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Leadership and Policy Quarterly

December 2014, Volume 3, Issue 4, pp. 157-179


Copyright Untested Ideas Research Center
http://www.untestedideas.com/journals.php?journal=LPQ
ISSN: 2168-7692 (Print); ISSN: 2168-7706 (Online)

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.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND PLACE


An important part of this paper is to challenge the normative discourse that is
associated with entrepreneurship and enterprise research. This is a complex thing to do
although there is an emerging critique of entrepreneurship research and there is within the
general entrepreneurship literature a recognition of a wide range of motivations behind
enterprising behavior. Nevertheless, we can see that all enterprise is not simply founded on
profit maximization, there are social enterprises for instance that have community-based
social goals and we can also identify entrepreneurial behavior that is not about trade but is
associated with resistance to historic and contemporary structures of power. The behaviors
that can be seen in the recent occupy movement would fall into this category. By opening
up an analysis of entrepreneurship and enterprise to the characteristics of place we take into
account a wider range of activity that may fall within, or be excluded from, the common
sense description of the field. This should help us go beyond the stultifying debates around
definition of entrepreneurship and should help to problematize its situatedness in todays
world.
Normative entrepreneurship research tends to be over reliant on a single cause or
grouping of variables that suggests wealth creation as an outcome of behavior or
physchological traits. These support ideas about enterprise as the heartbeat of lassize faire
market exchange and are tied to a certain instrumentalist approach to explaining the
importance of enterprise and entrepreneurship. If we are to expand our understanding of
urban economies then we need to acknowledge the dialectics at work, which in this case
means recognizing the role location plays in shaping enterprise.

Foucault and the Entrepreneur of the Self


The notion of the entrepreneur has become the bedrock assumption in a neoliberal
explanation of contemporary society. Foucault argues that the definitions we might use to
understand entrepreneurship are limited, increasingly exceptionalised and hold within them
an agenda about what is and what is not entrepreneurship. This is important because the
debate inspired by Gartner (1989) through his article titled Who is an entrepreneur? Is the
wrong question raised a contrasting examination between intrinsic characteristics, the traits
of the entrepreneur, and the actions of the entrepreneur, the creators of organizations. Both
definition types however, fall into the same category of overall analysis and end up
excluding some forms of enterprise and therefore inevitably define what is and what is not
deserving of the term entrepreneurship.

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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).

Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and Place


The entrepreneur of the self is situated in time and space, and the emphasis here is its
situatedness in place. This brings out the relationship between social and cultural behavior
and economic behavior. Hudson (2004) might wish to see these as complementary
perspectives to help understand the more nuanced aspects of urban economies, although
here we can also use the context of place to question the essentialist approach often adopted
in entrepreneurship research. While this is a theoretical enquiry with its own importance, it
is also empirical. From outside the Liverpool city-region a discourse has formed about this
place that suggests the local economy has remained in deficit because it (that is the people
in the city-region coming to represent the place as an aggregate) has lacked a so-called
entrepreneurial spirit. Accordingly, the city-region has a reputation for being anti-enterprise
and such views deserve to be examined.
We know that there are many different modes of economic and social life in a
complex system of wealth creation. Those such as Bjerke and Rm (2011) have been
influenced by Heidegger to explain enterprising behavior as an activity that recognizes how
human action in timely places constitutes different expressions of the concept (p.48).
Their notion of entrepreneuring moves away from what they refer to as the static
interpretation of entrepreneurship to an action and active-based phenomenological
explanation that gives meaning to behaviors. These authors argue for a relational
understanding that examines the social relations of the interplay of time, timing, space,
place and entrepreneuring.1 This would be, as Foucault (1997) would contend, place that is
marked by difference, something that does not develop in a vacuum but develops through a
set of relationships, the dynamics that give a place its own special meaning. In this sense
entrepreneurship in one place cannot be exactly replicated in another.

