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REVIEW ARTICLE
Re-imagining Enterprising Activities in the Liverpool
City-region: A Shift from a Syndicalist Past to an
Entrepreneurial Future
Alan Southern*
University of Liverpool
Liverpool city-region is a place that has undergone major
transformation. In recent years a number of prestige initiatives have
been attracted to the city, and alongside physical regeneration this has
led to a significant increase in tourism and consumer spending. The
city-region has been an economically distressed place in which its
population has suffered from social and economic decline and tagged as
militant and even work-shy. Yet even in a rejuvenated Liverpool there
are many different entrepreneurial narratives. One is the pursuit of
(often desperate) survival strategies by inner urban communities and
their engagement in economic activities that may be read
simultaneously as resistance or enterprising. Here is an epitome of the
relationship between entrepreneur and worker or entrepreneur as worker,
in a dynamic form that provides an understanding wider than the
traditional notion of enterprise as heroic or utopian. The proposition
here will challenge existing theories of entrepreneurship by arguing that
the syndicalist character of the Liverpool city-region is an important
contributory factor that while shaped in the past, has provided a
rationale for engagement in enterprising activities today. This is leading
to a different rationale to engage in enterprising activity not simply
founded on profit maximization but in the way resistance is created to
structures that often overwhelm both places and the entrepreneurs in
them. This paper considers the interrelationships between
entrepreneurship and the Liverpool city-region economy and how the
future of its enterprise may be cast.
_______________________________________________________
*Correspondence should be sent to: Alan Southern, University of Liverpool Management School,
Chatham Street, Liverpool L69 7ZH, United Kingdom. E-mail: alan.southern@liverpool.ac.uk
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INTRODUCTION
There is an obsessive pursuit of all things entrepreneurial across cities in the
developed world. Entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial behavior and enterprising activity are
afforded heroic status as many places have come to terms with the end of older industrial
mass forms of business and employment. At the same time more attention is being paid to
those mid size cities in the search for economic growth (cf. Dobbs et al, 2011; OECD, 2013;
Bolton and Hildreth, 2013). In this paper two concepts are brought together to consider
enterprising activities in an urban economy. These two concepts, focused on enterprise and
place, are the logic behind entrepreneurial behavior emerging in the way that it does in any
particular urban economy. The argument here is that when we look at the history and
political economy of an urban area we should expect the nuance of place to shape the way
entrepreneurship develops. This is important for two reasons. First it challenges the idea
that entrepreneurship has an essential drive often reduced to something known as an
entrepreneurial spirit. Second, in practice many city agencies and local authorities appear to
adopt an identical approach to entrepreneurship and thereby miss distinctive features that
could demonstrate in better ways local enterprise and entrepreneurialism.
Attention is paid here to the case of Liverpool and its city region. This city-region in
the North West of England is somewhere that has undergone major transformation in the
last two decades or so, with new regeneration initiatives visible in the city centre supported
through public investment and changes to the way in which it is and is to be governed. This
case can be understood by a focus on entrepreneurialism and specifically by examining the
notion that we all deploy entrepreneurial behavior in our contemporary world. Foucaults
notion of the entrepreneur of the self is important in this regard as it can help us to explain
the emphasis on entrepreneurship in a place like the Liverpool city-region. We can use
Foucaults work to consider the privileged status of all things entrepreneurial and
understand why it is framed in a neoliberal ideology. Secondly, Foucaults concept also
helps us to challenge the often positive discourse about enterprise particularly if we can
incorporate other types of influence on the way entrepreneurs behave and enterprising
activity takes form. Relevant here is the characteristics of place whereby we can recognize
the experience of people in urban areas, their history and their often-unique narrative is
what gives place meaning. It is this essence of place that provides the basis for an
examination of the Liverpool city-region.
