Sweet memories of old Liverpool

Apr 22 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

Although today is the 27th anniversary of the great Liverpool sugar refinery’s closure, a new generation remembers the boys and girls from the white stuff. David Charters reports

IN TIMES long gone, when steam rose from the old canal, the man now hobbling through the school gate with his loose-toothed smile, was a big-shouldered boy, who could be a little muddle-headed like everyone else, but generally kept his eye on the ball.

One day, in philosophical mood, his blue-eyed stare settled on a kind and tolerant teacher, Mr Sharp, and he offered the following thought.

“I don’t see the point of history. What does it matter what happened in 55BC, or which king got an arrow in his eye in 1066?”

Mr Sharp replied: “If you don’t know your history, you won’t have a future. We can all go backwards, but we don’t know what will happen when we go forwards.”

Of course, the boy had a point. Life is immediate when you’re young. But then the years slipped away and Albert Sloane himself became history, proud to tell of his part in momentous events, when his city was always in the news. Then, friends called him Chairman Mao with humour, respect and affection because he was a great leader of men and women.

Now, the boys and girls in another school are eager to hear him talk about how it used to be when he was a union man.

So Albert, for 35 years a machinist at the Tate and Lyle factory, in Love Lane, Liverpool, has become a history teacher, helping the fifth-year pupils at the nearby Trinity Catholic Primary School with their project about sugar.

This fine-looking building, full of light and friendly smiles, opened last September. “A bit different to Shiel Road,” says Albert, 85, recalling his own school in the Kensington area, as he walks across the playground into the hall and takes a lift to the classroom.

“How many of you have grandparents who worked in the refinery?”

The 41 children, sitting in their purple pullovers, look up and down the rows in the traditional way, before the first hand is raised in answer. Soon a dozen or more follow. They smile. It’s good to know you’re part of something, that you belong.

Their nans and granddads had spoken about those mornings of jangling keys – when down the streets of the Vauxhall neighbourhood, arm-in-arm, the gossiping girls in blue and white checked turbans, some with toast crumbs still on their lips, stepped to work in the lamp-lit dawn. Their breath made mist in the goosepimpling air and bicycle bells rang from one to the other on the bridges over the canal.

But did any of your parents work at Tate and Lyle? Not one hand is raised. That is how the closure of a factory affects the local community.

Twenty-seven years ago today, the refinery closed with the immediate loss of 1,600 jobs. But many others were dependent on Tate’s for their livelihoods. Liverpool was on the skids.

This is history in the raw, pulsing with memories, not printed in textbooks. And Albert is able to hook the generations together again at a school near the Green Man pub, facing the old refinery. It was used for some of the most poignant scenes in Alan Bleasdale’s TV series, Boys from the Black Stuff, which stirred national concerns about conditions on Merseyside.

The children, aged nine and 10, and their teachers, Anne Porter and Julie McAdam, advised by Albert, have produced a play about the refinery’s closure, called Love Lane Lives, to be performed before parents and friends tomorrow.

Also, at 6pm tomorrow, a 50-minute film of the same name is being presented at the John Foster building of Liverpool John Moores University, Mount Pleasant (ticket details on 0151 231 3221).

It was been made by Ron Noon, a senior lecturer in history at the university. Supported by a £50,000 grant from the Nation- al Lottery, he has been the driving force behind the Love Lane Project, which will soon include DVDs of the film, a dedicated website, and various campaigns to keep the part played by Tate and Lyle in the development of Liverpool fresh in the memory.

Sugar pleased ancient palates, but its popularity really grew with the colonisation of West Indian Islands by the Spanish, British and French. Huge plantations spread across the Caribbean in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Vast numbers of slaves were used to cut the cane shipped to European ports. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833, but for many Africans the conditions on the plantations remained grim.

In practice, you had black men cutting the cane with machetes. From this, brown sugar or molasses was processed. But this could be further refined into white sugar for those of delicate feelings.

This was the main purpose of the factory opened in 1872 by the businessman Henry Tate (1819-1899) on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in Liverpool’s Vauxhall neighbourhood. The sugar was also cut into little squares, associated with the cartoon character Mr Cube, drawn by Bobby St John Cooper, and introduced to sugar bags in 1949.

Working in the factory was hard and the profits were high for the bosses and shareholders, but Tate, a philanthropist and champion of the arts, established a regime of good and fair labour relations, which would sustain almost to the end. In 1921, his company merged with the Lyle group, particularly famed for its syrup. It had been started by the Scottish businessman Abram Lyle (1820-1891).

Tate and Lyle, with more than 3,000 on the pay-roll at its peak, was the biggest employer, apart from the docks, in the Vauxhall district, around Scotland Road.

Despite the disapproval of the authorities, children swam in the canal along a stretch called the “Scaldies”, where boiling water was discharged from the refining process.

However, there was never a strike at the factory where goodwill generally prevailed. When it was recommended that the refinery should close in 1971, such was the public outcry that the company decided to continue.

In the end, there was surplus capacity caused by Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy, which heavily subsided the rival sugar beet – leading to the slogan, “keep the cane, beat the beet”.

But the community spirit hadn’t died and after long negotiations, involving Anglican Bishop David Sheppard, the Catholic Archbishop Derek Worlock and even Prince Charles, local activists, led by Tony McGann, secured a £6.4m grant to start building the Eldonian Village on the sugar site. By 1989, 145 dwellings had been built, followed by another 150 houses.

Ron Noon, whose father, Henry, a seaman, lived on nearby Burlington Street, admits to being obsessed by this story.

Now 60 and the father of four grown-up children, he has consigned his flame-red Afro-style hair to history, allowing the wind a smooth run over his head.

But his passion for justice still bristles. That is why his film is a polemic, embracing the history of sugar and slavery; the experiences, the courage and the very decency of the people who worked in the Liverpool refinery.

“Behind a simple, taken-for-granted commodity, there is a very complicated social history,” he says. “It gives us an insight into globalisation because it is the quintessential global product. It is like Elvis and sex, it’s here, there and everywhere. Food manufacturers know that something sweet will always be consumed. It’s a story about capitalism. Something we did without for millennia and we don’t need, we now crave. It’s want not need, wealth not health, that this story is all about.”

“I think the children have gained a sense of pride in the local community,” says Mrs Porter.

“If we hadn’t done this project, the children would never have covered slavery because it’s not in the curriculum,” says Mrs McAdam. “They became absolutely engrossed in the subject. Also, they have empathised with people like Albert who worked there. It was only through the project that we learned that so many of them had grandparents at Tate and Lyle.”

Luke Kendall, 10, and Chloe Sharrockwoods, nine, both had grandparents at the refinery. Had they been born in an earlier generation, they might well have been looking forward to working there themselves.

“Every time I go and see my nan (Barbara Sharrock), I ask her about Tate and Lyle and she tells me,” says Chloe.

“We have been doing lots of stuff about how the slaves were treated with the shackles and everything,” says Luke.

Albert had three children with his wife, Louisa Alma Sloane. He is listening to a rehearsal of the play, which, of course, tells of his part as chairman of the General Munic- ipal and Boilermakers’ Union. Their success was in winning a £2,000 pay-off for every employee, paid in addition to their pensions.

“The children have been very good. They’re marvellous,” says Albert. “I wish I had had them there, working with me. Most of the people in the refinery came from this area.”

He looks from the school window. You can see the old tobacco warehouse, the world’s biggest brick building; to the right across the river is New Brighton. To the left are the skyscrapers of new Liverpool.

“So many changes,” says Albert.

davidcharters