Why we should stop banging on about Thatcher and the Toxteth Bloody Riots

Paul Bryan

My personal experience of the 1981 Toxteth Riots existed, as for so many others in Liverpool, solely on television. The nightly news reports showed lines of police officers cowering under shields as youths hurled stones and set light to cars and buildings. I didn’t know why it was happening but I knew it was exciting and so did my friends – as if through some mechanism of the collective unconscious we quickly turned it into a street game, unimaginatively called ‘Toxteth Riots’. The rules were fairly simple. All you had to do was clutch a metal bin lid and defend yourself from rocks and stones hurled somewhat half-heartedly by your mates. The winner was the one who could stick it out for the longest. Writing about this now, I’ve only just realised, we were instinctively putting ourselves in the shoes of the police. They at least seemed understandable. Still, it didn’t hold our attention for long. We got bored of it after two nights.

If only I could say the same about the national media. 41 years later and they’re still using the Toxteth Riots as the go-to framing device for just about any story on Liverpool. Of course, in no way do I mean to belittle the experiences of those who were there, or those who suffered under the social forces that made life more difficult. But for me growing up, the riots always felt like something distant, from some other Liverpool, far off and largely irrelevant. If anything, the Toxteth Riots were a boon – they gave me the chance to meet TV scarecrow, Worzel Gummidge at the International Garden Festival three years later, thanks to the intervention of Michael Heseltine, unofficially crowned the Minister for Merseyside.

I mention this personal story because I’ve noticed a tendency in the media and in political circles to describe Liverpool as a single unit, with a single, monolithic outlook and I find this approach unhealthy and untrue. The Toxteth Riots as history and metaphor have become something of an unquestionable foundation stone in our understanding of Liverpool’s journey. I’m not for one minute doubting their significance, but merely wish to flag that, due to the vicarious nature in which they were experienced by many, the events will never speak to us all in the same way and I think that’s worth acknowledging given the sometimes over-simplified, stripped-down caricature of ‘Scouse’ tales that we are often encouraged to identify with. And if that applies to someone who was alive at the time, you can bet it will apply even more to those who were as yet unborn.

The Toxteth Riots sit as the starting point of a master narrative that is told and retold ad finitum. Typically, it’s a story pitched as one of strife and rebirth – a city on its knees rising phoenix-like from the ashes with the regeneration that followed. Either that or it’s used to evidence our home town’s long history of racial inequality. There are further beats in the story of course and usually they point to ‘basket-case’ – a city that just can’t seem to catch a break or get its house in order. A place that is frankly perplexing. Journalists visiting Liverpool tell the same story, time after time, yet they never tire of it, new facts on the ground serving merely to embellish an already familiar pattern.  

It would be easy to point the finger at outsiders here, but this game plays out amongst Liverpool’s inhabitants too and I’ve begun to wonder… does the incessant focus on the 1980s (and we must throw the hate figure that is Margaret Thatcher into the same pot) does the constant repetition serve the city’s best interests? Do these references still yield insight or are they just a reheating of old battles, about as useful to understanding Liverpool today as the Suez crisis is to making sense of Britain’s contemporary approach to foreign policy?

A case in point. This week, the Mayor of Liverpool, Joanne Anderson was interviewed by a journalist from the left-leaning New Statesman magazine, enticed no doubt by the city’s hosting of the Labour Party Conference. Ostensibly about Liverpool’s current political crisis, the article began like this… “In 1981, the violent arrest of a young black man near Granby Street in Toxteth, Liverpool, led to nine days of rioting.” 

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“Journalists visiting Liverpool tell the same story, time after time, yet they never tire of it, new facts on the ground serving merely to embellish an already familiar pattern.”

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What followed was a tick list from the unofficial media guide to Liverpool which we presume is handed out by the NCTJ on journalism graduation day. Margaret Thatcher, ‘managed decline’, European Capital of Culture and the regeneration of the Albert Dock, Derek “Degsy” Hatton and the Militant Tendency, gang warfare and the shootings of young children, now sadly updated with new names. Welcome to Fleet Street’s version of Punxsutawney where we’re all doomed to live the same day, every day. Bill Murray, at least, found a way out. In Liverpool, we’re still looking.