It is for this reason that we can juxtaposition a syndicalist past with an entrepreneurial
future. This might appear to be counter-intuitive not least because some analyses would
associate one with the political ideals of the Left and the other with political ideals of the
Right. Yet this is precisely what we may be witnessing in the economic domain of the
Liverpool city-region, a comeback kid of a place whereby the local economy has an
increasingly positive narrative being written, in large part connected with a new emerging
entrepreneurialism even when taking into account the impact of the Great Recession and
specific cuts to public funding. So for example, the first strategic ambition set out by the
Mayor of Liverpools economic development company Liverpool Vision in 2013 was to
ensure that the city would be recognized as a global capital for entrepreneurship (Liverpool
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Vision, 2013). Liverpools past can be explained in part through the development of labor
in a different form and at a different pace, economically and culturally varied from other
places in the UK (according to Lane, 1987). We can this examine further below but for now
can propose that it is this essence of place that enables us to re-imagine enterprising
activities in the Liverpool city-region.
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These definitions are exclusive because they are achieved through acceptance of a
particular set of values and the values that are considered are rarely challenged. It provides
for the audience a discourse of enterprise and entrepreneurship that is held in high esteem
and seen as a productive force for social and economic good. Foucaults examination of
Homo Economicus - the ability of people to make a rational pursuit of their own interest and
make decisions on which economic behavior can be modeled and forecast - has laid the
basis for a contemporary neoliberal analysis of entrepreneurship:
the stake in all neo-liberal analysis is the replacement every time of homo
oeconomicus as a partner of exchange with homo oeconomicus as entrepreneur
of himself, being for himself his own capital, being for himself his own
producer, being for himself the source of [his] earnings (Foucault, quoted by
Dilts, 2011, p.131)
Here Foucault provides a much clearer understanding as he analyses the
Entrepreneur of the Self helping us to connect the idealism of the neoliberal
entrepreneurial framework to the precarious nature of the contemporary neoliberal world (cf.
Dilts, 2011; Simons and Masschelein, 2010; Hamann, 2009; Peters, 2001).
As Simons and Masschelein describe neoliberals have used the idea of economic man
in a manner that differs from the classical explanation. Freedom, they suggest is about the
entrepreneur acting freely in society as individuals are conceived as autonomous
entrepreneurs of their respective lives (2010, p.216) and life choices and competencies are
shaped by investment into ones human capital. A typical if crude example can be provided
by Rupert Murdoch who in the inaugural Margaret Thatcher lecture in 2010 outlined how
free enterprise is all about hard-working individuals, who want to make their way in the
world, and help themselves and their families and their society adding how it is taxation
and the actions of the state that destroys entrepreneurial opportunity (Murdoch, 2010, p.5).
In speeches such as this, and there are many, the values associated with the functions of
entrepreneurialism are crafted in a particular way, in a neoliberal fashion.
This Foucauldian reading helps to explain two things: first why the term neo is used
as the classical rational decision making actor is deconstructed and other qualitative aspects
of social and economic life are used to understand behavior that we construe as
entrepreneurial. As Hamann notes:
the central aim of neoliberal governmentality is the strategic production of
social conditions conducive to the constitution of Homo economicus, a specific
form of subjectivity with historical roots in traditional liberalism. However,
whereas liberalism posits economic man as a man of exchange,
neoliberalism strives to ensure that individuals are compelled to assume marketbased values in all of their judgments and practices in order to amass sufficient
quantities of human capital and thereby become entrepreneurs of
themselves. (2009, p. 38)
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In the world of neoliberalism the individualization of what once might have been a
collective goes hand in hand with the need of the person to be entrepreneurial in many
aspects of life. This liberalism anew derived by Foucault after his study of West German
and then US-inspired new liberalism, has to be understood to consider why for instance
flexibility in the labor market means greater ability to hire and fire, why unpaid work is
undertaken in preparation of paid labor, how deregulation of the professions occurs and is
replaced by audit and licence, and why the supply of labor on a global basis is being used to
drive down income levels of those in the developed world (Standing, 2010). There is a logic
between neoliberalism, the entrepreneur of the self and the rise of precariousness in work
and life.
