UK Indymedia | Post card from Liverpool - What the tourist board wouldn't want tourists to see!

Granby Street in 2004, it's over twenty years now since the well known Toxteth riots. While many saw the riots as a social uprising against repressive and racist policing, the accompanying photo-montage shows that the community around Granby Street in Liverpool 8 is looking more run down in many ways than it did after the 1981 riots. Granby Street is just one example of the insidious gentrification of Liverpool city centre which is clearing out working class people, a process which is now spiraling outwards at break neck speed.

Picture post card from Liverpool to tourists of the world - This is the reality!

Close to Liverpool city centre the Granby Street community was one of Liverpool's oldest communities, the centre of a thriving multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-faith community in many ways a refuge from the racist establishment that still controls Liverpool. On Thursday 11th of March I spent over an hour walking down this street taking over 60 digital photographs. I was accompanied by an engineering student, Rhona from Manchester, who made contact via Indymedia, this was the first stop on the way up to visit the Norris Green estate to show the desolation and destruction of the neighbourhood now known as the 'Boot' estate. The name given to it due to the constructors of the 1930's housing, Henry Boot Ltd which still exists.

While walking down Granby Street we met one young woman, I assume to be from an afro-carribean background, who shared her thoughts on the community and informed us that their recently built homes which are shown top-middle and bottom right in the photo-montage are threatened with future demolition. She told us the council officer who leaked this information to the community was sacked as a result, this is the first I'd heard about it and thus can't corroborate it from other sources. As a former resident of Norris Green and the 'Boot' neighbourhood it was plain that we shared similar concerns.

It takes more than one afternoon to drive around all the threatened working class communities in Liverpool and Merseyside. The beginning of this massive demolition programme noticeably began around 1995 in the city centre, the rate has increased and is now spreading like wild fire to the outer working class communities of Liverpool and Merseyside.

To put this article in the wider context then read the following articles.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/liverpool/2004/03/287440.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html

Feel free to pass on, email, print or otherwise distribute the attached photograph if you want to.

it would be useful to hear what the people who live in or near granby street have to say about developments there. or what people in other areas have to say about other issues not reported in the pro-government, pro-council daily post and echo.

many more people need to get involved in alternmative media, to tell the untold stories about what goes on in their communities. getting their stories onto liverpool indymedia would be a good start. liverpool IMC is having an open night at FACT in april and other alternative media events are also planned. we should be encouraging people to attend these events but also encouraging them to post to indymedia anyway or give their stories to someone who can do it for them. not everyone has a pc and is online but word can filter out once reports are posted. go here to check liverpool IMC traffic on the proposed events schedule:

http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-liverpool/2004-March/date.html

re:

"it would be useful to hear what the people who live in or near granby street have to say about developments there."

Well the report I wrote was really a sideline, I hadn't actually intended getting out of the car to walk around it was to be a short stop on the way to visit the primary subject I was asked to show, namely the Norris Green Boot neighbourhood. However believe me it was so freezing that my hands could barely press the camera buttons but I felt duty bound to take as many photographs then as I could. I agree that a report with quotes from the people there would have been a great idea, though at least I did report directly one comment from a person in that community and thus her concerns which surely must represent the views of many others have been aired and put on the record. In fact I used so much of the memory card on that part of my visit that I had only a few left to record the destruction in Norris Green. Though we must remember that in working class communities people wandering around with a video camera in hand is viewed very suspiciously, "is he from the social" I heard from someone when I took the 'Town Row' post office shot, I've been stoned by kids on the Boot estate. And I got quite a lot of suspicious looks while calmly walking down Granby Street, plus I'm not entirely sure if I would gave got any quotes on camera from that one person I spoke to.

"or what people in other areas have to say about other issues not reported in the pro-government, pro-council daily post and echo."

This requires some dedicated work by one or two media savvy people, I'm intending to do such a report in the next few days on an issue I found out about a few days ago, but yes I fully agree, let's do some reporting, interviews and get some vox-pops done.

"many more people need to get involved in alternmative media, to tell the untold stories about what goes on in their communities. getting their stories onto liverpool indymedia would be a good start."

Again I fully agree, as Indymedia needs to be more than just a political activists noticeboard, which looking around the other UK sites is what it tends to look like in all honesty.

