In the footsteps of Heseltine

Roy Kerndge

A terrible one for remembering street names, I never realised until now that I had ever been to Upper Parliament Street, Toxteth, before the riots broke out. I read that much of it had been burned to the ground, and assumed that it was in some far-flung tower block estate where children had grown up without the benefit of civilisation.

.What was my chagrin, on returning to Liverpool after an absence of months, to find my favourite chip shop had been boarded up! Upper Parliament Street Proved to be a road I had dawdled along many a time, admiring the tall, decaying town houses divided into rooms and flats, smiling at the earnest groups of students discussing nonsensical causes, nodding at Irish matrons or fat Africans sitting on doorsteps, and handing out lollipops to deserving children. University, the cathed rals mid town centre all five minutes walk away, it seemd a sleepily pleasant place to live by day, with a hint of excitement at night when saxophones blared from the African clubs. For Africans, not West Indians, have set the tone here, ex-seamen and waterfront boys who created a red-light district in an unlikely setting, and then Passed the torch to a younger generation. Kenneth Oxford, the Chief Constable, gained notoriety by saying that the rioters Were 'a product of liaisons between black seamen and white prostitutes'. There seemed to be some truth in this remark, as the wizened little-old-man faces on some hunch-shouldered coloured boys suggested a chequered upbringing.

I looked at the blackened ruins of shops I had visited and the gutted shells of fine 18th-century houses I had once admired, and saw, through new gaps in the blitzed thoroughfare, the rows of neat council houses where most of the rioters lived. It was almost as if the young tearaways had been in league with the council to destroy What was left of the real Liverpool.

They had done a good job of it. The Rialto cinema had gone, and many buildings looked like broken dolls' houses with the fronts torn away. A mobile 'radical lawyer' had set up office in a Portakabin on the charred ground. Two small boys ex plored the chaos of a looted pub, stepping Carefully over the broken glass. Only the ground floor remained, the rest being a Modern sculptor's delight of strange twisted metal shapes. Half the Princes Park Hospital was missing, but a memorial to Florence Nightingale remained. Evening came, and three busloads of Police drew up and parked on a stretch of newly cleared ground. I went into a pub and sat staring at the stained glass windows in a long-suffering manner and eavesdropping for all I was worth.

Most of the conversation, 'Tara love' and 'So I says to meself, says I', concerned the Royal Wedding, which has put such a happy spell on England. Some West Indians drank in amity with white Liverpudlians, but a brief silence and some frosty stares greeted the arrival of five gentle-mannered people whose blue dungarees and well-brought-up appearance proclaimed their Militant Tendency. For them, ruined homes and hopes, broken bones, blood and fire, spelled out one thing — Utopia round the corner. They looked suitably shiny-eyed.

'It's like a siege — you can feel the tension tingling in the air! Yesterday the Fascists attacked us — we must get more books and papers through to the people.' 'They say the police are using neutron gas now, to affect our hormones.'

'I never heard that. What I've noticed are the stray dogs wandering in the streets. That's the depth of deprivation, when you can't afford to feed your dog and it dies in agony.' 'I don't want to know that!', a pinkcheeked girl shuddered. 'Poverty and suffering has been my life, you don't need to tell me about it.'

'Well, to most of these youngsters the fighting just seems a game', her consort complained mildly. He was a bespectacled bearded man with thinning hair and a kind, reasonable expression that belied his words. 'They don't know why they're doing it, although I tried to explain. Last week was really political! I was cheering the youngsters on, waving a red flag! Tony really annoyed me then, you know, as he waved a black flag for anarchy instead of a red one for socialism. He told me later that the flag was black in sympathy with the Irish hunger strikers. A strange thing happened to me, when I was urging the youngsters on during the last riot. A woman rushed up to me, grabbed my arm and said, "Do you know what you're doing?" She seemed so passionate about it, I was quite surprised.' My long-suffering silent pose showed signs of breaking down at this, and with a mental prayer for that good woman, whoev er she was, I walked outside. There was a relaxed atmosphere, as the police walked around reassuringly, stopping for a chat and a joke with passers-by and doorstep-sitters of all colours. After all the fuss about 'police brutality' I had to pinch myself to see if they were real. No doubt some lose their heads when the fighting starts, but that is another matter.

'What would we do without them?' an old man said to me. 'They'll soon clear the trouble up, if they're allowed to'.