Foucault also helps us to consider why the Left need to move away from the notion of
small business and entrepreneurs as a petite bourgeois demographic who may vacillate
between the two great powers of the bourgeoisie and proletariat. This group may have been
marginal under conditions of the wage relation (i.e., capital and labor) but now under
neoliberalism the wage is not earned through a sale of labor power but is replaced by an
income obtained as a return on investment into human capital, including those intrinsic
motivational attributes and acquired traits of the entrepreneurial self. As Hamman (2009)
explains the worker is no longer dependent on the employer in the way he or she was under
Fordism, but is now responsible for their own rational (self) investment decisions. One
might argue that the neoliberal version of the market has successfully marginalized the
classic Marxist perspective of labor resisting subordination in the mode of production
abstracted from a range of choices an individual might make (Dilts, 2011). For the Left the
description of labor power as a component of class conflict purchased via a market
mechanism alongside other commodities is important. Yet this fails to help us to understand
whether to put it crudely, we should see the entrepreneur or the self-employed as bourgeois
manager or proletariat.
Familiar concepts are seen in the entrepreneurship literature that talk about necessity
entrepreneurship and this is usually positioned in contrast to opportunity entrepreneurship.
Even those more considered terms such as own-account self-employment (see Fudge,
2003) or the involuntariness of self-employment (Kautonen et al, 2010) are inadequate not
least because neoliberal analyses sees the individual deploy their labor (not labor power) as
self-employed or entrepreneur as one component in a range of activities. Choice is active
rather than reactive to poor labor market conditions so the idea of necessity in this instance
is not particularly illuminating. Instead we can identify investment into ones own
entrepreneurial self assisted by other forms of individualized human capital building such as
training, education, networking and so on that each fall on the supply side of securing an
income (Peters, 2001). It is here that neoliberalism trumps the Left through their
conceptualization of entrepreneurship. As Dilts points out: neoliberalism seeks to ensure
that the worker is not present in the economic analysis as an object... but as an active
economic subject (Foucault quoted by Dilts, 2011, p.135) or as we might say as an active
entrepreneurial subject.
Through the pursuit of entrepreneurial goals and investment into the self the effect is
to depoliticise and pacify political citizenship (Hamman, 2009). Homo economicus is
turned into a producer and consumer and both are realized as entrepreneurial activities
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whereby freedom is achieved through engaging entrepreneurially in competition, selfinterest and self-fulfillment. This subjectification is the responsibility of the individual and
constitutes a form of market morality while locking out other forms of freedom (ibid). Thus
self-employment and ownership are the basis of choice, freedom and autonomy, which
those such as Murdoch seek to defend from the illogical and almost illegitimate actions of
the state. Yet this level of entrepreneurial participation obscures the changes to the character
of the neoliberal economy and how precarious it has become. It creates an opaque transition
undergone in inner urban areas, from an old social model to a new type of regime (Southern,
2011) based on monetary stability and fiscal regulation. It unleashes as part of the
entrepreneurial venture a harsh and unpredictable environment and the unforgiving
demands of market forces and the kinds of impersonal judgments that evaluate them in
terms of a cost-benefit calculus of economic risk, financial burden, productivity, efficiency,
and expedience (Hamman, 2009, p.40).
Briefly, they explain as thus: time as an objective measure, timing as a subjective timely decisionmaking, space as theoretical and place as meaningful to human life, that is chronos (time), kairos
(timing), chora (space) and topos (place), see Bjerke and Rm (2011, chapter 1).
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in the city-region intuitively and conveniently, dovetail into the overall discourse about the
undeserving character of the city and its people who are reluctant to empower themselves
through their lack of entrepreneurial spirit. This gives the city-region a particular caricature
and it is this we turn to next.
The 1911 Liverpool Transport Strike has received much attention. The work of the following authors
will provide greater detail than set out here. See Taplin (2012), Smith (1980), OBrien (2012) and
Davies (1999). Specifically see Eric Taplin (1985; 1994) and Brian Towers (Towers, 2011) for the role
of dock workers in the 1911 strike, both of whom in recent years have sadly passed away.
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new forms of enterprising behavior and therefore is to reject the idea that as a feature of the
globalised (neoliberal) economy, should you not be able to stimulate your own local
economy then the responsibility is your own.