"liverpool IMC is having an open night at FACT in april and other alternative media events are also planned. we should be encouraging people to attend these events but also encouraging them to post to indymedia anyway or give their stories to someone who can do it for them. not everyone has a pc and is online but word can filter out once reports are posted. go here to check liverpool IMC traffic on the proposed events schedule:"

Lets remember that all the city's libraries have Internet suites with full access to the Internet, so perhaps its more a case of promoting Indymedia off-line. What is needed is a bigger audience, that entails more off-line promotion of Indymedia also we need people to be posting more news items, it's good to see that debate and discussion is opened up by posting a good article or two, especially if a photograph is attached.

PS can someone at Liverpool Indymedia please delete those two earlier surplus postings of this article.

yes, promoting indymedia offline has got to start happening. if you aren't on it already you should sign up to the IMC editorial list at the link i posted above where discussion of this has already been going on.

Many of these issues were discussed at the last UK IMC gathering in Sheffield and it was decided that we should make greater use of the imc outreach mailing list (

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-uk-outreach) to share useful experiences but to my knowledge that hasn't happened. At Bristol IMC we're trying large-scale leafleting of selected areas of the city to see what effect this has - we'll let you know how we get on through that list.

leafleting sounds a bit random, especially in areas where there's very little contact with IT, though it would depend on how you did it. targeting community groups or centres (with posters / flyers / visits) which are already social / information hubs might be a better approach to begin with. there is and will be a huge number of IT illiterate people who require only a little help to become valued newswire posters. they can't be reached by email mailing lists.

Leafleting might not be that random. My workmates (I have a 'blue collar' job) mostly have computers in their homes.
Plenty of my doley friends have computers too - but generally have no internet because they can't afford to have a landline when a pre-pay mobile can work out cheaper.

Respect to people in social centres and public libraries who are sorting out free internet access.

This is Granby Street in Toxteth, Liverpool 8 - March 2004

The reason so many communities are being destroyed and the people dispersed from their neighbourhoods in which their family and friends live is purely down to economics, money, profit and capital (big private money). There are hundreds if not thousands of stories which are personal tragedies from the Boot estate to the Gillmoss estate now undergoing demolition and effectively forced removal of families. Since the new housing company Cobalt took over in 2002 (through the usual rigged ballots) those tenants can now not be guaranteed a move back to a house close to their friends or families in their
communities, I've seen an example letter than clearly states that.

In Liverpool what big business wants - big business gets! What it wants most is *land*
and most of that land happens to be our land, publicly owned and held in trust with the
city council under the current control of -rotten anti-working class- elected councillors. However apart from the potential opposition in future of a pro-working class party and principled councillors at the town hall, the only obstacle now that democracy and accountability have effectively been brushed aside for the past decade in Liverpool is *us* - the working class. For it is us who live on this land, which happens to be what our homes and communities are built on.

The Boot estate was victim of a land deal land, the people were in the way of that. The first housing to be built there will be more for sale than for rent and COBALT/LHT got the land there without so much as a ballot of the residents there, the Boot estate part of Norris Green had the largest concentration of tenanted households in Norris Green also the poorest part of the estate, from the statistics gathered in 1992 for the housing investment bid that year. Thus linking in with the "ESF – deporting the poor from cities" article

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/liverpool/2004/03/287440.html

it is quite clear the poorest of the poor are being pushed to the margins here in Liverpool and my former community in Norris Green was an obvious example of this.

The house clearance in Gillmoss is again about land because Tescos want to build a supermarket and that neighbourhood is in the way, the housing having only been built within the past 30 years, housing which having been invited to in to view is far more spacious than anything the private sector can build for affordable purchase by working class people.

However these private money making concerns don't do the work of land clearance themselves they use the City Council to do the dirty, messy work of clearing the people off the land and mostly it's usually working class people who are bullied and abused as part of the heartless process. The people who usually carry this out are council housing officers as happened on the Boot estate in Norris Green and is now happening on the Gillmoss Estate near the Showcase cinema in Croxteth now. Most of these housing officers have become totally detached from the tenants over the past two decades with their mortgages for their private houses on their private estates. Emotionally they have no empathy with the tenants who they have effective total dominion over and often they can barely conceal their utter contempt for us. The people they are helping to shove out of their communities are often the most vulnerable, the poorest of the poor, the sickest, the elderly and the disabled.

