You won't hear much about it any more, but Liverpool is twinned with a city
in Nicaragua: Corinto, that country's main Pacific port. There are several
streets in Toxteth with Nicaraguan names, including Bluefields, and my favourite,
Sandino. This twinning, and street-building, happened in the aftermath of
the Toxteth riots, and the Nicaraguan revolution.
Liverpool wasn't the only city to get a Nicaraguan twin: the GLC twinned London
with Managua, and Oxford City Council twinned with the university city of Leon.
According to the media, Liverpool is undergoing a cultural renaissance, and
it's suggested that its sister cities are now Shanghai, and New York. Corinto
isn't part of the discourse.
But I've been reading a very interesting book, CINEMA & THE
SANDINISTAS (Jonathan Buchsbaum, University of Texas,
2003 (website) and
it suggests to me that we should revisit that link between
Liverpool and Corinto. Because, in spite of the resurgent
pride reported by the media, the two cities have more
in common than you might think. Or, more accurately,
Liverpool has something in common with revolutionary
Nicaragua, the other place, besides Iraq, that "dared
to fight."
The Nicaraguan fight only lasted till 1990, at which point the tiny, beaten-up
nation caved in, and the voters elected a series of corrupt, right-wing presidents,
of which they knew the US would approve. But from 1979 till 1990, Nicaragua
had a left-wing government - the FSLN - which had come to power via a popular
revolution. The FSLN, otherwise known as the Sandinistas, were greatly admired
for taking on the might of Uncle Sam, and overthrowing his pet dictator. The
Nicaraguans themselves were admired around the world for this, just as the
Iraqis and the Palestinians attract the world's sympathy today.
....The
American response was straightforward: Crush Nicaragua.
Terrorism, torture, economic sabotage, embargo, drug-dealing,
disinformation, all these and more were part of the
US arsenal against a country of three million people
- as they had been in Vietnam, and as they would be
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Nicaraguan
revolution happened a year before the Toxteth riots. Those riots
weren't race riots (as the media claimed, and still claim), but
anti-police riots, a social rebellion by a mixed community, which
people from all over the city flocked to join. The riots shook
up the British establishment like the Nicaraguan revolution shook
up the CIA, the State Department, and the White House.
Problems have to be dealt with. The American response was straightforward:
Crush Nicaragua. Terrorism, torture, economic sabotage, embargo, drug-dealing,
disinformation, all these and more were part of the US arsenal against a country
of three million people - as they had been in Vietnam, and as they would be
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The British government couldn't respond thus. Liverpool wasn't Northern Ireland:
to send in the troops, kill a few johnnies, well, it wasn't on the cards, what?
Churchill had sent gunboats up the Mersey in 1929 to quell a strike, but even
he hadn't been allowed to shell the city. Whitehall had to be a bit cleverer,
which wasn't hard: if killing isn't a happening option, money usually works
instead, and that was their solution. Throw money at some high-profile projects.
Sandino Street, built on a burned-out site in Toxteth! Promise more money.
Get Europe involved, set up some quangos, hire many more bureaucrats, promise
more money. If the money doesn't get spent, it goes back to Europe. Back and
forth flows the money. Back and forth fly the bureaucrats to Bruxelles, to
collect their perdiems. But few good jobs are created, the government masks
the unemployment figures by putting people permanently 'on the sick,' more
people fall out of the 'real' economy, and the population of the city continues
to fall, as people leach south, to London, or elsewhere.
Clearly a place must offer something, or no one would live in it, at all. In
Liverpool's case there's always been the football, the architecture, the beer,
and the tough humour and paranoid charm. (All this is good for boys; why women
stay is more mysterious.) The city presents itself - with justice - as the
birthplace of many great artists: poets, painters, musicians - you know the
score. Marx and Engels learned from it. Melville and Hawthorne spent time here.
Karl Jung dreamed it was the Pool of Life. And in 2003 Liverpool received
two enormous cultural feathers in its cap: the award of European Capital of
Culture for 2008, and FACT (fact.co.uk),
a fantastic new exhibition space, and cinema complex. These two things ought
to mean enormous benefits to artists and creative people within the city. My
suspicion that they won't is fostered by a quote from Ramiro Lacayo, head of
the Nicaraguan film institute, INCINE, in Buchsbaum's book: "A colonialist
bourgeois society does not generate culture, but seeks culture abroad...
The middle class, the petit bourgeoisie, unable to travel abroad, reproduces
the foreigner inside Nicaragua, and imports culture."
