SCOUSE EXCEPTIONALISM
As someone who was born and bred outside of the city of Liverpool, in the nearby towns of St Helens and Wigan respectively, but who now lives in Liverpool – married, as I am, to a Liverpudlian lady and a father to two little Liverpudlian girls – I approach the fascinating culture of the city from the perspective of an inside-outsider. I look at the people, politics and culture of Liverpool from a sympathetic vantage-point but also at a distance. I’m in the city but the city is not in me. The politics of Liverpool, in particular, are fascinating and my status as an inside-outsider, I would argue, affords me a different way of looking at the ways in which they differ from their surrounding areas in the North-West of England (and also from the rest of the country) which you may find interesting. It is hard to view an object when you are standing too close but it’s also difficult when you are standing too far away.
Ok, now that the throat-clearing has ended, let me get to the meat and potatoes of this particular pan of Scouse, namely: what is ‘Scouse exceptionalism’ and how does it help us to understand the politics of Liverpool? It is my contention that the key in regards to unlocking the mystery of Liverpudlian politics is to be found via an appreciation of its sense of itself as different from the areas which surround it and also from the rest of the country i.e its sense of exceptionalism.
One gets a sense of Scouse exceptionalism from the way in which Liverpudlians police the boundaries of Scouseness with the sobriquet ‘woollyback’ (usually shortened to ‘wool,) a term liberally applied to the people who live in the surrounding areas of Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire and the Wirral. The woollyback moniker serves as a reminder that Liverpudlians see themselves as being slightly different from the people who live in those areas outside of Liverpool.
We can observe this sense of exceptionalism manifesting itself quite clearly in regards to our contemporary political situation. As the so-called ‘red wall’ of post-industrial Northern England constituencies crumbled into so much blue dust – with a number of long-held Labour seats flipping to the Tories, in some cases, for the first time ever – the region of Merseyside (of which Liverpool forms the core) remains a red redoubt. There are fifteen seats in the Merseyside region and fourteen of them were won by the Labour party in the 2019 general election (the exception being Southport.) This contrasts sharply with the nearby Greater Manchester region, which has twenty-seven constituencies but nine Conservative MP’s.
Scouse exceptionalism therefore renders the anti-Tory sentiment that exists in Merseyside different in degree from the anti-Tory sentiment that exists elsewhere but also, I would argue, different in quality too. It is now part and parcel of Liverpudlian identity in a way that is fairly unique to the city and the resulting tenor of this animus has arguably come to bear some of the characteristics of a sectarian-like hatred.
The strength of anti-Tory feeling on Merseyside is usually attributed to the callous manner in which the Conservative party imposed its economic reforms in the 1980s but if we look elsewhere in the North-West of England, we find the same process of deindustrialisation and mass unemployment taking place at this time. However, it is only really in Liverpool that this enduring anti-Tory sentiment has become enmeshed with the political identity of an area in such a way that has seen it continue to the present day with the same level of vehemence.
It is clear that the events of the 1980s – managed decline, monetarism and Hillsborough etc – are absolutely necessary in regards to understanding the anti-Tory enmity that exists on Merseyside, it is less clear that they are sufficient. It is my contention that we have it the wrong way round – Scouse exceptionalism is not so much a product of the anti-Tory sentiment that exists in Liverpool as its well-spring.
David Jeffery, who has thoroughly excavated the history of Liverpudlian politics, has written that ‘from the mid-18th century until the 1970s, the Conservatives dominated the city council and often held over half of Liverpool’s parliamentary constituencies.’ A useful reminder that the Conservative party actually used to do well in Liverpool and that its decline in the area predates Thatcherism. The sentiment that ‘we are not English, we are Scouse,’ which is the absolute quintessence of Scouse exceptionalism, predates the anti-Tory vitriol that has become a notable contemporary expression of it too.
Scouse exceptionalism did not emerge, fully formed from the ether, in the 1980s. Put simply: if a region has a strong sense of ‘exceptionalism,’ of being different, set apart, special even, a strong ‘us and them’ dynamic is set into motion, the ‘us’ in this equation remains static but the ‘them’ is more dynamic. For Liverpudlians, since the 1980s, the Tories have become ‘them.’ In other words, the anti-Tory sentiment that exists in Liverpool is, in large part, a symptom of Scouse exceptionalism, not its cause.