According to Holton (1976) it was the precarious conditions of British capitalism in
the years leading to 1914 that lay the basis for syndicalism taking hold in the UK. Falling
economic growth and lower rates of industrial productivity led to falling wages and political
calls for protectionism against greater levels of international competition all formed part of
the trend of social, political and economic instability in this 1910-14 period. Syndicalist
expansion was based on huge levels of industrial unrest, occurring not only in sectors with a
record of conflict (i.e., docks, miners and rail transport) but in new sectors such engineering
and building. A second aspect was the types of workers leader emerging and a third was
the response of employers who organized themselves, and government with anti trade union
legislation being implemented (Holton, 1973). As this was played out in large cities such as
Liverpool the organization of labor took on a new type of formation, particularly influenced
by movements abroad, such as the one big union International Workers of the World
movement in the USA (Renshaw, 1967) and also influential was the founding of the French
Confdration Gneral du Travail, the CGT (Holton, 1973).
Belchem remarks that syndicalism had a particular resonance in Liverpool where
influential foreign inflections of the creed were frequently encountered (2011, p. 25). He
adds elsewhere how the casual nature of the employment relationship seen on the docks not
only became an illustration of low pay but of a cherished independence and stand against
work discipline (Belchem, 2006). This may be a point worth remembering, yet a further
effect of the waterfront in the making of contemporary Liverpool was its role as an entry
point for new ideas from seamen (local and international) and also the city acting as a safe
haven for activists who were persecuted elsewhere. In a speech made by the left-wing
activist George Garrett in 1921 at an unemployment demonstration this international
influence could be heard: All workers are slaves to the capitalists no matter what their race,
colour or creed is ... (Pridmore, 2007). Garrett, who was a playwright and writer, was
directly influenced by his time in association with those involved in the IWW. Other
notable international influences include the Spanish anarch-syndicalist movement and
activists such as Lorenzo Poret and Francisco Ferrer; there was Irish influence through
James Connelly and Jim Larkin (Larkin was born in Liverpool and his brother Peter was a
prominent syndicalist in the city at the time) and the arrival of Tom Mann from Australia,
who led the strike (Holton, 1973). Some argue that the syndicalist movement failed to
overcome elements of sectarianism, racism and sexism that existed in the Liverpool labor
movement (Belchem, 2011; Smith, 1994). However, Cowman (1994) suggests the evidence
is inconclusive in respect of women and the labor movement at this time while OBrien
counters that 1911 was the point in which the sectarian divide was weakened due to the
collaboration of workers across the protestant-catholic divide.3
3
This is complex as it concerns the intersection of class, race, sexism and sectarianism. It is not relevant
to rehearse the arguments here although Liverpool was divided through the politics of Conservative
Unionism that did translate into access into relatively more secure and better paid working class
employment for protestants and a hold by the Catholic church over a group of Catholic workers that
usually were allocated more casual and lower paid employment. There was a discernible Green-Orange
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The point to draw here is the extent to which Liverpool was a melting pot for many
different communities and how this has shaped the broader city-region today. There are
two distinctive aspects of the syndicalism of that time that have remained relevant
throughout the 20th and into the 21st Century. The waterfront and maritime industries and
trades not only delivered a multi-cultural Liverpool milieu, but because of the often
casualised low pay, laid the foundation for activism among the working class organizations
of the city (Holton, 1973). The second point is that the rank and file character of
syndicalism provided a most pertinent influence upon the character of the Liverpool cityregion. For example, not only was the opposition to casualised labor a refutation of capitalimposed work discipline but was also a rejection of the national labor bureaucracy (Waller,
1981; Belchem, 2006). The conditions of this period, a time when syndicalism was at its
height led to collectivism and importantly, not only hostility to capitalism but to the formal
leadership of the labor movement. Here was a movement that for some overcame sectional
interests (Holton, 1973; OBrien, 2012) but for others failed to do (Waller, 1981; Belchem,
2006), yet ultimately this period became the starting point for a much larger narrative about
industrial militancy in the Liverpool city-region.
