In October 2003, Liverpool’s Black Communities1 celebrated »International Black History Month« (BHM) with nearly 40 events: exhibitions, film screenings, concerts, performances, discussions and debates, culinary events and fashion shows. This would not have been possible without strong financial backing from the city of Liverpool. This kind of backing, however, does not mean the Black Community – the oldest in Great Britain and thus Europe from the point of view of continuity2 – is at all taken for granted. The fact that Liverpool once attained extraordinary wealth through its colonial connections is of scant benefit to blacks in Liverpool even today. On the contrary, the last decades have seen a hard struggle, with only modest successes.

Nowadays, Liverpool’s Black Community is practically synonymous with Toxteth, the district with the postcode L8. But this completely ignores the ethnic variety within this district. The Black Community only switched to Toxteth in the post-war decades after becoming victims of aggressive urban renewal projects in other districts. Because of the rapid economic decline of the city during this period, the traditional emigrant district of Toxteth in particular was extremely neglected by the city. Home building and education were the worst affected. The economically marginalized area, from which many whites then fled, became seen as a »no-go« area, and finally as a »black ›sink‹ neighbourhood«3 These unbearable conditions led in 1981 to the notorious »Toxteth riots«, in which – despite the usual way they are portrayed – white residents of the district were also involved. Dinesh Alirajah4, artistic curator at the Bluecoat Gallery, calls this event a »political awakening« and a »decisive moment« in Liverpool’s recent history. As a result of the troubles, lobbies and pressure groups were formed within the community that tried to make heard local ideas for renewal. And, in fact, both the local and national governments reacted to the 1981 signal with a series of urban renewal programmes. As studies carried out over the past few years have shown, however, although these revitalization programmes were doubtless profitable for speculators and private companies, they did not bring much benefit to the black population. Owing to »pricing out« and a rapid increase in rents, the blacks were pushed even more into the run-down parts of the district.5 In addition to inadequate infrastructures and educational institutions and enormous unemployment, the Community was affected by a high degree of racial discrimination. At the end of the eighties, the so-called »Gifford Report« described the situation in Toxteth as »uniquely horrific«.6 The scope of this sometimes institutionalized racism can be measured by looking at its direct effect on the labour market, for example.7 Now, since the nineties, the situation has begun to change slightly in a positive way; but, in stark contrast to cities like London and Manchester, white employers that accept black applicants are still exceptions in Liverpool. According to Dinesh Alirajah, there is no longer any »postcode vetting«, during which applicants from L8 were systematically excluded, but the presence of blacks in jobs outside of Toxteth is still extremely rare. »When I go into the centre of Liverpool, I don’t see people like me,« says Tony Mitchell8 from the pirate radio station TTFM. The black historian Ray Costello also emphatically refers to this paradox of the »physical invisibility« of the blacks in Liverpool.

Under these harsh conditions, the caution and scepticism exercised by the Black Community is just as comprehensible as its optimism in view of successful joint ventures with the city. For this reason, Mitchell sees the general thrust of the BHM as being partly towards a »rebranding of Toxteth«. The success of this year’s festival was build upon signs of recognition towards the Black Community that were all sent last decade. For example, in 1999 and 2000, so-called »Libations«, ceremonies embodying Liverpool’s official apology for its large-scale participation in the slave trade, took place in the presence of representatives of the city and the Black Community. The opening of the »Transatlantic Slavery Gallery« (1994) in the Liverpool Maritime Museum can be seen as the first visible concession to the Black Community. This gesture on the part of the city was not altogether a willing one, says Alirajah: the museum at first depicted the history of the city’s seafarers without even mentioning the history of the slave trade that was closely associated with it, but finally had to face up to this aspect as well. But putting the story of the slave trade into a museum also carries with it the danger of new stereotyping, by identifying the history of »all blacks of all times« (Alirajah) with the slave trade. This not only distracts from the work on contemporary phenomena of institutionalized racism, as has for example been detected within the police in the area Liverpool/Merseyside, but also from the history of positive achievements.

Ray Costello’s project of a »Black History« of Liverpool is probably therefore largely an attempt to point out models and positive figures of identification. This is a function that Sonia Bassey also claimed for her work as an artist and graphic designer within the Black Community in her opening speech at the festival.10 And, as part of the BHM, the Museum of Liverpool Life invited children from various Communities to realize a Web project entitled »Me, Myself and I« with the artist Fiona Hawthorne.11
The successful cooperation between the Black Community and the city council during Black History Month in October 2003 may have something to do with the fact that Liverpool is to be the European Capital of Culture in 2008. It seems as if the city sees the collaboration with the Communities as a prelude and training for the year 2008, which Liverpool is advertising with the slogan »The World in One City«. Can this really be seen as the beginning of a new relationship between the city council and the Black Community? For now, this relationship is best expressed by the fate of the William Huskisson monument: his statue in Princes Avenue in Toxteth was pulled down from its pedestal during the protests in 1981. Huskisson is considered as a slave trader, but is celebrated as a hero in Liverpool because of his liberal politics. Huskisson may have vanished, but proposals by the Black Community for a monument to Bob Marley or Nelson Mandela, says Tony Mitchell, have so far been rejected by the city. So, for the time being, a pedestal upon which a slave trader once stood must symbolized the relationship of Liverpool to the oldest Black Community in Europe.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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