Although employment in services was rising nationally throughout the 1970s, it actually feel in Liverpool to just 13%. Nevertheless, it was apparent even in Liverpool, that there had been a definite shift towards the service sector. English cities suffered negative shocks from 1970-90 which required changes in both land and labour forces. Urban economies became evermore post-industrialised and knowledge based, focussing on consumer demand.
After the war, Britain’s large cities carried with them, as Robson claimed, a “specific legacy in terms of physical, economic, social and political institutional structures, their industrial mix and skills base, which has impacted adversely on their competitiveness and quality of life in subsequent years.”(2000:p7) i.e. Many cities needed to adapt their economic base to meet the needs of the present/future economy. This is evident in the changes to Liverpool’s dock areas.
In order to conform to the rise in demand for service based activities, many British cities began to alter their economic base. A rise in high-tech businesses, creative industries, ICT and tourism is claimed by Robson to have shown that cities began to use “their potential as info-rich contexts which had obvious relevance for the development of modern economic activities based on knowledge industries.”(2000:p14) For example, all large cities in Britain are now hosts to universities and colleges, promoting higher education to provide a skilled and educated workforce, a driving force of the British economy. Liverpool has 2 major universities which also act as important research and technology centres. This is all based upon the idea that workers produce knowledge, not goods.
Many social changes which have occurred in Britain have been fuelled by the economic changes above. The economic restructuring of the 1970s brought problems for the people of Liverpool, accounting for the population loss which amounted to -15% from the 1980s onwards. Cooke claimed that “the recent bout of economic restructuring and the associated labour market fragmentation have set up great pressures in the ‘social fabric’ of the outer estates of Liverpool.” (1989:p209)
New towns, also known as the outer estates, were created in the 1950s and 60s in order to create a new role for Liverpool in terms of labour, following the decline of the port. Over 250 000 people made up the ‘overspill’ who could not be re-housed in the built up areas and instead they were moved to these outer estates such as Halewood, Kirkby and Speke. Many large Multinational Corporations invested in these areas, such as ‘Dunlop’, which created over 7000 jobs in Speke, and ‘Kodak’ in Kirkby which employed over 4000. These areas became ‘development areas’, encouraging an inflow of companies. As Cooke claimed, “The economic future of Merseyside was thus seen to lie in the decentralisation of industry and the matching dispersal of population.”(1989:p198)
Various social problems arose from the creation of these new towns. New communities had very distinct class profiles, mainly the unskilled working class. Previous tight knit communities had become fragmented, and families had been broken up among different estates. Unemployment in Britain was rising at the time, which was reflected in the Merseyside estates. There was a lack of local job opportunities, mainly because at the time of the population dispersal into the outer estates, many manufacturing firms had built up a reliable workforce over 6 years. Together with the factory closures of a number of multinational companies, poverty was rediscovered in Liverpool, as in other British urban areas.
Since the 1960s there has been a significant increase in migration from the Commonwealth, mainly because the pool of labour in Britain had been more or less exhausted. Social consequences of this can be seen in Liverpool. Cohen and Jenner (1968) and Fevre (1984) argued that Britain’s economy had begun to “downgrade certain jobs”- to the point at which the black population were the only people prepared to do them (cited in Robinson 1989). Black migrants had begun to inhabit previously white neighbourhoods and workplaces with the “white working class who had been socialized into regarding black people as inferior” (Robinson 1989). This, Together with race riots, for example those of Toxteth in 1981, encouraged social segregation. In the 1980s over two million black people had become segregated into predominantly black areas even though they were a permanent part of the nation/workforce. Although there have been initiatives set up to combat racial disadvantage, for example the Merseyside Taskforce, discrimination and segregation in disadvantaged areas continues to exist.
After a period of increased suburbanisation and a decline in the role of cities in urban Britain, the 1990s has been a decade of urban renaissance. Since 1995, all cities in Britain have increased employment, popularity in city centre living, urban tourism and night time economies. Liverpool is typical of all of the above. The city experienced a +10.4% employment change and a rise in popularity of city living especially among young professionals and consequently the Albert Dock area is host to new, prestigious apartments. The idea of the ’24 hour city’ has become ever more common as night time economies have begun to flourish over the past decade. Liverpool is home to a number of well known bars and nightclubs, for example the internationally recognised ‘Cream’. This urban renaissance has brought increasing numbers of jobs to the service sector and capital to the city.
Liverpool has experienced many of the social and economic changes that have occurred in urban Britain over the past 50 years. Although these changes have been fairly consistent throughout urban Britain, the consequences that have accompanied them have varied from city to city. For example, the economic restructuring and changes in trading patterns, which brought about the decline of the port, caused social problems unique to Liverpool.
To conclude, Liverpool as one of Britain’s major cities has been fairly typical of the economic and social trends of the past 50 years for urban Britain. Perhaps the way in which the city has reacted to such changes has not been so typical.