A coloured girl of sixteen, cheekiness personified, was questioned for a moment as she stood at a corner near a sign on a window reading 'No Kerb Crawlers'. She went into a song and dance act, clapping her hands, to the amusement of two constables.

'Want me to conduct yer?' one called out.

'D'ye want business, love?' the girl asked me boldly. Two others, looking even younger, stood by.

'Not tonight, thanks,' was all I could think of saying to these children of Liverpool.

In my opinion, years of left-wingery in schools and satire on television have so far altered the natural order of things that now, when a lawbreaker sees a policeman, instead of running away he attacks furiously.

The old African drug-peddling ponces were great ones for jumping out of windows when there was a raid, but those days seem to be over. Street-playing youngsters used to run from the police, but now it's the other way round. Everything is topsy-turvy — the rioters seem to be demanding 'police brutality' and they are turning pleasant, bohemian neighbourhoods into 'inner city deprived areas'. Unruly youngsters storm out of model council houses, egged on by teachers and social workers: the 'solution' seems to have caused the problem. What sense could Mr Heseltine make out of all this?

On Monday morning he was due to inspect the vast premises of the Tate and Lyle refinery in Love Lane, which has been closed since April with the loss of 1,800 jobs. When I arrived, the gates were just being opened, so I slipped through with his entourage and had a fine view of the man himself striding ahead, like a blonde prince followed by swarthy knights and villains, executives and Special Branch men. Black and cavernous, the empty factory shops had an eerie underground quality to them, as water dripped down and flooded the floor in places. However, most of the machinery seemed to be intact, and the hope was that the factory might be reopened, with the aid of private investment and public money. It was an impressive place, though I doubt if many rioters would reform and seek jobs there if it reopened, as such people never go far from their native patch. Love Lane is a lengthy bus ride from Toxteth.

At that moment a Special Branch man, who had been watching me nervously, decided that I had better leave. After my experience in the pub, I could see what he meant, as I am small, mild and bookish, and I wear glasses. Just the sort of person, in fact, who might attack Mr Heseltine. A factory worker called Alan, who had been kept on to maintain the machinery, showed me back to the works entrance. At first he seemed dour and suspicious, but when I told him how new I was to journalism, and how interesting it was for me to see great men in the flesh, his face broke into a boyish grin, sharing my excitement. He brightened further when I said how pleased I would be to see the firm re-open, and he blamed its demise squarely on the Common Market. Over to you, Mr Heseltine.

Soon I was face to face with the Minister, as he emerged, his famous wave of hair supported by spiralling sandy eyebrows. He was somewhat non-committal about reviving industry in Liverpool, saying that he did not want to raise hopes or waste the public's money. When he spoke of Toxteth, a look of real concern passed over his face, and he said how glad he was that the last few nights had been so peaceful. He had every confidence in the police, and it seemed that Kenneth Oxford's job was safe. I find it a very encouraging sign that a cabinet minister, even one with such an absurd title as 'the Environment', should forsake his car and walk around the streets talking to people. The next step must be to emulate George Orwell and stroll around tough districts incognito, wearing old clothes. Then he would really learn something.

As I left Love Lane, I passed a man pushing an archaic-looking hand barrow of scrap metal to his panel-beating yard in a railway arch. Such businesses, run by gypsy fiddlers who ignore red tape, will always flourish where mighty concerns topple and fall. Toxteth's rioters are less concerned with work, however, than with expanding their petty kingdoms of vice into empires. Already there are more prostitutes on the beat than I have ever seen in Liverpool before, the Anglican cathedral marking the boundary of their territory. When you realise that Kenneth Oxford is opposed mainly by ponces, his remarks about 'liaisons' appear in a better light.

However, the last word must go to 'Rioter, Liverpool 8', who wrote to the New Musical Express, a rock newspaper by no means sympathetic to his cause, or to the police for that matter.

'July 5th. I arrived on Parliament St at 1 lpm. There was an earth mover and milk floats pushing the police lines back. When the police got to the junction of Parliament St and Princes Boulevard, they started to retreat in haste. This is the spot where the Rialto and other buildings were looted, then burned. The crowd now had a nice large area to party in. The police let us stay there for an hour or so. The reason this position was given up was because we had to let the old people out of the hospital which was in danger of going up in flames. . . . After this the police came up with more men. . . . This is when I left — very drunk and choking on gas. . . . All I can say is that it was the best party ever. IT WAS FUN.'