Liverpool's decline and fall

'A place like Manchester went by the rules. A place like Liverpool lived off its wits and things that fell off the back of warehouses'

Linda Grant has just written a novel set in Liverpool. She was on Newsnight Review the other night talking about it. And she said something about Liverpool to which the chairman Mark Lawson took great exception.

Normally I would have to paraphrase their remarks, but I happened to record the programme on video, so I can bring you the exact words. Here is what she said.

"Liverpool has outlived its usefulness as a city, and I think most people in Britain would just wish it would go away."

You might think that Mark Lawson, being a fearless arts person, would chuckle about her outrageous remarks about Liverpool. Not a bit of it. When the chips are down, it seems he may be a BBC person at heart, because he positively grovelled in his haste to dissociate himself from Linda Grant.

"Before there are understandable howls from Merseyside," he said, "I have to say that Linda Grant was born in Liverpool and that is her view of the city.

"I was there this week and there are two fantastic art galleries, and a sophisticated French football manager, and many other things ... I think she's wrong about Liverpool, but ..."

So there you have it. On my left, Linda Grant who is a Liverpudlian and thinks the city has outlived its usefulness. On my right, Mark Lawson who was up there for the day and thinks she's wrong because they've got some really nice pictures and Gerard Houllier – what you might call the Front Row view of the World.

Now, instinctively you have to go along with Lawson, because Liverpool is the city of the Beatles and Arthur Askey and all that, but logically and historically speaking you have to admit that Linda Grant is absolutely right.

In fact, it was the very point made on Radio 4 not long ago in an edition of "Mapping The Town", in which Julian Richards made the very convincing case that Liverpool was above all a place of import and export. It was the place through which the North of England exported; it was a natural port for America, Ireland, not to mention the slave trade; it was right by the end of the Manchester Ship Canal; it was – well, I don't have to stress the point.

It was one of the great places in the world for things moving through, a place of seamen, travellers, docks, warehouses, trains, storage and inwardness and onwardness.

The downside of this was that it wasn't a place of manufacture. Almost alone among famous Northern towns, it never became known for anything it made. And therefore it never really acquired the habits of mind of a manufacturing town.

In a place like Manchester, full of factories and factory whistles, people thought in terms of clocking on, clocking off, timetables, routine, security. In Liverpool, where you depended on tides, and shipping, and big or small loads, everything was piecework. Everything was ad hoc, up and down, unpredictable.

A place like Manchester tended to go by the clock and by the rules. A place like Liverpool, where nothing was certain, lived off its wits and things that fell off the back of warehouses. If either place was to produce a scally mentality, it wasn't Manchester.

Well, the comparative psychology of two neighbouring places is fascinating, but the main point is that Liverpool lived or died as a port, and what Linda Grant was saying was the unsayable: that Liverpool died as a port. Once Liverpool lost its role as great shifter of things and people, it never really found another one.

Even the things that Mark Lawson thought were great about Liverpool were imported things – a few paintings, a football manager. If he could name one great painter who actually came from Liverpool, I would be more impressed.

Tomorrow I would like to continue this fascinating debate by arguing the opposite point of view.

Meanwhile, here is a genuine quiz question. In 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, what was the second city of the UK after London, in size and importance? Clue: it wasn't Liverpool. Or Manchester, either. Answer tomorrow.