Heads should roll for street festival catastrophe, according to one of event’s original leading lights

Aug 4 2007 by Jessica Shaughnessy, Liverpool Daily Post

THE chairman of the task force which created the Mathew Street Festival said heads should roll for the catastrophic handling of this year’s event.

Bill Iveson was challenged to revive the Mathew Street area in the early ’90s when Cavern City Tours directors Bill Heckle and Dave Jones came to him with the idea.

The first Mathew Street Festival attracted 3,000 people, but over the years the event grew and, at the same time, the area transformed into one of the most thriving and prosperous quarters.

Retired Mr Iveson, of Wallasey, Wirral, who was the founder and first chairman of the Cavern Quarter Initiative (CQI) said: “It will be a disaster for the City if the festival does not go ahead. It has been complete mismanagement of the situation.

“If Bill and Dave were still running the event, it would not have happened there is no doubt about that.

“They are businessmen. Civil servants were never going to achieve what they did.

“Whatever happens now, Mr Harborow has made a fool of himself, and has lost all credibility. He has no choice but to resign.”

The former managing director of Norman Simmons Menswear, which has now closed, Mr Iveson was asked to head the CQI in 1991 by Royal Insurance, which owned the Cavern Quarter.

He said: “They wanted to revive the Cavern Quarter, but I told them to do that we would have to have a go at the whole Mathew Street area.

“I was in charge of the budget and all the other businesses were involved.

“The streets were in squalor, nothing like it is now. Many of the buildings were empty, it was one of the worst areas in the city centre.

“Bill and Dave were already running the Beatles Festival in the Adelphi Hotel and they suggested they bring it down to Mathew Street, and that’s how the festival was born.

“It’s now an institution in Liverpool, there is no way the city can afford to lose it.”

Mr Iveson said he was shocked when he head the news of the event’s cancellation.

He said: “The first event was attended by a few thousand. Now it attracts half a million.

“All these endeavours were to regenerate a down- trodden area of the city.

“The Capital of Culture is about the heritage and the people of Liverpool.

“The Beatles, the Cavern Club, the Cavern Quarter and the Mathew Street Festival are all part of that Culture.

“It is the job of the Culture body to make sure that the Mathew Street Festival does go ahead. Its task is not if, but how to make sure this happens. To deliver a knockout blow at such a late stage smacks not only of incompetence, but lack of concern for all those involved, not only the local businesses and artists, but the many thous- ands of visitors, includ- ing many coming from abroad.”