Liverpool has only a small middle class, compared to most western cities. But
the middle class - often the middle class based in London - dictates much of
what passes for culture in the city. And, with rare exceptions (Macca's daubs;
an exhibition of Adrian Henri's paintings at The Walker, shortly before his
death), the middle class's definition of 'art' and 'artist' starts beyond the
city walls.
The Liverpool Biennial focuses outside the city, and concentrates on bringing
its organiser's friends up from London to play curator. The Everyman/Playhouse
is in thrall to London actors and to London tastes, which are currently very
conservative. This results in drama of a high technical standard, which could
have been performed - on the same sets, with the same readings by the actors
- at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, two generations ago. The promise of a Liverpool-based
production of Marlowe's DOCTOR FAUSTUS (Everyman, 14-26 February) is cause
for optimism: given the genius of local actors, the news that an all-scouse
cast is to be let loose on these exciting roles is very exciting.
In terms of FACT and the Capital of Culture, there isn't, so far, much reason
for excitement, or optimism. The City Council, predictably, is acting like
the title's in the bag, and little practical cultural work need be done between
now and 2007. This misses the point: the title was awarded on the basis that
Liverpool ISN'T the European Capital of Culture yet, but that it will work
really hard to be that, in 2008. The award was based on Liverpool-based projects,
and Liverpool-based people. The Council and the Culture Company knew this in
2003, but have forgotten it in 2005. To put reality further from their minds,
they've headhunted, as creative director, an Australian who won't start work
until 2007.
One of the reasons Liverpool received this gong was the impressive presence
of FACT, and what it promised in terms of a cultural renaissance in the city.
Eddie Berg, the founder of FACT, is an genuine scouser and has been instrumental
in keeping the building alive and ticking: a constant, enthusiastic presence,
with contagious cultural enthusiasm. In March, Eddie will leave FACT to set
up a much larger, similar, project, for the BFI in London. It's a great gig
and Ed would be mad not to take it, but it means his Liverpudlian presence
at FACT will be no more.
And even under Eddie's curatorship, FACT hasn't exactly been focused on the
work of Liverpool or artists. My favourite screenings have always been 'Liverpool
film night' - compilations of local schools' and individuals' work - but even
these screenings have become irregular. The galleries have featured work by
artists from the US, London, Europe, and Asia. Some of it was very good, and
most of it was interesting. But - to be blunt about it - what about local artists?
The design shows and the fine arts shows at JMU and Liverpool City College
each year are fantastic. Must the young people who exhibit such great work
then move to London, or Europe, or attempt to hang on in Liverpool and get
a show on at The Egg, because FACT is committed to showing new Finnish art,
or video-projecting Alan Partridge shorts?
It doesn't make sense. We celebrate Liverpool's great cultural facility and
prowess - our poets, painters, musicians, second-to-none, yadayadayada. But
we expect them to keep signing on, to work ignored, and broke, or not to work
at all, because, as Lacayo said, 'culture' is an alien thing that the middle
class believe ain't ours - it's imposed on us, from London, from the US, or
from Europe. The scousers' job is to be consumers. Charming, witty, bolshy,
artistic, if they wish. But consumers. Passive consumers. Not artists.
Elsewhere in the book about FSLN film, Lacayo is asked why
the Sandinistas didn't rush into coproductions with foreign
producers (they made only a few: Miguel Littin's ALSINO & THE CONDOR and SANDINO were two, my film WALKER
another). His answer was: "the internacionalistas wanted to make a big
film about Sandino, with Robert De Niro, and Jane Fonda. We would have ended
up carrying cables and Pacino's bags." They would have made a bit of
hard currency out of the deal, but instead the Nicaraguans opted to say no
to the 'trickle down' option, and to make their own films for several years.
That way they gained independence and experience, so as to be able to make
their own features, and to collaborate on more equal terms.
How many scousers do I know who carried Samuel L. Jackson's bags? Many. They
all boasted about it, and about what a great guy Samuel L. was. I'm sure he
was, too. But how many scousers worked in key positions on 51st STATE, or were
department heads on ALFIE? None at all. When we made REVENGERS TRAGEDY in Liverpool,
with scousers as department heads in almost every department, the Film Council
came up and buzzed about how efficient everyone was, how great everything looked,
how many more films they wanted to make with these brilliant people. How many
of those scousers have been hired subsequently, as department heads, on Film
Council-funded features? None at all. Maybe we're more subservient than the
Nicaraguans were, and bag-carrying, and passive culture-consuming, is the best
use of our talents. But I keep hoping, some day soon, for a cultural revolution.
