Festival in Liverpool

Roy Kerridge Thehe most important thing you must about Liverpool is that it Isn't England.' These words were spoken by Edith Newbigin, authoress and retired schoolmistress. She is one of the few to

have defied Liverpool Council successfully.

, Two years ago when I had first sat with 'ea and cake in her Edwardian-style front room, the windows had been protected ,loin flying bricks by wire mesh, and jeer- ing children trampled across her garden. Neighbours had sniggered when I asked where she lived.

'Oh, the Teacher,' they said, then jerked a thumb to a derelict block of four-storey

Lila's. Miss Newbigin, a forceful woman, had refused to leave when the council decid- ed to demolish these dwellings. Enduring vandals lead-thieves on the roof and children who stoned her when she went out, she stayed firmly put.

I'll stand for no nonsense fromthe council bully boys,' she told me. 'I've lived here on the ground floor with my little Barden en ever since 1952, when the Presby- erian

Church found me a council flat. I first came to Liverpool as a Church Sister, winch nowadays would be termed a deaconess.'

„She produced a sheaf of blustering,

wheedling and cajoling letters from the council, fonn

I am afraid that I too am not over-

tt11.' of Liverpool councillors. Part of eir financial difficulties must surely be due to the fact that they have pumped an enortnous amount of money into Toxteth, tilf Ostof which has gone towards creating a

keep class of 'black bureaucrats' who

1`tieeP the councillors cringing and paying

Newbigin in fear of further riots. If Edith had been an inarticulate Liver- _13001-1rishman I am sure the bulldozers

rnuld have been sent in and she would have inished

in a hostel. No match for her tIchenckle-rapping schoolmarml y approach,

pHousing Departmen sold flats to a rivate firm, Norbrown,t run bthey a Mrs The teacher then bought her own flat. bNewbigin spoke of 'council bully s 'Is and wild 'street children' in the t(a)nle breath, and they do seem to work Ligether. But in allowing whole quarters of boys to become derelict, the adult bully tens are surely the ringleaders. They have afteroe xe rit et tl demolished the Dickens streets of , delightful tree-lined terraces named lama created by the great

• -ose parts of Liverpool Eight un-

Firrnaged by the riots are coming down. iocst to

„ go has been the Somali club, a

mean)/ famous bohemian haunt. where peo- ty (Li all colours danced and drank in safe- pair,?1°re sinister establishments in Upper

'lament Street have been left alone.

Bullies are well known for being cowards. The children of Huyton seem to sense that the 'Teacher' has won a victory, and now treat her with respect, She takes them for outings in the countryside and helps their parents with their council-made problems.

`Beatlemania' in Liverpool seems now confined to the Tourist Board. Under their auspices, a museum, 'Beatle City', has been opened in Seel Street, and there is a Beatle Exhibition in the Walker Art Gallery. The difficult with such exhibitions is what to put in them. As the Beatles only created noise, what do you look at? The answer seems to be lots of photographs of the Beatles creating noise, and a few paintings by their art school friends, together with cast-off clothing displayed as holy relics.

In my opinion, this civic adulation of the Beatles contributes to the unusual lawlessness of Liverpool youngsters. Everyone knows the Beatles were anarchic young rowdies, so if teachers and grown- ups approve of them and hold them up as a symbol of Liverpool, the concept of good behaviour seems officially abandoned.

After examining the various costly Beatle displays and having tea with Miss Newbigin, I sauntered into Liverpool Eight to meet my African friends. Returning at a late hour to the YMCA, I found two white 'anti-racists' waiting for me, a man and a woman. Regular readers of the Spectator will remember that I am constantly plagued by self-styled 'anti-racists' who regard my opposition to 'black bureaucrats' as 'racism'. Here were two more, and I listen- ed in surprise as the woman, a young sociologist, ordered me to leave Liverpool on the first train next day. Unless I did so, she hinted darkly, my mother's house would be burned down and I would be reported to the Race Relations Board.

