Liverpool The shadow

In pre Clean Air Act Liverpool when smoking tobacco was still considered beneficial to babies and an organic aid to expectoration there was a city ordinance whereby if a citizen was found to be unable to produce phlegm of a suitable consistency within a certain period of time when stopped by the police they were fined on the spot or transported to a part of the city - the Dingle - a place more fogbound nasal and consumptive than anywhere else - for correction. A bit like George Orwell spending time in the Hebrides (annual rainfall 30 feet) to help his TB (it worked,the TB thrived). That’s why lard is so popular in Liverpool – to produce the true guttural hacking deliquescent speech of the scouser you need lots of lard. Its part of our jealously guarded culture and enforced with vigour.

In the same landscape, the officially approved king james authorised emotional vocabulary (local edition)seems to lend a preference to envy self-pity sentimental incontinence and an abiding sense of injustice and resentment as the most socially acceptable forms of expression -

At least, thats the stereotype; and, yes, there are elements of it I recognise in myself. But consider the landscape that produced us. I was born in Smith Street, Kirkdale, an area that at one time had the unenviable distinction of being the poorest and most densely populated area in Europe with the worst figures for infant mortality and life expectancy. Yet wealth flowed in an unending torrent through the cobbled streets via cotton and hides and bananas and livestock and rubber and anything else that could be bought begged stolen or threatened out of the colonies and commonwealth on carts and steam lorries (still working in smith street in 1954/55 - I saw them). Great fortunes were made. But the people who moved all this stuff, crewed the boats, worked the docks, drove the carts... and on - got nothing. Fuck all; poor schooling, poor health services, battened on by the church, treated like scum and refused entrance to much of the city.

Resentments arise when one is unable to express one's feelings adequately at the time. Usually because its not safe to do so. Peasants refrained from publicly criticising Stalin in his heyday not because they were repressed but because they were sane - thus with us. The suppressed affect festers inside. We don't lash out? We lash in. Get sick, despise ourselves and those closest to us, blame everybody and go numb. The oppression becomes internalised. Becomes shame, poor self worth underpinned by a uriah heap sensibility whereby we become so estranged from ourselves we don't even know who we are anymore. And so, become our own gaolers, we pass it on and on and on and the pain becomes so great we numb it with whatever we can get hold of - drink, drugs, violence, depression.

Well, that time has past. Time to speak is now, and that shame, our own private doorman that barred us entry from the world, is redundant. Speaking for myself,I commit here and now to my family, my wife and sons, my friends, I am never going to be shamed into silence again. I learnt long ago that if you're drowning in steerage its very difficult to listen without prejudice to the tales of selflessness of the passengers in first class. If I haven't been heard how can I truly listen to anyone else? - but more of this later.