Back to index of Nerve 16 - Summer 2010

Letters Page

Dear Nerve
Please find enclosed a copy of a letter I sent to you last year, regarding the 'never mentioned' inner city clearances of the 1930s, to Speke and Huyton, even though it was the biggest movement of working class docklands communities the city has witnessed to date! My letter was never printed in Nerve and you've run articles on public housing since.
The Museum of Liverpool Life at the Pier Head are constructing a full size model of a 'court dwelling' but they have no plans to mention what happened to the 30,000 plus people who actually lived in them after demolition. They were not allowed to stay in the area under the draconian Housing Financial Provision Act (1933) and were removed to Speke or Huyton.
I enjoy the magazine and it's fantastic it's free or donation. Issue 15 is a good calendar, but if you look closely at the month of August you will see that the writing on the actual photo states, "Boys Who Have Not Struck, L/pool". You also have smiling strike breakers on the front cover.
Yours sincerely, Delia Cullen

Editor: We are grateful for your highlighting of the mistakes in the Nerve calendar. How could we miss that writing on the Carter Boys photo! The only "excuse" is that we're a small bunch of volunteers who are busy trying to survive.
Delia’s letter is printed below.

The subject of being ‘decamped to Huyton’ was recently referred to in the local press. ‘Decamped’ is the right word, the Greenwood Act 1930 led to the Housing Financial Provision Act 1933. At the core of this legislation was the removal of the unemployed, casual labour, their families and single parent families from the inner city to the outskirts. The original slum clearances!
Liverpool City Corporation used its new powers in the middle of the great depression with gusto. Under this Act vast council estates were built by Liverpool City Corporation. Tens of thousands from the docklands north and south were swept away to Huyton and Speke. The choice was simple, if you had a job you stayed in the area, if not you moved to the outskirts.(1)
Only those with jobs would be rehoused on the sites cleared, large tenement blocks modelled on public housing projects in Hamburg and Vienna where constructed: Caryl Gardens, Gerard Gardens, Myrtle Gardens, Dingle House, Melrose House among other properties.(2) There is no question something needed to be done, living conditions were horrendous in the docklands in the 1930s for many. 30,000 people still lived In Liverpool’s infamous courts, housing that had been condemned as unfit for human habitation in 1850s. The were another 6,000 unsanitary dwellings on top of that; 700 cellars were illegally tenanted.(3)
In nearby Bootle the Corporation, to its credit, did not implement such severe methods as Liverpool; they didn’t jettison the unemployed to its outskirts as did Liverpool. Bootle Town Hall planners aimed to rehouse all the people, on sites cleared, to stay within that area. As for those ‘frog marched’ to Huyton and Speke they were told jobs would follow! Industrialists were offered subsidies and tax breaks to open factories on the outskirts to provide jobs; many would wait a long time. Others trudged back daily to the docks looking for work or to ship out.
Compared with the earlier and so called ‘garden suburbs’, those council estates built under The Wheatley Act in the 1920s,’Homes fit for Heroes’, there were stark differences. Under the Wheatley Act, the unemployed were not accepted as tenants, neither were those on low wages or in casual work. Rents in the ‘garden suburb’ or ‘Sunshine estates‘ as they were known were considered high. The houses were built to a higher standard and nobody was being forced to move there. The ‘garden suburbs’ were based on attraction, new tenants were accepted from across Liverpool and not restricted to those from the inner city as The Greenwood Act. Under The Wheatley Act housing estates were built in; Allerton, Clubmore, Edge Lane, Norris Green, Dovecot, Fazakerley, and at Old Swan, all completed in the 1920s. But some families in the ‘garden suburbs’ fell into poverty unable to keep up the payments, along with the added travel expenses to and from their place of work.
Rents at Huyton and Speke were relatively low, subsidized by central government,(4) but properties were substandard when compared to the ‘garden suburbs’. With no real job prospects, few public amenities, poor transport links, rootless schools (that persist to the present day), little or no entertainment close by, and the ‘local’ shop possibly a mile away, no wonder they didn’t want to move from the docklands. Yes, people wanted better housing but what they didn’t want was to be shanghaied to Huyton and Speke, they wanted to stay close to the river where they worked or had worked in the past.
The severity of The Greenwood Housing Act lessoned in the next decade under new legislation but Liverpool City Council persisted in its policy of ‘decamping’ the inner city population to the outskirts. There have been many books written lately on Liverpool’s recent past by local DIY historians and a myth that seems to be prevalent amongst them is that the residue of the population left today in Liverpool’s docklands north end and south end were somehow “left stranded when the tide went out” and have a monopoly on hard times and all things ‘scouse’. The tide didn’t go out, a tidal wave came in and washed the jobless majority out to the outskirts during the Great Depression. The depopulation of the inner city, the very heart of Liverpool, carried on through to the 1960s using various methods, though none as ruthless as that used in the 1930s.

