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Beryl Bainbridge „Liverpool's glory days are over“
„Rebranding Liverpool as a capital of culture won't bring back the thriving city I knew and loved„
Friday 11 January 2008 17.00 GMT
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/jan/11/liverpoolsglorydaysareover
New look, new city? ... a poster for Liverpool's year as European capital of culture. Photograph: Jim Dyson/Getty
I've been approached several times to take part in the celebrations. One of the suggestions involved being dropped onto St George's plateau from a balloon (it would only be a false drop, something clever with a door). But I didn't reply to that and declined the other invitations.
The reason I can't muster any enthusiasm for Liverpool being crowned a cultural capital of Europe is because it is no longer "my Liverpool". Liverpool in my day had the Royal Court theatre, the Empire theatre and the Playhouse theatre, where I was a student actor.
Now the Liverpool Playhouse is called the Liverpool Everyman. In my day the Everyman was a cinema for foreign films. The Empire is now only used occasionally, as is the Royal Court, as is the Playhouse. No repertory company remains. As far as I know, all the artistic venues for which Liverpool was once famous are now all mixed up together with everything else. They don't stand on their own. Presumably because they don't have the financial support.
The most interesting thing in the festivities is that the archbishop of Canterbury is going to talk about the Holocaust in the cathedral. That's important. But I don't know the names of any of the bands or celebrities who are billed to appear. The Liverpool Philharmonic are giving lots of concerts, but how many ordinary Liverpudlians are going to go to concerts? They never did in the old days. It was only a tiny minority -- the so-called middle class -- who went when Malcolm Sargent (Flash Harry) was a conductor of the Philharmonic, when it was a truly great orchestra. The middle classes have mostly all left Liverpool and gone out to the suburbs anyway.
What is Liverpool any more? Liverpool was famous because of its shipping, and the docks don't exist any more. What is the business centre of Liverpool now? There are big official buildings - but they're not what they used to be. Liverpool was a magnificent city in the 1800s, and it was pretty good in the 1900s, but like most centres of excellence, like Britain itself, it is always being replaced and "rejuvenated" with all these ideas of cultural centres, Olympic games and daft things like that. What is the point?
Liverpool's big name these days is only because of the bloody Beatles, nothing to do with its wonderful past. Liverpool's importance was to do with trade to the Americas and that no longer exists. It is not to say that I disapprove of Liverpool trying to be cultural, but what the hell is a culture of youth to a city that is in decline? But all this is only the opinion of somebody who left Liverpool 40 years ago. I wish them the best of luck with their celebrations.
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