Planning and politics

The Liverpool example

Eric Heffer

The recent successes of the Liberals in Liverpool have mystified many political commentators. Some have put it down to the marketing techniques of "Jones the Vote '' or " Jones the dustbin " as he was called by Labour supporters in Exchange, Manchester, while others have suggested it is because the voters are disillusioned with both the main political parties. The Liberals have themselves claimed their advances as an expression of positive " community " politics, by which they mean concentrating on cracked pavements etc, with the distribution of dubious leaflets containing no policy declarations of any kind, and pursuing tactics that debase the political scene.

There is of course some truth in all these opinions. It is also true that people voted to show their dislike of present Tory Government policies, but my view is that thereat and decisive reason in Liverpool is that the people are sick and tired Of being pushed around and subordinated to the planners, with their Liverpool City Centre Plan, which was launched with so much optimism in 1965.

The Plan was the result of more than three years work by the then City Planning Consultant and his team (i.e. Graeme Shankland, Cox and Associates) working in association with the then City Planning Officer, Walter Bor and his staff. William (Bill) Sefton, the Labour chairman of the Development and Planning Committee, wrote in the foreword, . the Plan really shows the way in which positive and imaginative development can now take place. This is an ambitious plan, its fulfilment must take many years and the phasing of development will need careful decisions."

I must freely confess that like most of the Liverpool local politicians I was sympathetic to the idea. It had always seemed to me that Liverpool, immediately after the war, had missed a great opportunity to rebuild and redevelop the centre. While other cities at home and abroad had rebuilt following the scars of the war years, Liverpool remained scarred and it seemed that at last it was to get to grips

with the problem and a new phoenix was about to rise from the ashes. Belated it certainly would be, but perhaps all the better for that, because we at least could learn from the mistakes of those who had already redeveloped other cities.

In the preface to the City Centre Plan, Walter Bor and Graeme Shankland wrote, "Liverpool can sustain a great range of facilities and perform functions which a smaller city could not provide. The scale and volume of building necessary to house the large establishments and the quantity of floor space which is required for various city centre uses, coupled with the magnitude of the inner motoway system required to serve both these uses and the need of the Port, is the stuff of which a true city environment can be achieved." It was all very exciting. The models were produced, endless discussions took place and the plan was approved. Unfortunately, the reality proved to be very different to the exciting models, and in place of the old scars, new wounds have been afflicted.

Cities are in reality a series of villages joined together. They, like Topsy, "just growed." Each " village" had its own peculiarities and developed a community which had, or has, a distinctive character. As Young and Willmott wrote in their study of Bethnal Green, "... even when . planners have set themselves to create communities anew as well as houses, they have still put their faith in buildings . . But there is simply more to a community than that. The sense of loyalty to each other amongst the inhabitants of . . . Bethnal Green is not due to buildings. It is due far more to ties of kinship and friendship which connect the people of one household to another. In such a district, community spirit does not have to be fostered, it is already there. If the authorities regard that spirit as a social asset worth preserving, they will not uproot more people, but build the new houses around the social groups to which they already belong." These wise words were writ ten during the very period that Liverpool's planners were active. They were largely ig nored by those planners, although among the City Fathers there was much talk about preserving the communities.

The horrible truth is that too many communities were destroyed, and what Liverpudlians are weeping over today are the vast derelict and depopulated city central areas. Those inhabitants left in the surrounding twilight areas are deeply afraid that the same fate is destined for them.

That is why the Liberal slogan of "Let's

make a fresh start in Liverpool ” appealed so many people, and especially to those in areas hard by recently destroyed c munities. Even those hostile to the Libe politically were not happy with what happened under both Tory and Labour ministrations in the city. They, therefore. pecially in certain of the central periph wards, felt it might be worth giving Liberals a chance. After all, they felt, loolc o at the devastation and destruction arou be, them, they could not do any worse, and P ;La haps they might do better. They mighti,.pe, least call a halt and stop the rot. I do share this false reasoning, but can underslar' sei it. It is a regrettable fact, but nonetheless UV in that too often people come second to the; terests of the Plan. Scotland Road, for e fir ample, which was a unique area of the CI Vi has been turned into a six-lane highway WI; sa the old community completely divided scattered. Because of the construction of Sti Inner Motorway, the local residents ha' ah been subjected to noise, fumes, dirt and c0 th tinuous upheaval, until they have cried 0' WI for peace, at any price. The guts " of Live pool have virtually been torn out. Not, hol ever, the heart of the people, that survi' ' in wherever they find themselves, but the dal: n( age done to the heart of the city has reduce rri it to a shadow of its former self. I well remember that when the idea ''41 Sa originally mooted that the planners should sv called in to Liverpool, Alderman Jack IVth dock (the then leader of the Labour Grol L; and husband of the formidable Bessie Bo. s, dock) was very much opposed. He had picions that if the planners got a hold t vi character of Liverpool would be changed.' N not entirely destroyed. His instincts Well 131 right, even if he did not convincingly artiO late his arguments to make them accept at to people like me, although I had serial;i reservations. But looking back, and it ways easy to be wise after the event, Braddock's instincts were fully justifie", ' Those of us who accepted the plan thougt that new housing projects would be built a, jacent to the slums that were to be destroYe", We envisaged the simultaneous re-buildinge. the working-class residential areas, but thi51'

fact is only now beginning to take place. ,

What really happened was that whole are ; were destroyed, the sites were then left va. ' cant for years, and the people were pusbe:, out to the suburbs or forced into multi-stor,, skyscrapers or induced to go to new tovillA5 until today we have the edifying spectacle ' gipsies and tinkers taking up residence ofi' their caravans on the wasteland °nil.' tWo three blocks away from shopping are; which, because of the wholesale destruct of working-class residential property, 31 beginning to look like broken-down towns, with boarded windows and en1P1' shops. The truth is that Liverpool, to use 1e1 graphic phrase of my parliamentary cil„ league, Joel Barnett, was rife for ‘ef gruntlement politics. The Liberals, with thell,, so-called "community politics" have mere' cashed in on the situation.

