The bishop of Hope Street offers an organic remedy for no-hope ghettoes
This should have been Boris's gig, of course. Our former editor's perilous journey into the heart of the Scouse soul was a penance of sorts for that notorious Spectator editorial. But amid the media scrum, he didn't have much chance to do anything but murmur a few defensive sorrys, hair flapping in the angry breeze. Closure wasn't achieved. A Liverpool City Life from the great man's pen might have made things better — or worse — but his thoughts have turned to London and good luck to him Liverpool, meanwhile, has moved on too and I'm delighted to report that The Spectator remains substantially less loathed here than the Sun, which is still reviled for its critical take on the Hillsborough disaster 18 years ago.
Hillsborough, the Sheffield stadium where 96 Liverpool fans died, is but one of a series of tragedies to hit the city during the past 25 years. There was another stadium disaster at Heysel. There was the scandal at Alder Hey children's hospital. There were the deaths of James Bulger, Ken Bigley, Anthony Walker and Rhys Jones — the very names evoke incredulity and despair. Has any other city suffered as much? The Rt Revd Dr James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, thinks not. 'Since I arrived in 1998, I have experienced the city's raw grief at first hand on too many occasions. I don't think we're hooked on grief, as The Spectator suggested, but we do grieve together and I believe that's a strength, not a weakness.'
A charismatic man in the old-fashioned, genuine sense of the word, the bishop argues that urban regeneration is the key to solving Liverpool's problems. He's not just talking about the shiny new developments in evidence along the old Mersey docks, but about reaching out to deprived areas such as Toxteth, Kensington and Croxteth. He likens this to the human blood supply; it's no use if it only reaches the heart; it must course through the whole body. Otherwise the gulf between haves and have-nots, so graphically illustrated when a gang member from the ghetto that is Croxteth shot dead 11-year-old Rhys Jones in a pub garden in nearby Croxteth Park, will only grow wider. Bunches of flowers and a well-worn Everton scarf mark the scene where young Rhys died, an aching reminder of one of Liverpool's darkest hours. Locals repeatedly name the suspected killer, but he has yet to be arrested and charged.
Bishop James believes there are tensions between community-led regeneration and programmes that are centrally driven — tensions that are often revealed in language. Local community leaders use an organic vocabulary of 'seeds, planting and renewal'; those who control the money use a mechanical language of `triggers, buttons, levers and targets'. He's convinced that you can't have mechanical solutions to organic problems, and that those with the money and the power need to understand more fully how communities die and live again. A visit to Toxteth, a chilling reminder of the real poverty that still exists in Britain, provides a classic example. A community college, built by the government as part of Michael Heseltine's 'Merseyside Task Force' initiatives in the wake of the 1981 riots, stands boarded up and derelict, a monument to futility and a target for the vandals that roam the forbidding, litter-strewn streets.
It is precisely because of Liverpool's proud past as England's most affluent port, and its promising future as European Capital of Culture 2008, that the problems of Toxteth and Croxteth matter so much. Less than two miles from Toxteth, but an eternity away in every other sense, stand the Three Graces, testament to Liverpool's prosperity before the first world war. These three buildings, the Royal Liver, the Cunard and the Port of Liverpool, tower over the Mersey and provide a challenging architectural benchmark for the ultra-modern developments springing up around them. Most crucial of these is the £950 million, 43-acre Liverpool One project, due to open within six months. It will create 1.6 million square feet of new retail space, in which John Lewis and Debenhams will be anchor tenants, and it is Liverpool's chance to return to the premier shopping league, reversing a drift towards Manchester and its Trafford Centre. The developer, Grosvenor, remains upbeat, but the project is £140 million over budget and storm clouds are gathering over the retail economy. Not even the fabled spending power of local queen Wags Coleen McLoughlin and Alex Curran may be able to stave off a downturn.
The playwright Alun Owen said that Liverpool marks all its children. I'm sure that's true. No city in the world has such a powerful sense of identity — expressed in passion for its football teams and pride in its popular cultural heritage, especially the Beatles. Liverpool's amazing comeback in the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul, led by the talismanic home-grown Steven Gerrard (Alex Curran's husband, for those not up on their Wags) provoked an outpouring of joy commensurate with the grief shown in that catalogue of tragedies. A visit to the Cavern Club in Mathew Street, birthplace of the Beatles, still sends a shiver down the spine, as does stepping on to Anfield's hallowed turf. Football and music provide wonderful outlets for Liverpool's youth. It's just a terrible pity that the gangs, born of a chronic three-generation breakdown of society, provide another.
A picturesque Georgian thoroughfare called Hope Street links Liverpool's Roman Catholic and Protestant cathedrals. The links between the two churches — and between their leaders and the city's Muslim community — are very strong. When Ken Bigley was murdered by Islamic extremists, the expected backlash against Liverpool's Muslims never materialised. That's tremendously reassuring, but is it enough? In 1708 Daniel Defoe wrote: 'Liverpool is one of the wonders of Britain. What it may grow to in time I know not.' We still don't know: will it grasp the opportunities of its reign as European Capital of Culture, or will it descend into self-pity city, a paranoid theme park for the disenchanted and dispossessed? Bishop James believes, with all the passion of an adoptive Liverpudlian, that the future is bright, provided — to repeat his analogy — the blood starts flowing right through the body. Tragically, just recently, there's been too much of it spilt on the streets.
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