Liverpool: It was also the scene of Nazi pre-war spying. Nazi Victory: The Post-War Plan, Guy Walters, Yesterday 2019
The information and intelligence gathered by Nazi pre-war spying in Liverpool would go on to be used against the city with devastating effect by the German Luftwaffe. ibid.
In the north of England we used to build in solid brick and stone. Today we clad in glass in steel: this is Liverpool I. The city fathers had delivered unto the people of Liverpool the biggest city-centre shopping development outside London. In fact since the end of the Second World War these 42 acres will only ever be shops, temples rising to the sky to celebrate the new gods: the big brands. But once upon a time when the North built, the world looked on and applauded. The city fathers then had different ideas of how architecture could contribute to the shape of their cities and improve the lives of their citizens. By lining the streets, not with temples to the gods of commerce, but buildings that expressed the grandeur and the nobility of a great civilisation. Those who gave Liverpool its architectural treasures would inspire other city fathers rights across the north of England. The civic buildings they created would transform the industrial towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and revolutionise urban landscapes for decades to come. Jonathan Foyle, People’s Palaces: The Golden Age of Civic Architecture I: Neo-Classical, BBC 2020
Victorian architecture in the north of England: 200 years ago these cities were themselves novel but a new breed of mercantile princes and governors came to build a raft of civic buildings. ibid.
In 1795 the writer James Wallace published A General and Descriptive History of the Ancient & Present State of the Town of Liverpool: he wrote of the Blue Coat: ‘There are in this school 79 orphan children, 143 fatherless children and 158 whose parents are in indigent circumstances’. ibid.
Throughout the 18th century Liverpool was controlled by men … who made up the Corporation. It was a closed shop of cronies, unelected sons who … looked after the town’s needs but chiefly they looked after their own. ibid.
The 16th century Italian genius Andrea Palladio: an important principle of Palladian buildings is that they are bound by symmetry, geometry and numbers in firm proportion. ibid.
Clearly in the 1740s the slave trade was nothing to be embarrassed about. ibid.
Liverpool’s Lyceum was Europe’s first lending library, designed by Thomas Harrison in 1802 this fine little building has fine strong bones – Greek bones at that. ibid.
Liverpool was fast becoming the Athens of the North. ibid.
Their handsome Portico Library (founded 1806) … Just 100 yards from the Portico is the Royal Manchester Institution. ibid.
St George’s Hall: One of the hall’s most glorious features is its Minton floor, a mosaic of over 35,000 clay tiles. ibid.
Half of its children were dead by the age of ten. ibid.
A young girl gunned down in her home. A mobster convicted of murder. And a city brutalised by drug crime. We investigate how the gangsters who brought death to Liverpool’s streets made millions. Panorama: The Drug Wars that Killed Oivia, BBC 2023
A hitman arrived firing two guns. The gunman is after a local drug dealer. Career criminal Joey Nee … Joey Nee follows her and tries to get into the house with the gunman in pursuit. Cheryl is trying to shut the door on Joey Nee when the gunman takes out a second weapon and fires towards the house. ibid.
‘A nine-year-old child has been murdered in her own home.’ ibid. rozzer
The day before Olivia was murdered, just two miles away, another family lost a daughter to gun crime. ibid.
Over the last 50 years organised crime has taken hold in Liverpool. ibid.
The city has suffered a series of high-profile shootings. Olivia Pratt-Korbel was the latest. ibid.
Liverpool is at the heart of the UK drug trade. ibid.
Comerford was put back behind bars. But by now, Customs had identified 50 crime groups in Merseyside. ibid.
1980s: They flooded the city with cheap heroin. Whole estates were ravaged by the drug. ibid.
Warren Curtis: Britain’s biggest ever cocaine importation. ibid.
In the early 2000s Liverpool’s drug wars intensified. ibid.
The new wave of younger gangsters had grown up with guns on the streets and they were hardened to the violence. Drug wars broke out across the city between the new young gangs and the older mafia bosses. ibid.
The city in the eye of the Covid storm. First into the top tier of restrictions. Now the first place to get mass testing. So how have people here handled the crisis? And will their sacrifices be worth it? Panorama: Liverpool: Fighting Covid, BBC 2020
Liverpool: a vibrant capital of culture. A tourism industry worth nearly £5 billion. And officially the best football team in the world. 12th October: 277 Covid-19 patients; 14th October: 323 Covid-19 patients. ibid.
