Happily watching Susan Calman as she tours Liverpool. The joy of this is that I know and love this city well. People if ypu can get the UK channel 5 please check this out.
The Liver Buildings, Charles Dickens, Williamson’s Tunnels, the Atheneum, St George’s Hall. It’s an amazing city about more than the Beatles, more than tne football teams.
If you’ve never been, please visit. Walk the streets, see the sights but above all talk to the people. You won’t regret it.
Odd title eh? I spent last evening listening to Laurence Westgraph black historian and founder of the Liverpool and Slavery group. He was speaking at the Atheneum Club in Liverpool. The club has been around for a couple of hundred years. The founders included those who profited from the slave economy and those who opposed it. Some switched sides, for the better. One, William Roscoe MP lost everything in voting to abolish slavery. The club under it’s current president is looking at ways to pay respects and acknowledge the historic significance of its involvement in the trade. The audience was largely white, largely middle class and very engaged.
Many of Liverpool’s streets have names reflecting this trade, the names of the owners. There is only one named memorial in the gardens of the Parish Church of Our Lady and St Nicolas, that belongs to the first black resident of Liverpool. Abell a freed slave. The current Rector is also the current president of the Athenaeum. The club holds records of slave ownership and is committed to publishing research based on these. There are currently two doctoral candidates working on the records. It is not comfortable work but it is necessary. Liverpool was built on the slave economy.
The slave economy? Simply being a slave owner was not all of the story. Trade in slave produced goods from sugar to cotton were imported and made many a fortune. We have a Tate Gallery. The statue of the Spirit of Liverpool sits atop the Walker art gallery seated on a bale of cotton you can’t walk away from the bloody history of the city. Even the glorious Palm House was the first (and for a long time the only) place in the UK that had a statue of Columbus. When asked Laurence said that he believes that street names need to be left in place not changed so we can educate people and remind them. He gave his opinion that plaques explaining the truth should be placed near to sites of note so that all of history can be heard. In Falkener Square Gardens, for example, a sign tells of Major Edward Falkener raising a force to defend Liverpool from the French. Falkener gave money, never fought and his rank reflected the amount of money he gave all of it earned from the slave economy. (I’ve not added a link as Wikipedia has the sanitised version of the tale. Please feel free to join a walking tour if you ever visit the city.) These same philanthropists who built hospitals and churches also felt that is was acceptable to own people.
Liverpool was on the side of the Confederacy in the US civil war. It’s not a thing the current inhabitants are proud of but the people own it and are doing what they can.
Please remember that although slavery is illegal the world over it still happens. Next time you consider an eco friendly electric car think about who is mining the raw materials. Spend time finding out about sex traffiking. Ask yourself who made those clothes and at what cost? I had no desire to get preachy and yet that’s how this came out. There is more here than meets the eye. We may not be able to change history but if we do not learn about the uncomfortable past we are destined to repeat it.
ffiftypluses 