This is why we fight
Today, as we go about our daily business, and the Labour councillors who approved Greatie’s move strut around making a mockery of public service - there are traders from Great Homer Street who are trying to sell off their stock, offload their business, and figure out how a 30 foot pitch fits into a ten foot space.
It doesn’t.
Ah, Liverpool. You self harming city. Your vulnerability will be taken as your consent. And we will wring you out and hang you to dry.
Head to our waterfront and you’re entering a World Heritage Site. The Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City is UNESCO protected. But, more than this, it’s a touchstone to our past. We came from the marketplace. Trading made us.
Two miles upstream, and we’re wiping our oldest street market off the map. Like some new money chancer or grubby social climber, embarrassed to admit where we came from, we’re shamelessly chasing after new mates from out of town. Rich southerners who come to fuck us over and spit us out. To make a few quid. Appease a few shareholders. Cripple a few local businesses. Playing the short game in an old city.
Because that, according to our Council, is our only possible future. Let’s get Sainsburys. Let’s get Amazon. Let’s get call centres and zero hours and Irish developers and out of town speculators. Let’s feast like it’s our last meal, and pay no heed to those who’ve kept the city alive through boom and bust and blitz.
Fuck em. Fuck the people whose only demand was the right to get up at half four on a Saturday morning and try to make a living in the pissing down rain. And, while you fuck em, make them the enemy too. Make them seem like miserable, selfish moaners holding the city to ransom. Make us fight amongst ourselves. Distract us with details, because the bigger picture is too grisly to consider.
We’ll pick the low hanging fruit because we know no better. We’ll whitewash our history because we’re not worthy of it. And as we gorge ourselves let’s watch the migration, out of this city, of our young people, of our talent, of our future. Because that’s what’s happening. Now. In real time. And no big fat supermarket is gonna make any young apprentice, smart graduate or entrepreneurial kid want to hang around. They’re going to Manchester, and London, and cities that have decided their soul ain’t for sale, at least, not at Asda’s price. Cities planning for thirty years ahead.
A year ago, our council trumpeted the arrival of their SIF: the Strategic Investment Framework. A road map for the next 15 years, it talked passionately about the need for ‘distinctive neighbourhoods’, of ‘infestation by small businesses’, Community Interest Companies. A sense of place.
And so here we are. Making Greatie distinctive, according to Cllr Kennedy, means doglegging the street into an identikit Sainsburys, u-turning on promises and forcing traders out of business.
Supermarkets do not regenerate. It’s a stone cold lie. People regenerate. Local businesses regenerate. Connectivity and diversity regenerate. Supermarkets are hermetically sealed sheds. Their idea of community is a parachuted in PR exercise, a noticeboard and a coffee morning. Get into bed with them, and you think they’re gonna call you tomorrow?
So here we are. At the beginning of a whole new chapter. Labour councillors saying yes to a site roundly considered to be unsuitable. A couple of decent LibDem councillors wanting to hold back the decision until after a site visit: “If it’s taken 13 years to sort this out, surely we can wait another 30 days to make sure it’s a suitable site,” said Cllr Steve Radford. Reasonable? No, not according to planners.
Why do we care? We care because this isn’t about one street market. It’s about what makes a city a place we can invest in. A place we can pick out in a line up. A place we can call home.
Liverpool. We made you. We watched you grow. And we sold you.