Truth is, the story could have been about anything – crime, the opening of an arts festival, or an important football match and it could have been published anywhere – The Telegraph, The Guardian, The New York Times or Unherd. It doesn’t really matter what the initial prompt is, as long as the story stays the same. Liverpool, the city, is perennially cast as the troubled lead in a Shakespearean morality play, fuelled by righteous anger, touched by tragedy, let down by treachery, now sadly a watchword for – (insert your favoured macro-political, agenda-driven blank here).

Refreshingly, the Mayor was not too impressed with the New Statesman article. On Twitter, Joanne claimed the writer had “focused on a whole load of scouse stereotypes” and accused him of “lazy journalism”. I found myself in agreement so I reached out to the Mayor for further comment, and to my surprise she replied. What she had to say, for a local Labour leader is, I think, important and worth hearing. But you’ll have to wait a while. You see, first I have this theory and it involves turning our attention inwards. It’s the real meat in this piece. For as much as we might want to blame the media, I believe that the press are, in large part, reflecting back what we as a city put out about ourselves.

Sometimes, our own worst enemy

Compare these two statements. The first is by a journalist, Oliver Brown, Chief Sports Writer at the Telegraph, who was writing about Liverpool’s complex relationship with the establishment in light of some fans failing to observe a minute’s silence to mark the death of the Queen.

“Liverpool is a city that feels that it has been shunted to the margins of British society. It is scarcely an unfounded view.”

The second is from Kim Johnson, MP for Liverpool Riverside who was describing her sense of betrayal at Labour Leader, Keir Starmer writing in the Sun in 2021.

“We are the Socialist republic of Liverpool, a city that marches to the beat of a different drum, a resilient city that will always come back fighting.  But we have a long memory and will not forget this betrayal by the leader of the Labour Party, in our Labour city.”

Can you spot the similarities? For starters, they are both quite careless in their use of the collective – back to that sense of the monolithic, singular opinion to represent the Liverpool way. But they also both spoke to something else – a powerful sense of grievance baked into the city identity. Kim Johnson’s quote in particular was the perfect crystallisation of a view that has become increasingly noisy in recent years – the idea that Liverpool is ‘Scouse, not English’ – a place apart, waged in a perpetual battle to get a fair deal, coalescing around some sense of the ‘Other’.

A few weeks back, the Liverpool Echo’s Dan Haygarth, in a quite remarkable article, attempted to explain why so many in the city reject national identity. As explanations go it was comprehensive, yet strangely unconvincing, but it was a perfect reflection of what passes for common sense around here. Supposedly, our 19th-century Irish roots had turned us into ‘rebels’ sceptical of authority; our coastal location transformed us into natural internationalists who looked out rather than in; a history of being ‘let down by the establishment’ first by the Thatcher government in the 1980s and then over the Hillsborough disaster had for many ‘broken the city’s relationship with England beyond repair.’ Throw in the generosity of EU European Objective 1 funding followed by savage post-2010 cuts from Westminster, a Brexit vote that went the wrong way and a nasty article in the Spectator under Boris Johnson’s watch and a seemingly irresistible case was made for a city destined to walk alone.

Haygarth’s article concludes – “The phrase 'Scouse, not English' not only encapsulates Liverpool's civic pride and a healthy rebellious spirit, but expresses a feeling that the city has been so often let down by the establishment of this country. It should come as no shock that large swathes of this Labour-voting, outward-looking, and heavily-Irish city do not feel like they have much in common with the rest of England.”

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“They also both spoke to something else – a powerful sense of grievance baked into the city identity… a mutual connection made through the collective swallowing of bitter pills… our loudest voices complicit in the forging of our own myth of alienation.”

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For me, the sense of our loudest voices being complicit in the forging of our own myth of alienation is palpable and the justifications horribly deterministic. Who here thinks their life choices and personality are determined by people born 200 years ago? Stitching together disparate events, our public figures and opinion-formers are consciously weaving a narrative that seems to share some of the features of an accelerated national story – one encompassing communal loss and betrayal, a unique sense of difference forged through a mythic connection to lands beyond the horizon and an othering from a surrounding horde of distinctly unsympathetic barbarians. But as foundation stories go, it seems to lack many of the positive elements that make nationhood worth having – with little sense of victories past or historic purpose hard won. Today, it’s hard to look back to our past days as the Second City of Empire with any pride – our fine buildings now come tinged with a dusting of racial guilt. Meanwhile, victories in the class war seem thin on the ground. We are adrift.