Taking no notice, for I was looking for- ward to the Garden Festival, I went to bed and slept soundly. If only the Race Relations Board would abolish the lunatic word 'racist', a prime cause of paranoia and hatred, they would earn my hard-won gratitude. In the shopping centre, I encoun- tered three youths with surly expressions who stood in a line and held up copies of Spearhead, the magazine of the British Na- tionalist Party. These were anti-anti-racists, I suppose, and I looked through their magazine with interest. The ill-founded at- tacks on coloured people that made up half the contents were mostly based on quotes from the well-known black spokesman, Mr Darcus Howe, who must have proved quite a find for the British Nationalist Party.

'Fascist!' a voice called. I turned and beheld an angry young coloured man. His wife turned away as if disgusted by politics. 'I saw you buying that!' he exclaimed in a heavy Scduse accent.

Having had quite enough of all this, I jumped in a taxi and sped towards a saner, sweeter Liverpool, that of the International Garden Festival. The sun was shining, I paid my money at the green and yellow kiosk and soon I was walking along the prom as if I were at Blackpool. The amount of rich peaty earth laid on the site was col- ossal, and the grass looked as though it had been there for ever. Brilliant beds of tulips, daffodils and pansies foamed out in all directions, red, gold and purple. Streams and pools with bridges over them appeared every few yards. These waters were strewn with grey pebble beds and beaches, making them seem a part of the natural landscape. Small steam trains from Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway made a never-ending journey around the Festival, the carriages crowded with children and their self-reliant humorous-looking fathers.

Beyond a lake surrounded by animal sculptures stood the great Festival Hall, a sweeping curve of fibreglass with a glaring ring of white light reflected on it from the sun. I don't care greatly for bright sun- shine, and so I hope the thousands of sapl- ings planted all over the Festival are allowed to reach maturity and provide some shade.

Inside the hall a display from Israel caught everyone's attention — through a desert landscape a stream ran among rocks, a stream not only of water but of fresh tropical fruit and rose blossoms that by an optical illusion seemed to pour endlessly into a pool with fishes in.

Every nation seems to have contributed something to the Festival, and gallant little Barbados has given a double portion. See- ing the impact of Barbadians on England, the islanders who virtually run London Transport, smiling pillars of church and community, it is hard to realise that their place of origin is an isle small enough to be lost in Jamaica or Trinidad. Tropical flowers filled the many greenhouses outside the great hall, where orchids from the Caribbean grew from mossy branches hung across dark fern-rimmed pools. 'Oohs' and 'ash' were the order of the day, the rapture of the visitors increased by civic pride that for once was not misplaced.

Gardens from many lands were linked together by winding paths of coloured gravel, many nations choosing ruined temples as a theme, an idea which would have been well understood in the 18th cen- tury. After a nap on the comfortable cushions of the Turkish Coffee Pavilion, I pressed onward, over the artificial hills,

past the great outdoor theatre for the most magnificent spectacle of all, the two , Chinese pagodas sent by the People's Republic, every inch of carved wood

painted with patterns and scenes from mythology. As if in a Chinese picture, the pagodas were perched on great rocks overlooking a lake on which exotic wild ducks dived and swam. A waterfall cascad- ed down among boulders. Paths led up to a man-made branch of the Pennines, where a mountain stream tumbled through heather moors and newly planted bluebell woods. The illusion of wilderness was complete. Here and there, signs marked 'Methane Well' showed where the poisonous gas that had been brewed under the former rubbish dump has been bottled up for industrial purposes.

Eight hours proved far too short a time to see the whole Festival. Everywhere I heard the same fear echoed: 'What will happen when they hand all this back to the council?' Would the trees be safe? If the

many attendants, who must have taken a mile off the dole queue, are replaced by five municipal park keepers, would not vandals uproot everything? Liverpool has man; parks, which in their heyday were as grant' as the Festival itself, but are now run-down and neglected. If an entrance fee were kePt, the Festival could become a Northern Kew Gardens. As it is, the council have dark utilitarian plans for the site. Liverpool s triumph could easily turn back to ashes' and the proposed handing back of the Festival to the mercy of hard-faced men would be a crime of the same order as hart', ing Hong Kong to the heirs of the Cultural Revolution.