As if to confirm that history matters, in response to the significant strike wave in
Liverpool in 1911 Ramsey Macdonald then a leading figure in the Independent Labor Party
and later to lead a coalition National Government for which he was expelled from the Labor
Party stated Liverpool is rotten and we had better recognize it (Belchem, 2011, p. 24) and
during the strikes complained about how very difficult it has been for us to control certain
forces (House of Commons Debate, August 16th 1911). This brings us to the important
question of what type of syndicalism was constituted at this moment. Holton (1976)
believes British syndicalism exhibited anti-state behavior although its focus on
revolutionary change through industrialism was very different from the insurrectionist
Bolshevist ideas emanating in the UK and even from the French syndicalists. 4 This in spite
of violent demonstrations and deaths in Liverpool during the 1911 strike that also led to the
deployment of a naval battleship with its guns directed at the city (OBrien, 2012). Holton
(1973) however captures the root of such analysis when he asks whether the syndicalism of
this time was a mood of discontent or an ideology with a theoretical basis. If it is the former
then we would expect to see a short lived movement and a singular reference point in time
as those such as Waller (1981) and Belchem (2011) would suggest, a movement unable to
overcome prejudices to be found in its midst. If the latter then some legacy would be
apparent, a vestige related to overcoming sectional interests and one that would provide a
longer base for anti-capitalist resistance.
divide that prior to WWI was much more marked than in Glasgow. Waller (1981) provides a thorough
account but also see Smith (1980) and Belchem (2007) for more on this. Smith (1980) for example
argues that there was a clear failure of syndicalist leaders in Liverpool to face religious sectarianism
and that this left the working class in the hand of the Tories, Irish Nationalists and right wing labour
organisers. We also know that attacks on those in the Black community, the Chinese community and
the German community took place, while Melville explained that the negro steps with a prouder pace
in Liverpool than in America (Lane, 1987, p. 117) and OMara (1994) described how local white
women appreciated Black husbands because of their commitment to financial and family stability.
4
In particular the work Comment nous ferons la rvolution (How we shall make the revolution) by
French syndicalists E.Pataud and E.Pouget, see Holton (1976).
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a bonus for the media were the shop-floor representatives who were certain to
supply pithy and slightly sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek replies to pushy young
interviewers sent up from London. (Lane, 1987, p.153 original emphasis)
Whether this imagery was justified is a disputed point. Yet as pointed out at the time, the
reaction by workers in Liverpool during the 1960s and 1970s were a response to
international attempts at rationalization (Merseyside Socialist Research Group, 1980, p.
21), in other words local workplace action in resistance to the causes of globalization rather
than militancy as a cause of poor economic performance.
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produced a negative discourse within a national - not international - context that is resented
locally.
The negative discourse that Boland refers to has formed over time and in some cases
is distinctly political; Thatcher was encouraged to manage the decline of the Liverpool cityregion in the early 1980s by her ministerial team, other than through the views of Michael
Heseltine (Travis, 2011). Paddy Ashdown former leader of the Liberal Democrats described
the Speke district in South Liverpool as worse than Sarajevo (Novak, 2003) and the then
Home Secretary Jack Straw when addressing a crime prevention meeting in Milton Keynes
casually remarked You know what Scousers are like, they are always up to something
(Boland, 2008, p.365).6
Over a decade ago when bids were being received for the 2008 European Capital of
Culture designation that was subsequently awarded to Liverpool, it was reported on the
BBC website that when
newspapers need a feature on juvenile crime, poverty, drugs or the inefficient
workings of the criminal justice system, the lazy journalist looks no further than
Liverpool... [adding] Some people still see as fact the fictional city evoked in
the 1980s sitcom Bread, a place of work-shy, dole-cheating chancers
(Rohrer, 2002, no page number)
In 1982 a Daily Mirror reporter casually reported that [t]hey should build a fence
around [Liverpool]... it has become a showcase of everything that has gone wrong in
Britains major cities (cited in Lane, 1987, p.13). While in a recent BBC Radio 4 program,
the Liberal MP Alan Beith was speaking about a forthcoming By-Election in Edge Hill,
Liverpool during the Lib-Lab pact of the late 1970s reportedly asked do you want another
militant headbanger from Merseyside? (BBC Radio 4, The Reunion, broadcast on 25th
August 2013). Even in recent months, in an argument against financial regulation and tax
fraud the Prime Minister of the Isle of Man warned If we destroy our financial system, we
will become a kind of Liverpool, but with a worse climate (Marn, 2013) while those such
as Leunig and Swaffield (2008) presented a pre-financial crisis, market-logic reasoning to
suggest how a place like Liverpool has lost so much population that it will never reach an
optimum size to stimulate new growth. The message that followed was move away.