Therefore, if we want to understand the Oak tree of anti-Tory sentiment that exists on Merseyside then we firstly need to examine the acorn of Scouse exceptionalism from which it has grown. To do so requires an appreciation of the Irish influence on the city.
Liverpool has long been a port city of course and thus exposed to a variety of cultural influences from all over the world. Nearer to home, a strong Welsh influence has been added to the Liverpudlian melting pot over the years but the influence that, more than any other, has helped to give Liverpool its own distinctive flavour, I would argue, is unlikely to be Welsh. Historically, there were no English folk songs entitled ‘No Welsh Need Apply’ nor signs on doors with the proviso ‘No Welsh, No Blacks, No Dogs,’ but there were in respect to the Irish. In the aftermath of the great hunger in Ireland it is reported that some 300,000 Irish paupers landed in Liverpool in the space of five months at a time when it was a city with a population of only 250,000. At one point 25% of the Liverpudlian population were Irish-born and even today 75% of Liverpudlians have Irish ancestry.
Put simply, you could construct a strong argument to say that Liverpool is a Lancastrian city that has undergone a process of partial Gaelicisation and from this process the distinctive nature of ‘Scouseness’ has sprung, right down to the famous Liverpudlian accent. To put it simply: it is my contention that Liverpudlians are basically Irish woollybacks and that this hybridisation of cultures is primarily where the sense of Scouse exceptionalism stems from originally.
I believe that the long-standing othering of the Irish in England – no blacks, no dogs, no Irish – has seeped into the very soil of Liverpool (as the city underwent a process of partial Gaelicisation,) and from this soil a sense of exceptionalism has flowered i.e the distinct sense that to be a Liverpudlian is to be Scouse not English.
I would argue that an understanding of this sense of exceptionalism should form the backdrop to any exploration of Liverpudlian politics. Any city that had an actual Irish Nationalist MP from 1885–1929, a literal Protestant party until the 1970s and a history of voting on sectarian lines (during much of the twentieth century) will, of course, be a very different political animal from its neighbours where those conditions did not apply, a fact that should be obvious to everyone.
This understanding should guide the approach of the Conservative party towards the city in two ways specifically. Firstly, via an appreciation that what will work politically in places like Leigh, for instance, will not necessarily work in Liverpool, despite their relative geographical proximity. As the Labour party has undergone a process of embourgeoisement and at the same time English national identity has conversely become gradually proletarianised, the Conservative and Unionist party have been able to make inroads into previously impenetrable areas for the Tories via Brexit, which has the strength of English national identity (harnessed towards the realisation of a particular political project) at its heart. However, this is not a strategy that will work as well in an area for which the strength of English national identity comes a distant second to a more potent regional identity.
Secondly, whilst an awareness of Scouse exceptionalism is essential, it is also imperative that this sense of difference that Liverpudlians feel is not reinforced via continued derogatory comments directed towards their region by non-Liverpudlian Tories. Anti-Scouse jibes from Conservatives, typically rooted in stereotypes formed about Liverpool in the 1980s, only serve to activate a latent sense amongst the people of Liverpool that there is something intrinsically un-Liverpudlian-like about being a Tory.
It is in the Conservative party’s own self-interest to take heed of this advice, not just in regards to any potential future strategy that may be constructed with the specific purpose of ensuring that the Tories start to make inroads into the city of Liverpool (which will be an uphill struggle and a long-term task in any case,) but also with one eye towards the many small towns in the North-West, outside of Liverpool, who have undergone a partial process of Liverpudlianisation. There are now a number of towns in the North-West of England – such as Runcorn, Widnes, St Helens, Skelmersdale, Birkenhead and Ellesmere Port, to name but a few – who have undergone a similar hybridisation of cultures that I have previously described in respect to Liverpool, but in relation to internal migration from Liverpool (as opposed to external migration from Ireland) on this occasion.
As Liverpudlians have gradually moved out of the city (especially after world war two) in greater numbers and settled into those towns, they have ironically taken their sense of Scouse exceptionalism with them. Therefore, an understanding of Scouse exceptionalism is important for the Tories to absorb not just in respect to gaining an insight into Liverpool itself but also in regards to a number of towns, outside of Liverpool, in the North-West of England, who are now partly ‘Scouse,’ too. If the Tories want to make further inroads into Labour heartlands areas in the North-West of England therefore, an awareness of Scouse exceptionalism may prove essential.