Notes:
1. Liverpool Corporation. Housing Committee Minutes, 27.11.1930
2. Liverpool Daily Post. 22.6.1933
3. C.G. Pooley and S. Irish, The Development of Corporation Housing in Liverpool 1869-1945, Lancaster Press.
4. Genuinely Seeking Work, 1992, Liver Press

Yours Sincerely, Delia Cullen

Dear Nerve,
In the previous issue of Nerve magazine there was a mention of Frank Hendry, a local artist who had recently passed away at the age of 85. The article claimed that we had missed the opportunity to document the interesting life story of this much loved Liverpool man. However, I'm glad to say this isn't the case. Frank kindly gave a three hour oral history interview for the 800 lives project at National Museums Liverpool in April 2008. For more information see eighthundredlives.org.uk
Frank gave permission to share his life story and I would like to take this opportunity for readers to know a little bit about him.
Francis Brian Hendry was born in 1924 and was raised mainly around the Scotland Road area. At 17 years of age he volunteered for the fire service and was on duty during the evenings of the heavy bombings in May 1941. The scenes that were etched in his memory at this time were later depicted in many of his oil paintings in exhibitions throughout the country. Some of these can be viewed on the Academy of Arts website:
www.la-art.co.uk/Exhibitions/E148.php
Frank was called up in 1942, and being a grammar school boy he was automatically trained as air crew. He was sent to train in South Africa and endured a voyage of near starvation. A later enquiry led to an officer being jailed for 18 months as he had bought cheap food for the voyage which was inedible.
Whilst he was stationed in South Africa and no doubt because of his mischievous character Frank often got himself into trouble. Once, when he was ordered to sit on the flight path in the evening as a punishment he managed to start a fire…

I was having a little ciggie you see, and I started a fire in the grass all round me (laughs) terrible it was you know, and I was trying to stamp it out but it was impossible. Next thing you know this bloody wing commander in a side car and the fire brigade and everything come! …and the fella was bulging with anger and he said 'what happened there?' and I said 'I think it was a spark from one of the planes taking off' and he didn't leave it you know and said 'are you sure you weren't bloody smoking?' and I said 'Oh no, I wouldn't do that'
…anyway they pulled me off that job!

Frank was an air force pilot later on in the war and witnessed some terrible tragedies. He was involved in the infamous Rhine Crossing which was later viewed as a strategic error that led to the death of many men. His brother was also killed during the war and his death had a devastating effect on Frank's family.
After the war Frank attended Trinity College, Dublin and went on to become a journalist. He worked for a number of papers including the Crosby Herald, the Oxford Mail, the Coventry Standard and the Bristol Evening Post. Frank was sometimes dismissed from the occasional newspaper job more often than not due to his natural tendency to question authority. Frank eventually ended up leaving journalism altogether. He told me that he had become disillusioned and uncomfortable with the undemocratic nature of the control and ownership of the news media.
Frank then became a teacher and worked in Ellergreen, St Teresa's and later spent many years teaching at Notre Dame Catholic School.
It wasn't until later on in his life that Frank became interested in art. He was an accomplished oil painter and had a unique and distinctive style. Frank was much loved in the Liverpool art scene and could often be seen working in the studio at The Liverpool Academy of Arts in Seel Street. In 1978 he had an exhibition in the House of Commons with the late Arthur Dooley. Frank continued to paint and exhibit right up until his death last year.
Frank was a lovely, warm, intelligent and funny man. I remember seeing a figure walking towards me in the rain once. With his hood up, casual clothing and boyish walk I thought it was a young person. It wasn't until I got up close that I realized it was the 84 year old Frank!
It was always such a pleasure to stop and chat to him. I remember continuing my walk in the rain with a big smile on my face.
That was the kind of person Frank was.
Christine Gibbons, Oral Historian

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