By Josh Anderson
When I came to Australia at 13, I was rattled at how popular English culture had become in the school yard.
On my first day I felt like an animal in a zoo, schoolkids asking me to quote their favourite lines from The Inbetweeners and Skins, a stampede trying to get a glimpse of the new kid from England.
But there was a problem. Although technically considered English, culturally and linguistically I am not.
I am from Liverpool.
A city technically situated in the northwest of England although closer in proximity to the capital of Wales and Ireland than it is to London.
A city so far removed from its own country that its inhabitants use the phrase: “We’re not English, we’re Scouse.”
The word Scouse, or Scouser, derives from the word lobskaus, a meat stew eaten by Scandinavian sailors around our docks. They would shape our accent too.
Although they contributed, it was arguably the Welsh and Irish who influenced our tongue the most. This created a distinguishable accent, yet almost unrecognisable when it comes to most English dialects.
If you can imagine the sound of Welsh, Irish and Scandinavian coming out the mouth of a 13-year-old who is supposedly English, then you can imagine the disappointment of my classmates.
It’s not just our accent that separates us from the rest of England, it’s our demographic too. This is when we start to question if we are even English at all.
It is estimated that 75 per cent of the city is of Irish decent, making it the most Irish city outside of Ireland. Largely due to the famine in the 1800s as Irish flocked to Liverpool seeking refuge and work.
Something we share with our Celtic counterparts is our lack of love for the English … perhaps it’s genetic? Jokes aside, we cannot deny the negative influence England has had on Ireland, but little is known about Liverpool.
Scousers have a reputation for being criminals, people not to be trusted. They are dirty and violent, a vicious stereotype born from a history of impoverishment.
The British media has ensured this stereotype remains, by attempting to give it life whenever it can. Most notably in 1989 when Liverpool Football Club lost 96 fans in a fatal crowd crush.
The Sun newspaper blamed the fans themselves, the front page reading: “The Truth, some fans picked pockets of dead victims, some fans urinated on the brave cops, some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life.”
Eventually those claims were proven false but not until 2012, almost 20 years later. A jury found the disaster was due to gross misconduct by police, revealing a police cover-up with over 160 altered statements attempting to shift blame towards Liverpool supporters.
The Sun issued a front-page apology, Liverpool responded by boycotting the newspaper and banning Sun journalists from entering stadiums.
This came at a time when Liverpool’s unemployment rates were double the national average. The city was in desperate need of government assistance, not media discrimination.
Despite this, leaked documents from Margaret Thatcher’s British Government proposed a “managed decline” of the city, essentially a purposeful effort that would force the city further into deprivation. Although this never came to fruition, it solidified what Scousers had always known, that the country did not see them as equal.
Tracey Shields, who in the 1980s lived in Liverpool’s most notorious ghetto, Toxteth, saw the effects firsthand.
“Most of us were poor and working class, and it was very multicultural were I lived,” Shields said.
“We couldn’t afford school uniforms or great food but all round it was a positive experience.”
Although they were living in poverty she spoke highly of the tight knit community, saying she felt “safe” and spoke to the intelligence of its people.
“People were educated, they were working class but they were very educated in politics and literature, they understood government, they understood politics.”
According to Shields, Scousers already suspected neglect before the managed decline documents were leaked.
“There was a solidarity of Liverpool people coming together and going, ‘Why are we neglected? What is the government’s problem? Why are we not being taken care of? Why is our unemployment rates so high? Why do we not have sufficient housing? So it became more of a community-based thing, everyone came together and took care of each other.”
Perhaps now we can understand why Liverpool prefers to separate itself from the rest of England.
We don’t sound English. In fact, most of us are not even English, because even if we wanted to be English, would they accept us anyway?
Featured image: Liverpool has been shaped by the city’s docks. Photo: Chowells/CC/Wikipedia Commons