What is striking about this evolving story of self, and I must point out that this is about the narrative, not the individual, what is most striking is that it does seem to cohere around a strong sense of grievance for slights endured – a mutual connection made through the collective swallowing of bitter pills made palatable by the odd-football win. Of course, many will simply feel this description does not fit and may take offence at any perceived slight on their scouse identity. But this project to manufacture a sense of separation is very real.

In my view, we are being sold a pup and it’s one that needs to take a trip back to the vet. While we gripe against lazy stereotypes in the media, we are, in truth, guilty of playing to them ourselves and too often take on these restrictive ideas as our own. Liverpool, and I say this with genuine love, is in danger of becoming an addict to its own class-A narrative.

Stuck in the past – where’s our sense of agency?

I’m conscious I need to explain how I think this works and why I believe it’s so dangerous to our health of mind and our future prospects. Let’s go back to that Liverpool Echo article and the popular argument. It has the benefit of simplicity. It goes like this… our sense of grievance, which is legitimately founded, is fuelling our independent, republican spirit, our demand for fairness and our rejection of Englishness, and this is entirely understandable and in some ways positive. It is up to the English and the English alone to make good or we’ll carry on our separate way. Should you be so minded you can buy the mug or the t-shirt and proudly proclaim your support for the Scouse Republic.

Now let me explain what I think is really happening. It ain’t pretty. Strap yourself in. I won’t be winning any prizes for popularity.

My argument is that our sense of grievance is fuelling not a positive assertion of independence but a downward spiral into insularity. The modern sense of political scouse identity that we are being encouraged to adopt, is a perversion of the positive and energetic forms that went before. It is forming primarily around negative assumptions – everyone hates us, we never get treated fairly, we have to fight for everything, and the outcomes that we want are largely beyond our control. There is a sense that the game is rigged against us, feeding a loss of faith in government authority both in Westminster but also increasingly at the local government level too. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve been seeing such low electoral turnouts. After all, if you view things that way, what is the point?

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“Our sense of grievance is fuelling not a positive assertion of independence but a downward spiral into insularity. The modern sense of political scouse identity that we are being encouraged to adopt, is a perversion of the positive and energetic forms that went before.”

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A primary feature of this outlook is pessimism and a loss of faith in the future. Our belief in our own agency to identify and solve the city’s problems and to conceive of big, ambitious solutions is becoming eroded over time. This is why today, in Liverpool of all places, we feel the pull of the past so strongly, expressed as it is in our stubborn defence of heritage (even when it makes no sense) or our determination to keep fighting old battles long after the social forces that made them have ceased to apply. Looking to the past is simply more reassuring because there is already a map to guide us and our obsession with the 1980s is at least in part, down to this nervousness about our future. It is also a politically convenient way of passing the buck.

As we struggle to find solutions to the problems we face and lose hope of better outcomes, our instinct as proud men and women of Liverpool is to throw our ire outwards, to say, ‘Sod you’ to the rest of England, which as the mooted source of our suffering is cast as the villain (the Scots, Welsh and Irish have our sympathies as they are also considered to be under ‘the yolk’). So then we double down on our own sense of uniqueness - we are hated because we are different - which is mostly a palatable rationalisation of our own sense of defeat. Of course, some people just go away, fire up their belly, and take charge of their lives, for example by setting up a business in places like the Baltic. Others just go away. Meanwhile, as a community, we re-commit to our grievances.

Unfortunately, despite the likelihood of a new government and a change in policy direction, there is little prospect of a shining knight riding over the hill to rescue us. We know this, don’t we? Our grievances serve no purpose in a battle we cannot win. All they do is fuel our sense of powerlessness. What we need to do as a city, as a people and as individuals is to reclaim our sense of power and agency and we can only do that by just doing it. Some, like Metro Mayor Steve Rotherham, will argue that this is why he is trying to gain more powers for the Combined Authority so that the region can exercise more control over decisions and that is right. But unless our leaders can find a way to turn their backs on the dominant pessimism of these times, they will dream only little dreams.  

What ‘Scouse, not English’ and the backward-looking forever-focus on the 1980s offer us is a shrunken vision of our place in the world. A tiny Scouse Republic of Retreat - a new Pimlico. Sure, it doesn’t require a passport for entry and exit, but just like in that famous Ealing Comedy, it brings with it a wariness of the outside and a closing of doors at the exact time we need to be opening them. We should have no truck for this limited and carefully edited version of ourselves, this ‘Petty Scouser’ mentality. Instead, let’s stand tall, be open to the world and claim our confident place amongst it.