Here the importance is the constant reiteration of a particular imagery and how it has
become a contributory factor to the way enterprising activity in the contemporary Liverpool
city-region has been problematized. On the one hand there is the production of evidence
that associates local economic decline to a lack of entrepreneurial spirit. This appears
irrefutable, although it is argument based on an instrumentalist and normative approach to
understanding what enterprising activity is and reduces its essence to economic growth and
wealth creation. Related to this is the narrative that developed around the Liverpool cityregion formed during the 20th Century and continually reiterated in negative tones from
politicians and the media regardless of political hue. This was a narrative that provided
strong images in the post war period, at a time when industrial restructuring was occurring
6
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in places beyond Liverpool. The syndicalist past of the city-region provided an historic
starting point for an imagery that followed and likewise we should ask what it means for the
type of entrepreneurial future that can be shaped for the Liverpool city-region.
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formation rate in Knowsley at 4.81, St Helens (5.23) and Halton (5.36) is noticeably lower
than that for the North West region (7.31) and England (8.55) overall (ibid).7
Indeed, while figures from the LEP network show the city-region to be among the top
five LEP areas in new business start up (ibid) in their latest evidence report the Liverpool
City Region Local Enterprise Partnership point to the problems they face.
The Liverpool City Region has 37,600 businesses; however, the City Region
has a deficit of 18,500 businesses compared to the national average. Growth in
the overall business stock has mirrored the national average over recent years
despite business start-up rates being below the national average, a result of
business closure rates not being as bad as nationally. However churn in
business start-up and closure rates is generally seen as indicative of an
entrepreneurial culture (many new starts will fail; hence, having a high start-up
rate even with a higher failure rate is seen as a positive). Business survival rates
are broadly similar to national rates; hence it is critical for the City Region to
have more business start-ups. The lower level of business start-ups is further
reflected by below average levels of self-employment and the fact that the City
Region has a lower number of micro-businesses (less than 5 employees) than
nationally. (Christie, 2013, emphasis in original)
The report by the LEP also shows a weakness in the types of businesses, for example less
higher value-added enterprises, in the types of jobs, less knowledge intensive employment
opportunities and less impact from exports, although with a slightly better performance in
GVA per capita than the UK overall and significantly better than other regions in the north
of England (ibid).
These statistics are a continuation of a negative story about the city-region and
provide a description of a poorer performing local economy, albeit missing the crude
narrative demonstrated above. However it is a discourse that continues to negate the subtle
differences of place that are critically important to help explain why and how enterprising
activity takes place. The point to grasp is that the reason for the poor performance of the
Liverpool city-region in terms of levels of enterprise and entrepreneurship lies in the
nuances that this place has experienced.
Yet the city-region is a place that has undergone major transformation. In recent years
a number of prestige initiatives have been attracted to the city, and alongside physical
regeneration this has led to a significant increase in tourism and consumer spending. As we
have seen this has been an economically distressed place in which its population has
suffered from social and economic decline and tagged as militant and even work-shy. The
leaders of the six local authorities that make up the city-region have also recognized the
need to respond to under performance and negative perception. The establishment of a City
Mayor for Liverpool, the close connection with the Liverpool City-Region LEP and the
recent designation of a Liverpool city-region Combined Authority are a response to this.
7
This is a rate of new enterprise formation calculated on population, 1,000 economically active persons
per number of new businesses started in 2011.
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The City Mayor for Liverpool Joe Anderson spoke at the beginning of 2014 and pointed out
how the city was now aggressively promoting itself as a place to attract new investment
(Anderson, January 2nd 2014) while the Chair of the LEP in outlining the ambitions for the
city-region to the UK Prime Minister Cameron also spoke of the drive for growth and
investment (Liverpool LEP, April 3rd 2014). This is an update of the language used by the
Mayor that Liverpool will be the entrepreneurship capital of the world and that business is
in our blood and follows on from the city-regions showing at the 2010 Shanghai Expo, the
2013 internationally renowned and Kauffman Foundation led Global Entrepreneurship
Congress hosted at the waterfront conference centre and the 2014 International Festival for
Business held across Liverpool city-region (Southern, 2014).
This objective of growth is predicated on five strategic aims as set out in Figure 1.