‘Liverpool is a wonderful vibrant city … But we sadly do have pockets of some of the greatest multiple deprivations in Britain, in fact in Europe. The highest levels of Covid activity mirror the areas where there’s highest degrees of deprivation, and that’s because there’s been generations of bad diet, multiple occupancy within houses … ibid. Professor Calum Semple, Government SAGE committee
Nick was fined £1,000 but refused to close his gym. Others in Liverpool are also resisting the rules imposed by Westminster. People take to the streets, some Covid deniers, others angry about money. Frustrated about the rules. ibid.
Liverpool was not plunged into chaos with the arrest of Joe Anderson.
The reality is this city’s administration was engulfed by crisis long before the mayor was quizzed on suspicion of conspiracy to commit bribery and witness intimidation.
But the memes that dominated Merseyside Twitter, when it emerged he was to be questioned, marked the end of a particularly devastating 12 months for the Cunard elite.
Since December 2019 town hall figures, a £1bn developer and several influential city personalities have been taken into custody.
Detectives have questioned 11 people and search teams have visited 10 homes across two counties.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds seized from suspects is currently being held by Merseyside Police.
It was recovered in multiple currencies.
The majority of that came from Elliot Lawless, whose landmark Leeds Street scheme has stood dormant for much of 2020 following his arrest just before Christmas. Liverpool Echo online front page 6 December 2020, ‘Arrest of Liverpool major Joe Anderson latest in dark saga for city politicians and developers’
[jaunty music] Liverpool. A world city at the heart of the new county of Merseyside. It’s a city full of contrasts. A kaleidoscope of contradictions … Liverpool Narcos I: Heroin, public information film, Sky Documentaries 2021
We don’t class ourselves as being English: we’re the People’s Republic of Liverpool [laughs]. ibid. old lady in greenhouse
We have a degree of accepted lawlessness here. It’s like Cowboys and Indians. They don’t follow the rules ’cause they’re outlaws … The epicentre of drugs … Welcome to Liverpool. ibid. comments
What was it about Liverpool that made it such a big player in the drug trade? The docks? ibid. Michael Showers, the boss
The hard part was getting it off [ship]. Customs were very very alert in Liverpool. Our firm had people who had relatives in senior positions. And that was it. It was just a matter of choosing the right time for them to take it off. Then pass it over to our sales division. And our sales division did their work. And then when I came home, just counted the money. ibid.
Pleading guilty at 15 to something I hadn’t done was my greatest regret. My greatest regret. Because that started it all. ibid.
In the ’80s a number of things conspired to bring brown smokeable heroin to Liverpool … 47% of black workers unemployed, 43% of white workers [news clip] … No opportunities whatsoever … Young people weren’t of any value to society, or so they felt. And then of course we had the Toxteth riots in ’81 … A visitor from the US came in the ’80s and said, ‘This is like Beirut. This is like a bombed-out shell, a husk of a city,’ and a number of other things … ibid. comments
The game-changer was a cheap, high-grade smoking heroin became available. It was from Pakistan. And I’ve got Pakistani family. So I immediately kind of seized the opportunity to capitalize on that. Yeah. ibid.
Samples: if you went to source in Pershawa, you can buy a kilo over there for £2,500, 3K. Yeah, and that would be 80-90%. ibid.
It was like total destruction. It spread like cancer. Straightening out your foil, putting in your little bit of powder, at the corner where you wanted it. Getting a little pleat in your foil. Tilting it was little bit. Your flame underneath the powder. And then inhaling. Everything seemed to slow down a bit. You feel comfortably numb. No more worries, no stress, nuttin’, just comfy. ibid. Billy Moore
It was an epidemic that happened in this city. You know this city was flooded with narcotics. ibid.
Everyone’s on heroin? How the hell did that happen? ibid.
Operation Rainman surveillance … Suddenly, these guys were doing seriously well. And flaunting it. And that kind of rankled with us. So we kind of took that personal. ibid. rozzers
This was the early ’80s. You drove round in a white Rolls Royce? ibid. rozzers to Showers
So in 1983 the police tried to prosecute Michael Showers for the second time in short succession. On this occasion is was for possession of a firearm, cannabis, and heroin. The case collapsed in court. And Michael Showers to this day maintains that the case was never legitimate against him. In effect he was fitted up. ibid.