Liverpool 1911 – A City On The Edge

Steve Higginson

“Rhythms That Carry”

“You need not attach great importance to the rioting in Liverpool last night. It took place in an area where disorder is a chronic feature”.

– Winston Churchill

When Churchill made this statement to Parliament, Liverpool was under martial law: a gunboat was moored on the Mersey, dockers, seafarers, and transport workers were on general strike.

Rhythms that Carry, will explore and illuminate new histories concerning the events of 1911. In 1886, a magazine described Liverpool as being the “New York of Europe,.. A World City”. The open-ended nature of the port gave Liverpool a cosmopolitan edge and had a profound impact on the industrial, artistic, educational, cultural and social life of Liverpool.

However, there are questions that have remained unanswered with regards to the spontaneous nature and causes of the strikes that engulfed Liverpool across that long hot summer.

Rhythms that Carry, will attempt to answer these questions and much more besides. 1911 represented the birth of Speed-Up Capitalism. A natural tide and motion was being replaced by time and motion. The prominence of women and people of colour left a lasting imprint and symbolised Liverpool as the epicentre of new interlinking cultural and social movements… What was the influence of Liverpool 1911 on Charlie Chaplin?

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