Behind this is the development of a city-region enterprise strategy to coordinate the aims of
the Combined Authority and led by a Chief Executive of one of the local authorities not
by an elected local politician. The Liverpool city-region enterprise strategy will promote an
entrepreneurial culture aimed at new business start up, to stimulate 5,000 new enterprises by
2020 including 2,000 additional women running businesses. It will seek to diversify
enterprises into new markets that support export potential and investment into research and
development and encourage greater investment by enterprises into the skills of their
employees. And as part of the strategy European funding and funds to be accessed from
UK Government schemes will be coordinated to support its objectives (ibid). Objectives
such as these are problematic for two reasons.
Figure 1
Liverpool City-region Five Strategic Objectives
Market Liverpool city centre as a global brand, as a business and visitor destination; a
location for growth in knowledge assets.
The Liverpool City Region Freight and Logistics Hub exploiting the natural assets of place,
particularly the waterfront.
Develop the city-region energy supply to a more low carbon provision using off-shore wind
energy and marine energy generation stimulating supply chain growth.
Enhanced access to the Port of Liverpool thereby increasing the capacity to and from the
waterfront.
Establish a City Region Capital Investment Fund to coordinate funding from Europe and the
UK Government Growing Places Fund to support transformational projects such as the
Enterprise Zones (Liverpool City Zone, Mersey Waters and Daresbury).
(Source: Liverpool LEP, 2014b)
Strategic objectives such as these are difficult to discern from platitude. Working within a
normative framework, many would want growth. At the same many other cities adopt very
similar objectives around new enterprise start up, innovation and technology. One might
argue that visions and strategies such as those offered by agencies like LEPs are part of the
response to a negative images and that they have more potential when seen as part of a new
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discourse about a place. Even in a rejuvenated Liverpool there are many different
entrepreneurial narratives. One is the pursuit of (often desperate) survival strategies by inner
urban communities and their engagement in economic activities that may be read
simultaneously as resistance or enterprising. This perspective is not only grounded in the
reality of the relationship between entrepreneur and worker or entrepreneur as worker, in a
dynamic form that provides an understanding wider than the traditional rhetoric to be found
in strategic documents that simply portray enterprise as utopian with entrepreneurs willingly
riding into the fight against urban economic under performance.
Indeed, in interviews with local people about entrepreneurship in the Liverpool cityregion we can find various references to the past, to resistance and opportunity in the
flamboyant style of the Cunard Yank.8 In some cases we can see a direct link to the past, to
the tradition of the particular neighborhood drawing out the essence of the community in
which visions about entrepreneurialism are formed:
its all about leadership and entrepreneurial spirit our community was run
by matriarchs our house always full of kids, a plate of scouse on and Mum
would look after them [this was] an inadvertent entrepreneurial spirit
(Business and social enterprise development worker, early 2014)
This notion of an entrepreneurial culture would be exactly what local agencies would seek
to create. However, it has a complex make-up and in some instances the skills for enterprise
are articulated through informal or illegal business acumen, through the trading post of the
local drug dealer or the mathematics of the youth in the betting shop; a point articulated
previously by a business advisor.
Our research shows that [people living in low income communities] are more
entrepreneurial. The reason for that is to survive in a deprived area youve got
to be, the word they use is street-wise, and when you look you find its all about
having the skills to survive. Many of those are entrepreneurial skills. The simple
answer is we find and all our research shows people in deprived areas tend to be
more entrepreneurial by nature. (Business support advisor B, Winter, 2006/7)
The idea of a drive to resist the inequities of capitalism translating through the entrepreneur
of the self is a constant theme when thinking about how entrepreneurship is engaged by
those in urban economies.
Theres no shortage of people in our poorest areas sick of being hard up and
wanting to do something about it. They might have illusions about getting rich
quick but I dont think theres any general aversion towards working for a
living [they may] like the idea of working in a relatively unconstrained
The extracts from the interviews that follow are drawn from before the Great Recession, circa 20062007 where the study was on how you stimulate enterprise in low income communities and in more
recent years where the focus has been maintained.
