Almost Liverpool 8 (2021) A Love Letter to a Postcode (Review)

In this documentary film, the writer Ronnie Hughes remarks “I’m not particularly interested in history…I’m more interested in what it tells us about how people live, and how is it now, and what is the history of now that we can turn into the future” So let’s get the history out of the way first.

Toxteth. Mention its name, specifically to anyone who lives outside of Liverpool, and the first thing that will spring to mind is the riots of 1981. You’ll hear of the three nights of turmoil and devastation, the powder keg that erupted after a decade of ghettoisation of Liverpool’s Black community, of poor access and isolation, and of dwindling opportunities, unemployment and police harassment under Thatcher’s intentions of a ‘managed decline’ for the once prosperous and productive port city of Liverpool. Mention Liverpool 8 or L8 to those same people, however, and you’ll be met with blank stares. Whilst Toxteth is the name of the area, its residents uniformly refer to it by its postcode. It’s the legendary community activist Joe Farrag who addresses it early on in this film “If you Google Toxteth, the riots comes up straightaway. But if you Google Liverpool 8, all nice things come up” Daniel Draper and Allan Melia’s Almost Liverpool 8 is a loving and contemporary portrait of the area; it’s quite rightly all about the nice things.

That’s not to say that history does not figure in Almost Liverpool 8, it’s just that – using Hughes’ words almost as a mission statement – the film is solely concerned with how it has shaped the area today. A loose framework hangs over the film, deriving from a photograph shot by the acclaimed photojournalist Don McCullin in the early ’70s of a young girl flitting across an anonymous, puddle-strewn pre-slum clearance L8 street. Pulling at this thread, the film sets out to locate the very spot the photograph was taken and consider the changes that have been made in the fifty or so years that have passed. To do so, its filmmakers explore a diverse, melting pot community and the many characters, from business owners to beekeepers, actors to activists, who reside there.

McCullin, whose work formed a retrospective at Tate Liverpool during filming, is a charming interviewee whose eyes gleam as he recalls his time in Liverpool, firstly as a fifteen-year-old dining car attendant on the trains from Euston, roaming the unfamiliar Victorian and Georgian streets once home to wealthy sea merchants and industrialists on his days off, and then as a professional photographer, capturing those very same streets in their decline, when disastrous town planning effectively segregated the community from the rest of the city. Taking as its cue his comment that the best way to communicate is via a photographic image, Draper and Melia present their L8 as a portrait, composing artful, lyrical and truly cinematic shots of the neighbourhood, with interviewees allowed free rein to simply talk. The end result, much like a portrait in a gallery, challenges the audience to form their own judgements of this misunderstood place. Sometimes, they place themselves in the composition in a fun little ‘show your working out’ kind of way that seeks to remind us this is all an individual observation.

Personally, I’m quite familiar with Liverpool 8. As a resident of Merseyside, I have often socialised there and certainly recognise the community in Draper and Melia’s film. It is a neighbourhood with a profound history; said to be the oldest Black community in the UK, the author Herman Melville once reflected in the 1830s that “In Liverpool the negro steps with a prouder pace, and lifts his head like a man; for here, no such exaggerated feelings exist in respect to him, as in America”. These were not the slaves Melville would have known in the US, these were free men drawn to the port from the outposts of the Empire and Commonwealth, working the docks or sailing the seas. The Empire may be inextricably linked to Liverpool 8, but the communities tolerance, love and respect are the virtues that ought to make us proud to be British. With its synagogues, churches and mosques and its multicultural population from the Caribbean, Africa, Yemen, Syria, Asia and the Indian subcontinent, Liverpool 8 is what Britain ought to be; modern, vibrant, positive, equal and wholly independent of spirit.

Almost Liverpool 8 is, quite rightly, not interested in the riots. That was just a very small chapter in the area’s rich history. Instead, the film wants to address what’s happening in L8 now. If it addresses racial inequality, it is through the wider, universal spectrum of the Black Lives Matter movement, with footage of a march through the streets and an interview with community activist Buster Nugent whose understanding of social inequality does not dampen his optimism for the future. Perhaps reflecting on the summer of ’81, he notes that the community “always rises from the ashes”, whilst McCullin recollects a certain glint in the eye that reminded him of the scousers’ Irish ancestors – a look that says it’s futile to come here and judge us as “we won’t be judged”. Many have though tried to judge Toxteth, and indeed Liverpool, across the years and many of these Conservative-minded types have experienced that futility first-hand. It is a community, a city, that rises from the ashes and it does it, as Nugent fervently hopes, by collective efforts that strive for a fairer world – an anathema to the Tories of course. With that in mind, perhaps the most subtly insightful contributor to Almost Liverpool 8 is the Rastafarian beekeeper Barry Chang, who discusses the crucial role the humble bumblebee has in the world but also reflects on how they do not share humanity’s selfish streak. Bees work together in solidarity within the hive for the benefit of humankind. Liverpool 8 is a similar collective effort and hive of activity, a tight-knight, creative and proud community we can all learn from. We can start by watching Almost Liverpool 8.

THANKS FOR READING MARK’S REVIEW OF ALMOST LIVERPOOL 8

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