So, back to Thatcher and Toxteth

A little section here about our 1980s obsession and who stands to benefit. Let’s be clear. When in 2022 people re-raise folk devils from 40+ years ago as if they are still relevant, they are doing it for a reason. In Liverpool, it gives activists and elected representatives an alibi, allowing them to point the finger of blame outwards for the city’s sorrows, instead of looking within. It’s a way of avoiding scrutiny and of taking responsibility for inventing new stories and new sources of power and success. It’s time we all got wise to it. We deserve better.

More concerning though is what an over-zealous focus on the past communicates to the world outside and to the people we’d like to partner with. Forever talking about the 1980s pins us as irrelevant, backward-looking, and worst of all, passive in the face of the present. By using long-gone events to explain the outcomes of today, we risk turning ourselves into victims of history, still driven by events we cannot change. Time to let go.

What’s in a name?

At Liverpolitan, we’ve often been chided for adopting such a name. Why didn’t we use Liverpudlian? Nobody calls themselves a Liverpolitan. But exercising our agency means waving goodbye to insularity and engaging fully with the world around us. It is our signal that this country and in fact the whole planet is full of Liverpolitans making their way beyond the narrow confines of the city limits. What is remarkable about many of these people, is that though their lives have taken them elsewhere, they retain their passion for their ultimate home. They are a resource, they are legion and they are on our side. We should use them.

Last words to Joanne…

So what did the Mayor say that was so interesting? If we are being honest, it is the Left in the city that has been more prone to mining the past. You can argue it’s been an election-winning strategy, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. So when the Labour Mayor of Liverpool tells us it’s time to face forward, I think we should listen. Here’s what she had to say.

“Every city has its challenges, and Liverpool is no different. But outdated scouse stereotypes and harking back to the 1980s does not define our city today. It is blatantly obvious that the city has undergone massive transformation and is continuously evolving. We have a dynamic culture and arts scene and major regeneration projects, whether it’s the growing health and life sciences sector, the film studios on Edge Lane, or Bramley Moore Dock. It is damaging when publications rely on the same old tired cliches and narratives about Liverpool, as it just perpetuates old myths that simply are not true. Liverpool is looking forward with optimism – maybe it’s time others do too.” Joanne Anderson, Mayor of Liverpool.

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Paul Bryan is the Editor and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a freelance content writer, script editor, communications strategist and creative coach

*Main picture by Alex McCarthy on Unsplash

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The Ten Commandments of Scouse TV and Film

(How Liverpool stereotypes shape our media)

Paul Bryan & Michael McDonough

“Ignore the non-creative, faceless, nameless, self-appointed prick Tony. Imagine someone in New York (with all its crime stories) taking that same lazy, blinkered view. There’s a dark side to our city - anyone who doesn’t accept that is in denial. Well done & good luck mate.”

 Dave Kirkby, a Writer/Producer/Director on Twitter

The Tony in question was Tony Schumacher, the screenwriter of new Liverpool-based BBC cop drama, The Responder, which stars Martin Freeman as a morally compromised Urgent Response Officer working the night-time crime shift. According to the Guardian, we can look forward to seeing the policeman pinch cigarettes and food off the dead while battling local drug barons. The show airs on the 24th January 2022.

Tony was not happy and to be fair, Liverpolitan had something to do with that. We’d spoilt his day, we were told, with a tweet of our own. It was maybe a little bit naughty.

“Another crime drama for Liverpool. Original,” we’d posted. Queue shitstorm. Tony bit back and all hell broke loose. Actors, producers, godknowswhosers leapt in intent on tearing us a new one, and presumably to make Tony feel better. But it was too late supposedly. We’d taken the shine off his achievements. Bubbles had been burst. You can check out all the fun here.

Based on the strength of the reaction, there was the distinct feeling that we’d touched a raw nerve. Are film and TV producers, writers and directors aware of just how often they go to the same well, selecting from the small set of go-to tropes and narratives that depict the city as the land of desperation rather than opportunity? We’re bored of it. Bored of seeing Liverpool as a metaphor for the down at heel, for crime and unsafe streets. For plucky, gobby underdogs struggling to keep their heads above water. There’s got to be different stories to tell.

