Liverpool

Liverpool, like Bristol, owed its rise to its involvement in trade with Ireland (though its link with the slave trade in the 18th century was another key element). Individual migrants from Ireland came regularly to Liverpool but it was during the Great Famine that migration occurred on a massive scale. Many of these refugees continued on to Canada and the United States but others remained, earning a living as dock workers, as seamen, or as casual labourers in the Scotland Road area. A strongly Irish ethnic identity survived and in the 19th and early 20th centuries the Irish community in the Scotland parliamentary division regularly returned the Nationalist Party MP T. P. O'Connor to Westminster. A good deal of sectarian hostility between ‘Orange’ and ‘Green’ also existed, particularly in the Netherfield Road area of Everton. During the Second World War, however, in the wake of heavy bombing by the Luft‐waffe during ‘May Week’ 1941, the level of sectarian feeling declined. In the second half of the 20th century the links between Liverpool and Ireland became more attenuated. Immigrants from Ireland now preferred to seek work in London or the Midlands rather than the depressed area which Liverpool had become. ‘Liverpool Irish’ was increasingly transformed into a ‘Liverpudlian’ identity made familiar by the Beatles, by television series, and by the success of Liverpool Football Club. The memory of Bill Shankly overwhelmed that of St Patrick.

Hugh Kearney