Liverpool: The Yuppie Takeover
MC | 26.03.2006 16:18 | Culture | Social Struggles | Liverpool
Lord, in a bourgeois town
It's a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
- Leadbelly
The yuppies are coming! The scum are taking over! Nothing and no one is safe. The local authorities are in on the act. The government too. Everything we’ve been taught to love and trust has sold out to this dark force. It’s Vichy France all over again – so you better stop worrying and learn to love the new regime.
Yes readers, Liverpool is a city in the grip of immense change. More precisely, Liverpool is a half-city/half building site in the grip of immense change. Numerous cranes now adorn the historic skyline, arching like giant Meccano vultures over the commercial centre of the city.
The rich and the beautiful are desperate to bask in the glory of the 2008 Capital of Culture. For the politician’s hell-bent on extinguishing the last remnants of working-class culture and identity, this is a golden, jackpot opportunity. They hope the yuppies will bring their money and bourgeois values with them – lining the pockets of the local fat cats and helping to turn to Liverpool into a cosmopolitan theme park. It is sign that a city is losing its soul when it becomes defined by the shops it has to offer; how expensive its property is, and the exclusivity of its culture. This is the inevitable fate of every urban district in the neo-Thatcherite era.
What about the natives? Over the years, millions of pounds has been thrown at Merseyside, some of it used well, much of it misspent and squandered on bureaucrats and ill-conceived schemes. Amongst the growing number of luxury apartments there are run-down areas of neglect and dereliction. One such area is Everton. The community is tight-knit; the strong look out for the weak, and everybody knows everybody else. The proximity of the area to the city centre has made it a prime location for development, making the existing tenants somewhat of an inconvenience to the city council. Mandy, a local council tenant, remarked, “this house is falling down, the windows, the heating, everything is faulty but I can't get repairs done because the council will not spend money repairing properties earmarked for demolition.” On a walk around the estate, Mandy showed me the rat holes in her front garden; the dank dens frequented by smackheads evidenced by their discarded hypodermic trash; the lone, elderly residents living in otherwise empty, boarded-up blocks of flats. Who’d have thought Paradise Street was just a stones throw away?
So what options are we left with? 1. Lie back and wait for the tide to wash over us; accept colonisation as a sign of ‘progress’ and maybe get a nice, cushy new job as a yuppie collaborator. 2. Resist the takeover, oppose the invasion.
Only a counter-cultural explosion of grassroots guerrilla resistance can slay this particular beast. Quiggins, Liverpool’s quasi-bohemian grotto facing yuppie eviction, hosted a punk night opposing the emergence of a ‘city of capitalist vultures.’ It’s a start, but a mere drop in the ocean when only a tidal wave will suffice.
Raise the stakes or the beast will prevail.
Yes readers, Liverpool is a city in the grip of immense change. More precisely, Liverpool is a half-city/half building site in the grip of immense change. Numerous cranes now adorn the historic skyline, arching like giant Meccano vultures over the commercial centre of the city.
The rich and the beautiful are desperate to bask in the glory of the 2008 Capital of Culture. For the politician’s hell-bent on extinguishing the last remnants of working-class culture and identity, this is a golden, jackpot opportunity. They hope the yuppies will bring their money and bourgeois values with them – lining the pockets of the local fat cats and helping to turn to Liverpool into a cosmopolitan theme park. It is sign that a city is losing its soul when it becomes defined by the shops it has to offer; how expensive its property is, and the exclusivity of its culture. This is the inevitable fate of every urban district in the neo-Thatcherite era.
What about the natives? Over the years, millions of pounds has been thrown at Merseyside, some of it used well, much of it misspent and squandered on bureaucrats and ill-conceived schemes. Amongst the growing number of luxury apartments there are run-down areas of neglect and dereliction. One such area is Everton. The community is tight-knit; the strong look out for the weak, and everybody knows everybody else. The proximity of the area to the city centre has made it a prime location for development, making the existing tenants somewhat of an inconvenience to the city council. Mandy, a local council tenant, remarked, “this house is falling down, the windows, the heating, everything is faulty but I can't get repairs done because the council will not spend money repairing properties earmarked for demolition.” On a walk around the estate, Mandy showed me the rat holes in her front garden; the dank dens frequented by smackheads evidenced by their discarded hypodermic trash; the lone, elderly residents living in otherwise empty, boarded-up blocks of flats. Who’d have thought Paradise Street was just a stones throw away?
So what options are we left with? 1. Lie back and wait for the tide to wash over us; accept colonisation as a sign of ‘progress’ and maybe get a nice, cushy new job as a yuppie collaborator. 2. Resist the takeover, oppose the invasion.
Only a counter-cultural explosion of grassroots guerrilla resistance can slay this particular beast. Quiggins, Liverpool’s quasi-bohemian grotto facing yuppie eviction, hosted a punk night opposing the emergence of a ‘city of capitalist vultures.’ It’s a start, but a mere drop in the ocean when only a tidal wave will suffice.
Raise the stakes or the beast will prevail.
MC
Homepage:
http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/misc/articles/yuppie_takeover.htm
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
Radically sick !
26.03.2006 22:45
I lived in Brixton in the late 70's early 80's when gentrification was just taking off.
When the middle classes move in prices start to go up and the standard of living for working class people goes down. I prefer to call them "radical chic" they are oh so left wing and if you have a go at them, well of course it stands to reason if they are "the people" the left so if your against them you must be the dreaded right !!!
well fuck my old boots I must be a fascist.
In those days they formed "peoples" housing coops and had meetings with their mates from the council in the that little(youngs) boozer (the trinity?) in the SQ of the high street, they knew all the abbreviations for all the housing grants and got every penny.
those nice little working class houses make wonderfull starter "cottages" for first time buyer rich kids to buy.
It's not just liverpool it's the same throughout the UK and the EEC and who knows with all these low cost
new members of the EEC it will be happening in these countries as well soon ..
charliban
you're too right mate
27.03.2006 10:46
Fuckers.
nestor
Don't bash the rich
27.03.2006 13:41
No. Simply because they are too strong and too ignorant. There are hundreds of thousands of millionaires in the UK and millions who they could employ to defend them. If you are tempted by violent retribution, then you have to realise you won't take many of them with you, so you have to target and prioritise. Target your limited and desperate act to be as eductaional as possible.
Bash the war-mongering MPs not the soldiers. Bash the oil-profiteering chairmen not the pension-fund holders. Bash the vivisectionists before the meat-eaters.
And don't bash them, and don't torture them, kill them quickly and try to get away with it so that you can kill more of them. Targetted assasination is the only survival strategy for our species once mass nvda has failed - anything else is as meaningless and ineffectual as a drunken pub brawl. Killing a millionaire simply enriches their next of kin, it is like pissing yourself in black trousers, it gives you a warm feeling but nobody notices.
Widerstand