But weren’t we being unreasonable or unkind? After all, we hadn’t even seen the show yet – just the trailer, the star interviews, and the press coverage, which seemed to major on how hard Freeman had worked to perfect his scouse accent. Marvellous. Wouldn’t want to get that wrong.

We’re bored of it. Bored of seeing Liverpool as a metaphor for the down at heel, for crime and unsafe streets.

BBC Trailer for ‘The Responder’

The truth is, The Responder could be the best British TV show ever written (and we hope it is) and it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference. We’ve walked this path many times before. That’s not to say Liverpool doesn’t have real social problems. Of course it does, just like any other major city. And we’re not saying people shouldn’t write about them – everyone’s got to make a living, but what you really notice is the absence of alternatives and the laser-like focus on suffering. And what happens when the same kinds of story and the same kinds of characters get rolled out time and time again? How do the scouse stereotypes impact the way the world sees us? Or even more worryingly, how we see ourselves.

But’s let’s park that discussion for a minute because we need to make a point. Liverpool is, as many readers will know, a popular filming location. Everything from The Batman to Peaky Blinders and The Crown have been filmed here in recent years and many more productions besides. The Liverpool Film Office claim the city is the most filmed UK location outside of London. It’s an undoubted achievement. But the truth is, Liverpool tends to act as a stand-in for other places – notably New York and London, rather than as a setting itself. This is no doubt testimony to its incredible architecture and urban landscape. But what this does mean, is that the cultural imprint of Liverpool is often invisible on the screens. Unless you were in the know, you’d have no clue you were seeing the north’s best city. So when assessing how Liverpool is represented in film and television drama you can disregard all of those productions. You need to look at shows that are set here and you need to look at Liverpool characters that appear in other programmes located elsewhere. It’s the only plausible way you can do it.

And the mind naturally turns to Stephen Graham, that quite brilliant actor who is nevertheless, a one-man industry in televisual scouseness – the close-cropped hard man with the inner vulnerability. He is screen-gold, no doubt about it and we’re huge fans. He is unreservedly a fantastic asset to the city, whose name will be forever synonymous with Combo, the fascist scouse skinhead from This is England, perhaps only rivalled in intensity by Robert Carlyle’s scouse football-obsessed racist psychopath in Cracker.

I guess we need to put our money where our mouth is. Tony Schumacher seemed to think there hadn’t been any crime drama set in Liverpool since 2012. But our yardstick is wider. Here’s a list of crime or crime-related dramas that have been set in Liverpool or featured major stereotypical scouse characters – Waterfront Beat (1990), Cracker (1994), Liverpool 1 (1998), Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Going Off Big Time (2000), 51st State (2001), This is England (2006), Good Cop (2012), Little Boy Blue (2017), Tin Star (2020), Time (2021), The Responder (2022).

Of course, we’re only really touching the surface here.

Benidorm (2007-18) featured a whole plethora of dodgy scousers on the rob, Coronation Street has never been shy to play the thieving scouse card either. Who can forget Jackie Dobbs, Diedre Rashid’s classic Liverpudlian prison cellmate. Then we’ve got the crafty lazy type – Lister from Red Dwarf (1988-2020), a self-described bum, and Jim Royle of The Royle Family (1998-2012), the cynical, albeit amusing slob. England’s most incompetent manager ever was also a scouser in Mike Bassett, England Manager (2012). We’ll steer clear of Harry Enfield … All of them had a flexible moral code when it came to the law (with the possible exception of Mr Bassett). We can’t help but feel we’re missing other examples – Boys From the Blackstuff (1982), Blood on the Dole (1994), Bread (1986-91). Hell even the C4 series, The £1 Houses: Britain’s Cheapest Street (2018) had to feature regular shots of feral-looking kids.

What you really notice is the absence of alternatives and the laser-like focus on suffering. How do the scouse stereotypes impact the way the world sees us? Or even more worryingly, how we see ourselves.