The City Centre Plan said," A city centre, a heart deriving a special sort of social economic vitality from its catchment areof This relationship makes it a meeting place4 unpolluted attractiveness and liveliness '', also renders it vulnerable to competitioll1; Much of the so-called vitality of LiverP0130 city centre today is made up of motor /le roaring over the flyovers. Today, when offices and shops have closed at night, tev city centre is more like a ghost town than t • centre of an international seaport. The people have gone to suburban deserv,,, which are only now slowly developing a C0 munity spirit. All this may appear harsh and exaggerate‘ili I plead guilty to being harsh, but I doubt 1'01 have exaggerated. In fact, many LiverP° people would say I am being too kind.

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Li ei ai tar , What I am saying is that the devastation, The dirt, dust, rubble, confusion and the upoting of communities with the loss of the enPle, has led to political frustration and a egret of disillusionment that has given the

5 iberals in Liverpool a chance they would ever have had, had such conditions not pree,y,aned. There is, of course, one other impor

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he' ant factor with regard to the local political. tic 0,toene that is essential to bring out. Contrary ame political pundits, such as Francis I.:Yu of the Guardian Liverpool has never p,aben a safe Labour town. Until the 1960s er L ;13ur had only been in office for a brief r,rriod. and it was not until 1964 that Labour tar ad seven out of the nine parliamentary seats. Labour lost control during the period of illeLabour Government and only regained it t aY 1972. In the past it was always a Tory 'fi rvn. P. E. Smith (Lord Birkenhead) who was ci .irst elected to Parliament for the Walton di\s12:1,°n, which I now represent, could rightly 'n a debate in the House of Commons, st.at he represented a working-class con0!1 ahtilencY, and one that gave him a comfortmajority. The reason of course was that cf, we Tories won the majority of the Protestant la-class vote. That vote has now 1 disappeared. Liverpool's Protestant

, °ricers no longer automatically vote Tory;

nn fact both Protestant and Catholic workers e, 1111 °,W c rossv ote with religion playing a very ,,,nor role. lie saf`,, interesting fact is that it is in either T°rY or in marginal seats that have 34 11, "i"g in the past between Tory and Labour, r „,a th ,c4 Labo.ie Liberals have made their real gains. ti ‘autrivreecvently lost some seats, but the Conser

ate both in the metropolitan elec ate both in the metropolitan elec

sts ris and in the Liverpool district elections ea-:uallY collapsed. In the marginals it was ei be',Y for Tory voters to vote Liberal, as they te there is not a vast difference between 114 Z Philosophies of the two parties. This has jOlt Exeenh further underlined in the Manchester ths,-"ange parliartientary by-election. One of po;iInost significant seats lost to the Liver-4 In Conservatives was the Aigburth ward. nh, Metropolitan elections, the Liberals did oc ha-I.,' contest the ward, and the Tories had a l jne majority, but in the district elect0 thpj they did contest, with the result that iS 'Won all the three seats, driving the To0 a poor second position. .01 voto"e additional reason why Labour lost lea-s Was due to the fact that the Labour iri 1,1ec -tjef,rahiP of the City Council had said it lict,-,*7 not implement the Government's "ne Finance Act, but backed down and 7,01 groLresult for a period split the Labour tei;P. The split was healed prior to the remetropolitan and district elections, but eas tioh-moubtedly had an effect. The present posioPar is that the Liberals are the majority ,of 114;2' with Labour a close second. The Tories niti econtrol of only three wards, regaining `r°In Labour by the slenderest of mar

tf Until 1971 it had been a copper-bot .,!• d Conservative seat.

Liverpool City Centre Plan was begun lei` ftirttsgle Tories, continued by Labour and lhe;"er carried forward by the Tories when !.egained control. The Plan as such was the'f' a serious point of difference between by,L14/0 Parties, or as far as I know opposed to `"e Liberals, although it would be correct colispraY Labour councillors individually and eft 'etively were deeply concerned about the .iect it was having on the people. 14r1Le Liverpool situation has serious lessons ToHtne Labour Party but they are lessons the torn''es will also need to learn. People must slb,"'e first. They cannot and must not be th;nted about and treated like pawns in a ile;sis game. If they are, they will react ri5 .nst the traditional political parties. The the"ntage has been temporarily gained by iberals this time; later it could be other wa„e,sinister political forces who are in no dedicated to the democratic processes. I )0 not deny that planning is essential — in fact the Liverpool plan had real advantages — but huge local government departments headed by high-paid planners, remote from the people, lead to bureaucratic attitudes which perpetuate and extend remoteness from the people.

As Tom Gower. Davies says in his interesting book, The Evangelistic Bureaucrat, ” Power tends to corrupt. It is not that our planners are new Machiavellis, although they play their politics as the next man, they are not without concern for the effects of their plans on human beings . . . It is simply that the exercise of power has taken the place of the exercise of reason. The possession of power is a licence for stopping thinking, it is an invitation to an intellectual indolence which borders on contempt for those affected by the decisions made and the policies chosen."

I would urge all politicians to mark, learn and digest these words.

Eric Heifer is Labour MP for the Walton Division of Liverpool, ancl a former. Liverpool City Councillor.