforce. So that the north end soon emerged as a distinctively Irish and Catholic community, as new churches; the centre of associational life, encouraged the tendency to residential propinquity. Cultural provision was less cohesive in the south end, an area of more mixed social and ethnic composition, including a significant Ulster Protestant presence. By the late nineteenth century, Great Homer Street was the acknowledged boundary between Catholic and Protestant Liverpool, with the most partisan Orange district running north of Netherfield Road. Thus stratification, a process which began with the physical and cultural segregation, was a complex phenomenon in the Liverpool urban mosaic, an amalgam of socio-economic, ethnic and sectarian variables. It was such sectarian allegiance which proved the crucial determinant in the political arena, accentuating the traditional partisan division in this "Whig and Tory-Ridden Town". Briefly ejected from office, the Tories, seeking a wider popular base beyond the diminishing freeman vote, added a sectarian inflexion to their protectionist rhetoric. Sectarianism proved a successful approach, sweeping the Tories back into municipal office by 1841. The Tories posed as defenders of traditional liberties, and certainly when allied to ethnicity, Protestant sectarianism provided a solid base for popular Tory support; addressing workers' fears not of Rome, or reform, but of Irish migration. However efforts to organise the Tory vote, were by no means restricted to the Protestant working class. Partisan sectarianism was the defining characteristic of the Liverpool Tradesmen's Conservative Association. Here master tradesmen, shopkeepers and other members of the middle classes were also enrolled in active support. Liverpool was certainly an unlikely site for popular Toryism. A commercial seaport with a large casual labour market; it lacked the large manufacturing plants in which Tory employer paternalism was to flourish best. Protestant sectarianism doubtless contributed to the continuing Tory success, but cultural style, and the persistence of the convivial populism, was just as an important factor. The Tories, the Daily Post observed, owed their mastery in municipal matters to their ready rapport with the electorate. Being assured of their position, the Tories were 'affable, kind and conciliating'. Stating that leading Liberals on the other hand, were somewhat 'imperious... not conciliatory; they repel rather than attract. In fact, they are more exclusive than the Tories and are unable to bridge the social gap'. Therefore whilst Liverpool Toryism displayed the characteristics of a party of 'social integration', the Liberals remained socially exclusive, and hence politically disabled. Liverpool then, a veritable stronghold of popular Toryism for much of the nineteenth and twentieth century, stands apart from the mainstream narrative of Conservative party history.

(Please feel free to request Part II)