In 1965, during the midst of the great urban renewal where the Victorian slums of northern Liverpool were bulldozed wholesale the BBC sent a documentary crew to Liverpool.
The premise of this documentary was:
"How urban regeneration tore the heart out of the Singing City."
The documentary hosts interviews with dockers, priests, seamen and even the famous police constable 'Herbert Balmer'. The highlight for me are the rare interviews with the women who kept the communities together when the men were away at sea.
For anyone who pines for the 'good old days' before they knocked the slum terraces down these interviews are a stark reminder of the utter deprivation, poverty and danger that haunted those terraces and tenements.
Listening to the stories of these people, it if difficult to believe that such poverty was still prevalent into the second half of the 20th Century.
This bleak image is constantly undercut by the use of music which is central to the film. Typical folksongs of the era are present in abundance (inclduing live recordings of Pete McGovern in local pubs) and even more remarkable is the recording of the childrens songs, sung on countless playgrounds.
These childrens playground songs and rhymes seem to echo through the ages but are held up to contrast with images of children in the same streets singing American blues music 'The Wood-chopping Blues'.
This documentary really shows the birth of the modern world where children still have to sleep in houses infested by damp and rats yet the police were deploying CCTV in the city centre (30:00 mins).
Britains first CCTV cameras? Liverpool 1965, showing the Metropolitan Cathedral half-built.
Was this the first use of CCTV in the UK?
You can watch the documentary here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/mersey/5183.shtml
'There are no folk in the whole world so helpless and so wise, their is hunger in their bellies, and laughter in their eyes'.
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