Now we want to make absolutely clear, this is not about passing judgement on whether TV shows are any good. There are clearly some classic stories and memorable characters here. Neither is it about advocating for only ‘positive’ portrayals like some latter-day Mary Whitehouse protecting the nation’s morals. Creators should be free to fly wherever their muse takes them including to the darkest of places. Writers should feel no obligation to tell any kind of story unless it’s an imperative they feel within themselves. Nothing is off limits as far as Liverpolitan is concerned and we are wary of those who want to place limits on expression in pursuit of other political goals. We will not put forward the case for restrictions on the use of regional stereotypes by co-opting the kind of representation arguments employed in matters of protected characteristics. Creatives have enough on their plate as it is.

But the question stands, why when it comes to Liverpool, do certain types of narrative and certain types of character re-occur over and over again? And this goes way beyond crime. That’s only a subset of the cliches. In addition to the drug dealers and gangsters, lazy slobs, dirty cops, jailbirds and grifters we have the more scouse-than-scouse; the images of decay and struggle; of hard-men and gold-hearted working class women (only working class is allowed if you want to be a hero) striving to overcome the limitations of an oppressive place that wants to beat them down and crush them.  Sometimes, if we’re lucky we get the positive spin version, where ‘authentic’ people find happiness or social solidarity in the most unexpected places, despite ‘the system’ and the limitations of their surroundings. Liverpool characters are typically portrayed as ‘street-wise’ and ‘gobby’, which is something I guess we’re supposed to take pride in, but less so do we see them as educated or refined (the entire premise of Educating Rita was based on the unlikeness of a scouser going to university). Often, they are just one heart-beat away from kicking-off, sometimes saved from eruption by that omnipresent scouse ‘sense of humour’. Throw in the name checks to the Reds, Blues and Beatles and the lingering shots of discarded shopping trolleys and the rain-soaked terrace houses where everyone is supposed to live and it’s hard to escape the feeling that we’ve seen it all before. That those creating or commissioning shows are themselves suffering from some kind of block, a collective failure of imagination. It most probably doesn’t help that most (all?) commissioners are located elsewhere, but the truth is many of our own sons and daughters seem all too happy to play this game. They may be wonderfully talented professionals who can play or write characters with nuance and all power to their elbow. But maybe we should try a little harder to look outside the model and imagine different kinds of stories. When is Liverpool going to get its own When Harry Met Sally? (not the coke-snorting edition). I’d even take a horror - the Williamson Tunnels lend themselves to finding a monster in the deep. You can have that one for free.

Of course, the question naturally arises, whether any of this is important. Are we exaggerating the significance of dramatic media portrayals in shaping external perceptions of the city? And even if they did have an influence, does it matter? Does the way a region and its people are viewed have any impact on real-life outcomes? How credible is it to say, as we suggested in the online debate, that fictionalised accounts of crime, depravation and struggle when incessant impact business investment decisions? Surely that’s a nonsense?

This stuff is always hard to prove and it’s easy to mock. As one exasperated Tweeter said in the Schumacher clash, “If crime dramas damaged a city's reputation then New York would never see a tourist.” Perhaps stretching the point, someone else made a similar argument about Costa Rica and the threat of Jurassic Park dinosaurs. But New York is not the debate-winning example they seem to think it is. For every NYPD Blue, there’s a Coming to America, Birdman, Jersey Girl and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. New York is an unofficial capital and home to powerful media empires. Its stories are legion and diverse, reflecting the vast variety of life in one of the world’s most important cities.

Creators should be free to fly wherever their muse takes them including to the darkest of places. Nothing is off limits. Liverpolitan will not put forward the case for restrictions on the use of regional stereotypes.

Liverpool’s media landscape consists of The Liverpool Echo and some broadcast journalists on loan from Manchester. Its biggest TV Production Company, Lime Pictures inspired the scripted reality nonsense that was Desperate Scousewives. It’s once ground-breaking soap opera, Brookside is long dead, and Richard and Judy fled back to the capital because TV guests didn’t fancy the trip up to the Albert Dock. The city is simply not in control of its own narrative. It eats what it’s fed and what it’s fed is the drip, drip, drip of bleakness and all too often criminality. It might make for good TV (if you like that kind of thing) but it’s depressing as hell, and it’s about as ‘real’ as a Potemkin village.

We can’t prove that a business looking to invest lets the latest Stephen Graham crime special outweigh what its spreadsheet calculations tell it, but we’ve been around long enough to know there’s a strong dose of subjectivity in the decisions people make. If all you’re ever told is Liverpool is the land of the desperate, how likely is it to make it onto your office relocation shortlist?