The lack of democracy and accountability in most aspects if not all aspects of life in Liverpool can be traced quite clearly to the doorsteps of Liverpool's town hall, where the two main parties are guilty of throwing the most vulnerable of Liverpool's working class into the shark infested cesspool of the free-market, allowing a growth of thugs and bullies in neighbourhoods who end up being self-elected and go on to dictate the future destruction of their local communities often in alliance with the private sector big business interests. These obnoxious individuals are insulated from criticism and
accountability by Merseyside Police harassing activists at meetings and out in the community. Also the mainstream parties in the council have created this feudalistic like culture in many communities and the Labour Party with it's grip upon the mindset of working class voters regularly turns a deaf ear in places like Norris Green to the
abuses of their own members. These Labour party members bully and abuse, break the constitution of tenants associations for example with the fully informed knowledge of the Liverpool Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations. The Tenants Federation has it's own internal Labour party connections which put the interests of Labour Party houseowners breaking constitutions above non-Labour Party council tenants whose rent actually (10p a week) pays for the offices and resources of the said Tenants Federation in the first place. It is these thuggish chairman of tenant associations usually house owners who then block, threaten and send in the police to intimidate ordinary tenants fighting for their family and friends housing rights and exclude them from public meetings deciding the fate of their homes and communities.

Ah bless you ,
It really took me back reading the absoloute class 1 shit you knobheads are writing about Toxteth .I actually grew up there and if you have ever been to Liverpool never mind Toxteth you will know that after being traeted like shite by most people ,the people there basically rose up in July of 1981 and said enough is enough . What happened then was that the area was so blighted nobody would invest there , the Police gave up there ,and literally anyone with any sense got out of there because to write for a job with your C.V having a Toxteth address on it usually meant you had just wasted the price of a stamp . Then people like Curtis Warren turned the place into the Drugs stockmarket of the U.K , ramraiding was invented there , and you could literally be taking your life into your own hands to go in there in broad daylight never mind at night time . To read comments like making room for more Yuppies just shows how stupid you people really are .I can sympathise with you though because I was young once to and was even a Socialist . I even use to believe and listen to people like Derek Hatton and look at him. He turned out to be the biggest Capitalist going . I myself am in the construction business and the area is under going massive change under the H.M.R.I Pathfinder Initiative . I am not going to even explain what that is all about because as you will find out when you grow up and eventually reach about 21-22 years fo age is that being Che Guevara doesnt work and we all have to become normal one day .You only get out of life what you put into it . You really are very dangerous and stupid people arent you . Looking at those pictures with those stupid incorrect captions . If you tossers had any sense you would realise the area is about to be cleared and redeveloped with a large amount of Social Housing because the current housing stock is so knackered . Anyway Im bored with writing to you pricks now so run along and get you satchels ready and get in Mummy and Daddys BMW to be driven to private school . PISS OFF WE DONT NEED YOUR LEFT WING SYMPATHY.Coincidentally Derek Hatton can be contacted at Century F.m in Manchester where he is a D.J

I was saddend by the photographs,I lived in Coltart road and went to Tiber street Junior School,I later worked in a Bakery in Granby Street [Pars Bakery on the corner of Ponsonby Street],I can honestly say I never encounterd any trouble.The people were honest,hard working people from all backgrounds and cultures,yes there were a few unsavoury characters but on the whole it was a close community,families that went back generations,this will never be re created,when will councils learn,goodbye Granby Street,may you one day rise like a pheanix from the ashes.

Liverpool is one of the most racist places in the Uk this capital of culture award is a bad joke up until the late 90's liverpool celebrated its links to the slave tradeThe killing of Anthony Walker is testament to the attitude of the majority of liverpool non blacks There is even a new unique divide in Toxteth between the mixed raced and the black carribean, black africans.

These pictures are well out of date u cheeky twats

22.05.2004 23:14

Post card from Liverpool - What the tourist board wouldn't want tourists to see!

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PISS OFF WE DONT NEED YOUR LEFT WING SYMPATHY

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