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framework and dealing with customers and suppliers and the like found the
better deal than working in a big hierarchy
(Business support advisor A, Autumn, 2006)
And while this can show ambition in the traditional sense of entrepreneurial behavior we
should recognize how this type of enterprise is often precarious and grounded in a reality
often absent in the glory of much entrepreneurship research, as this entrepreneur, a small
caf owner, explains.
I think I just wanted to break the mould of working on the side [i.e. informally]
Im 32 now and my daughter is 14 and I just wanted I got a council house
in a really nice area and I fought to get it and Ive moved every two years in my
life since my daughter was born. And I wanted something better for us, but I
seem to be worse off, completely financially the business isnt making money
and you are only entitled to so much family tax [credit] we were going to get
a loan from the bank to get an oven in [fitted] and we could serve breakfasts to
meet the demand when people come in, and were scared of not being able to
pay the bank back. And were in a dilemma (interview with local
entrepreneur Y, early 2008)
This precariousness is similar to that experienced by the casual laborer at the height of
syndicalist Liverpool. Yet we see too, aspects of class as a characteristic remaining in
todays entrepreneurs.
One community worker whose efforts were focused on the provision of credit and in
part, specifically for new business start up was clear about the influence of the trade union
movement on what he did and the outcomes. He explained that the influence of working for
Ford Motors was important because his experience
never left the influence of the trade union and workers education [adding
that entrepreneurship is] not all Dragons Den some people are happy with a
small loan, with a ladder and a chamois; theyll make a living, theyll have a
holiday with the kids and a good Christmas
(Credit Union Manager, early 2014)
And while this refers to the modest side of enterprise, another one time activist believed that
in their campaign to resist the then Thatcher Government it wouldnt have entered our
head that we were entrepreneurs but we were and added:
In the 1980s we defended our space, tried to resist closures and so on. And
they still closed. Now its about being adaptable rather than just defending,
flexible and see what opportunities arise. (Ex Left campaigner and now social
entrepreneur, Spring 2014)
175
Again, consistent with the notion of resistance and being conscious of something else
driving a type of entrepreneurial behavior, as one entrepreneur explained.
You see I think if you are an entrepreneur youre an entrepreneur its there
its in you some very big social movements have arisen from like, women in
working class communities over the years so its kind of there and that just
comes out of need and the desire to improve your family doesnt it
(interview with local entrepreneur X, Autumn, 2006)
The skills of being an entrepreneur and an agitator are similar:
its your organizing skills. I treat business like a campaign. The sectors I work
with are the sectors I care about. I want to fight for them. It attracts me to it.
(Ex Left campaigner and now social entrepreneur, Spring 2014)
And specifically about place, when asked if there was anything distinctively about
Liverpool that came out in entrepreneurial behavior, this interviewee replied: Yes. I put a
front on, big time, entirely consistent with Beynons trade unionist in Fords and Lanes
colorful Cunard Yank.
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global capitalism and how the shape of that resistance finds its way into many spheres of the
urban economy. We might also see the precarious nature of enterprise as part of this general
struggle.
These characteristics suggest that rather than accepting an entrepreneurial narrative
that is fatalistic (see Parkinson, 2011 for an analysis of such a perspective), in the sense of
being accepting of an orthodox type of enterprise imposed from neoliberal ideals seen in
official strategy documents and doomed to under perform, that here is enterprise that has
in addition a political, social and cultural hue. Instead of passively accepting the negative
discourse about the problem of entrepreneurship being one of local communities, that the
lack of entrepreneurial spirit is a deficit in the make up of local people and that there is only
a single means by which entrepreneurial behavior can be considered to be a success, we
should open possibilities of exploring the relationship between those on the Left and profit
making and for example, about the association between activism and enterprising activity.
We can juxtapose class, wealth creation and profit making as a central part of understanding
entrepreneurship and to understand how places can find their legitimacy in a globalized
system.
If there is an emergent cadre of entrepreneurs with historic roots in a once syndicalist
city-region itself fashioned by powerful global interests centered on the waterfront as part of
an Imperial British trading centre we might draw on Lane to finish this paper, who in 1987
(p.162) wrote the following.
Liverpools future lies in being a different place and not in trying to be again
what it was before.
Re-imagining enterprising activities in the Liverpool city-region is likely to be a substantive
part of such a future.
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