The perverse thing, if it is a thing, is to wonder to what extent these narratives become internalised by the city’s own people? Become part of our own self-image, heralded as truth as we play the fool. Do we start to celebrate our own stereotypes, and invent new stories that fit the ever decreasing circles of our imagination?  It’s worth thinking about even if you end up dismissing it. At the very least, you should ask yourself, why Liverpool is never the setting for a romcom, or a political drama (God knows we give them the material – appreciative nod to Bleasdale’s excellent GBH (1991)) or any number of things that we don’t currently see. What exactly is going on in the heads of our commissioners?

So we’ve been doing some thinking about these fictional tropes and narratives that swirl around the city of Liverpool. We’re going to call them The Ten Commandments of Scouse TV and Film. There’s actually more, but 13 didn’t sound as snappy. So read on, we’re about to list them and let us know if you can think of any more. Oh, and for the avoidance of doubt, they are intended as satire, not tablets of stone. We named them, but they aren’t ours - they’re in the minds of those with the power to green-light, polluting our cultural soup.

But before we get to that, one final point. In our minds, when we were writing this, our intention was not criticism but rather a rallying call to creatives. It is time to set our imaginations free. To see the city of Liverpool not as others do, but as we do. In full technicolour. Let the new stories begin.

The Ten Commandments of Scouse TV & Film

Thou Shalt …

1. Make only working class heroes

‘Real’ heroism is measured in the absence of a bulging wallet or purse.

E.g. Letter to Breshnev, Boys from the Black Stuff, The Liverbirds; Bread

2. Depict Liverpool as a cesspit of crime

Coke wars, feral kids, dodgy police, prison officers and cons, murders, gangsters, hard-bitten opportunism, and an uncooperative and sullen populace. You get the picture.

E.g. 51st State, Blonde Fist, Tin Star, Little Boy Blue, The Responder, Good Cop, Liverpool 1, Going Off Big Time, Clink, Merseybeat, Z-Cars, Wired

3. Ensure the scouse accent is turned up to eleven

According to TV, every character from Liverpool speaks with the thickest of scouse accents because it’s ‘authentic’. If they didn’t, they’d be bracketed as a ‘snob’. Don’t expect to be hearing anyone that sounds like they might hail from Woolton or Crosby.

E.g. Almost every single show that ever featured a Liverpool character

4. Portray Scouse protagonists as gobby, streetwise but uneducated

The only higher education most scouse characters get is from the university of life. They grew up the hard way, on the streets, but they’re crafty or smart in their own way – not easily fooled.  Schooled in conflict, they can always handle themselves verbally with fighting-talk, and if required with fists too. Always dreaming of better.

E.g. Educating Rita, Desperate Scousewives, Shirley Valentine, Benidorm

5. Point the camera at dirty streets, dereliction and decay

Phwoar, look at that, what a tip! But the poverty is ‘real’. Oh, and everyone lives in a terrace house up there.

E.g. The £1 Houses, 51st State

6. Plug the ‘scouse sense of humour’ as a genetic omnipresence

Everyone’s a wit. I mean, you’d have to be to live here.

E.g. Bread, Brookside, The Royle Family

7. Script storyworlds to revolve around misery, struggle, bigotry or a fight against injustice

Because that’s the sum total of life in Liverpool. Now, can I have a cappuccino with that?

E.g. Boys From The Black Stuff, Anne, Brookside, Blood on the Dole, Blonde Fist, Lilies, Secrets & Words, Hearts and Minds, Wired

8. Roll out the not-too-bright, fighty scouse psychopath, lazy slob or lowlife criminal

When you need a real nutter with a good line, who better than a scouser?

E.g. This is England, The Royle Family, Red Dwarf, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Cracker

9. Portray scouse men as hard as nails with a soft centre, women as brassy or hard-worn salt of the earth

Everyone’s got a shield and everyone’s got a story. They do what they have to do to survive. But deep-down, they’re good people. Even when they are knocking you unconscious.

E.g. Brookside, Time, Line of Duty, The Street

10. Mention either football or the Beatles or both

Well you’ve got to haven’t you?

E.g. Doctor Who, Help, Cracker, Yesterday, Scully

Paul Bryan is the Editor and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a freelance content writer, script editor, communications strategist and creative coach

Michael McDonough is the Art Director and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a lead creative specialising in 3D and animation, film and conceptual spatial design.

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