September 18, 2008
Oral history narrators John McGuirk and Dolly Lloyd
In a cavernous cellar, with radical undertones, off a bustling Liverpool street earlier this week a group of Coventrians and Liverpudlians met to celebrate their postwar histories and memories.
It was with great pleasure that Selina Todd and myself welcomed everyone to the News From Nowhere radical bookshop to celebrate the completion of the oral history projects, Coventry and Liverpool Lives, following two years of interviewing in both cities: twenty-two people interviewed; thousands of words spoken and a wealth of memories sparked. As the oral historian on this project I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting everyone involved and it was a great privilege to be invited to listen to everyone’s personal life histories.
People have lots of questions when you approach them to take part in an oral history project:”Why do you want to speak to me? What can I tell you? What will you ask me? What is it going to be used for? Who else are you talking to?” And as the interviewing is underway people often ask “What have the other interviewees said?”
These questions are important. The key to being an oral historian is that you must answer these questions honestly and provide as much information as possible to put the narrator at ease. At the same time you must encourage and create a comfortable atmosphere for the narrator to continue to tell the story they want to tell. Although the oral historian is the person with the questions, the person who turns the recorder on and makes sure it is working, the person who is most important is the narrator. Without the oral history narrators’ enthusiasm, time and memories this project would not have been the success it is. The collection is a rich source of material which will be a valuable resource for future researchers. At the Liverpool gathering answers to these questions will hopefully have become more apparent. The interviewees were able to meet each other and through this website they can finally hear segments of what the other narrators said.
Together this collection contributes significantly to our understanding and knowledge of post-war everyday life. It fills a gap in sources of the period by focusing on Coventry and Liverpool, two cities that were integral to British post-war reconstruction. Historians’ attention is shifting from the London centric image of the swinging sixties to consider more regional and local experiences. This collection will make a significant contribution to this new direction in British history. As a collective archive they cover people’s experiences of growing up, working, married and later life from the 1920s, through the 1980s to the time of interviewing in 2008.
Although a collective experience of a period or event is crucial what is important about this collection of oral histories is that they are full individual life histories. No two life histories are the same. Each is unique. Personal accounts and memories of often not spoken about topics are detailed. You may have lived on a street with fifteen other families and some of those families may have been related to you but your memories of the support networks, family get togethers, births and deaths belong to you and are shaped by your perspective of the events. Well told stories sit alongside those that had been forgotten and are slowly pieced back together.
This collection is a rich resource. Thank you to all oral history narrators for your time, enthusiasm, encouragement and memories.
Hilary
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Coventry, Liverpool | Tagged: Coventry, Liverpool, News From Nowhere, oral history | 
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Posted by voicesofpostwarengland
September 1, 2008
The press release for the oral history project in Coventry in Spring 2007 attracted a phenomenal number of replies from people born in Coventry; people who moved there in the initial postwar period as children with their families or as young adults to find work or who had found love during the war and were following their heart; people who no longer live in the City but live in other areas of the country or live abroad now, also got in touch. Thank you! We were unable to interview everyone but we hope that this site and blog will be of interest to you. You are very welcome to comment on any of the content and include your own memories of living in and working in Coventry.
The picture of the Locarno Ballroom included in the Coventry Evening Telegraph prompted Alan Watkins to get in touch. He was able to identify himself and his then girlfriend, now wife, Veronica, celebrating New Year’s Eve in the Locarno c. 1960s.
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Posted by voicesofpostwarengland
June 13, 2008
At the end of the Second World War in 1945 Coventry became the focus of an extensive reconstruction plan including a new city centre and a wide network of new housing estates. The city experienced considerable economic growth and social change in the post-war period and was heralded as a ‘phoenix’ rising from the ashes. Since his appointment in 1938 and the extensive bombing of the city in November 1940 the newly appointed city Architect, Donald Gibson, had been ‘looking to the future’ of Coventry’s urban planning. He recruited a team of assistant architects and surveyors, the Re-development Committee, initially to alleviate immediate housing needs due to the flourishing car and machine tool industries which attracted a large migrant workforce. While designing the new housing Gibson and his team also worked out a scheme for a new civic centre as a whole. The Council felt that the city lacked the cultural, social and educational buildings appropriate to a thriving industrial city. There was no theatre, central library, art gallery or public baths; it needed new civic offices and law courts and a new building for the school of art.
The modernity project that the city and the working-class people of Coventry were a part of in the mid-twentieth century created a space for constructing a new future and possibly new identities. The Coventry Evening Telegraph recognised in 1945 that “No Government alone could make Coventry prosperous. The good life would only be possible to the extent it was lived and worked for by the ordinary men and women of Coventry.”
The redevelopment of the city in the late 1940s and 1950s was of central concern to the planners, councillors and central government as it was thought to reflect the country’s wider recovery after the war and ultimately result in a ‘Better Britain.’ The rebuilding and planning of Coventry has tended to be told through the planners, architects and local government’s perspective. The oral history gathered for this project tells a different story of the reconstruction of Coventry in the postwar period as people remember going to school, playing on the bomb sites, and moving into newly built homes to accommodate those living in slum conditions or those who had no housing at all.
The image above is the front cover of a special edition of Architectural Design dedicated to the redevelopment of the city (December 1958). By the time this special edition was published the original city architect. Donald Gibson, had left the project and Arthur Ling had taken over. The edition included an extended essay by Ling called ‘Looking to the future’ about his own personal views of what Coventry could expect in terms of housing and a new city centre.
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Posted by hilaryyoung
May 15, 2008
During the winter of 2006 and the summer of 2008 I have been conducting full life histories with people in Coventry and Liverpool about their experiences of living and working in these cities in the immediate postwar period, a time when both cities were trying to recover from severe bomb damage as well as cope with distinct economic and social change. It is also time that is commonly labelled as period of austerity and then affluence. As the interviews were full life histories what we tried to do was include the narrators’ experiences of the later twentieth century as the seventies and eighties are often characterised as a period of discontent for many. What resulted has been the creation of a wonderful collection of memories of past and present communities, people and places in two cities that have witnessed changing fortunes throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.
At the moment I am working with the narrators, their recordings and transcripts to ensure they are happy with the content. This is an important task as it ensures that the people I have interviewed are included in the process of collection and dissemination. This site is one way we hope to include and involve those people we have interviewed as they see their own words, experiences and memories contributing to new discussions about how we think about the working class not just in the postwar period but also in today’s changing society.
The photograph above was taken by Harry Ainscough in Springfield Road in Liverpool c. 1964. Ainscough, who lived in Sheffield in the 1960s, was captivated by Liverpool and the changing nature of the inner-city during this period. He would travel regularly from Sheffield to walk around Liverpool and record the city life. The focus in this picture is a group of young people congregated outside what looks like some sort of community building with large swing doors to the left of the image. Girls as well as boys are mingling outside and resting on the wall. The girl sitting on the wall is wearing a mini-skirt while one of the lads sports a quiff. The others are also dressed well. This image evokes a sense of youthful play in the neighbourhood and community as people meet to chat and socialise in the local vicinity.
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Posted by hilaryyoung