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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Thus, to reduce our analysis of entrepreneurship in the Liverpool city-region to a


single and intrinsic cause would limit our understanding of not only what has happened
previously but what could happen in the future. Indeed Foucaults position on the
entrepreneur of the self and his contention that we are in the epoch of space is an antiessentialist approach and from this we can challenge normative notions of enterprise
through the complexity of lived experience (Gibson-Graham, 2006). This provides the basis
from which to consider a potential association of syndicalism and enterprising activity in
the Liverpool city-region. Anti-essentialism can help us to recognize that through time and
space, there may be a relationship between syndicalism and enterprise.
Therefore we may paraphrase Gibson-Graham (2006, p.88) and propose as follows:
First we may acknowledge that in the representation and operation of global
capitalism we experience local diversity. We should therefore expect to see difference that is
based on spatial and historic attributes. The task here is to produce a particular account of
a generalized understanding of global capitalism, an account that helps us to understand
the multitude variations in the local economy particularly the diversity of enterprising
activity, in this case in the Liverpool city-region.
The overriding proposition in this paper is centered upon how syndicalism and
collective resistance through industrial militancy may well have shaped the forms of
enterprising activities we see today in a particular place. The values attached to traditional
and often functionalist entrepreneurship research do little to support such an examination.
Gibson-Grahams notion of anti-essentialism overcomes those that suggest a single
essence of cause behind the entrepreneurs creation of wealth, or that the behavior of the
entrepreneur is an outcome of particular identifiable human characteristics and instead
broadens the possibilities for research in the context of the political economy. As change in
the urban economy takes place in a systemic manner we should expect enterprising activity
to sit at the nexus of a bewildering complexity of natural and social processes, constituting
it as a site of contradiction, tension, difference, and instability (Gibson-Graham, 2006,
p.74). An approach like this broadens the possibilities for research and helps to position this
work in the context of the political economy. This provides a way in which we can think
about the association of syndicalism and enterprising activity and avoid a teleological story
of the Liverpool city-region.
Often a number of assumptions are made about the economy of the Liverpool cityregion. The two most pertinent in problematising enterprising activity here are that it is not
entrepreneurial enough and that this is a place with a poor reputation. Part of this narrative
is about a poorer performing urban economy with official statistics showing the city-region
to be below the average in terms of new business start up per head of population, likewise in
other variables that provide the correct environment in supporting enterprise (Southern,
2014). As a result additional public sector funding through initiatives such as European
Objective I Structural Funds, are required blocking entrepreneurial spirit and opportunity
just as Murdoch would have us believe. In turn local governance agencies accept this
position and lobby hard for support that prioritises enterprise as an important strategic
theme. This then adds to the poor national reputation that the city-region has suffered from.
Often at the centre of this imagery is a perception about industrial militancy. So that when
the two are put together a particular argument emerges. Lower levels of enterprising activity

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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.

FROM A SYNDICALIST PAST


In the Liverpool city-region the waterfront is important as a scene of social and
cultural exchange including large-scale immigration and migration via the port. It is also
relevant to the industrial struggle and conflict seen in those mass general industries such as
transport and the docks. We can reinforce the point that place matters with Liverpool cityregion as a space that constitutes structures and relations that has meaning with a
differentiated pattern of enterprising activities where the entrepreneurial character of place
will manifest in a wide variety and possibly contradictory ways. This meaning has given a
resistance and culture that may not only be deemed to be entrepreneurial in some way but is
built on a mix of syndicalist past and cultural modernity that has fused to give the Liverpool
city-region something of a uniqueness or at the very least, a particular perspective on what
is enterprising behavior.
This example of time and space dynamics helps to explain what enterprising activity
can be by taking into account the different dynamics under which entrepreneurship takes
place. For example we can acknowledge the different rationales and causes that exist for
engaging in enterprise other than just profit maximization; we might consider the diverse
ways in which economic life is organized, for instance into cooperatives, between families,
through local money networks and of the many ways in which surpluses can be generated
and importantly, distributed (Gibson-Graham, 2006). This approach can add to our
knowledge of critical research under development in the field of entrepreneurship and
enterprise (see for example Gill, 2014; Harvey, 2005; Jones and Spicer, 2005; and the
authors in Southern, 2011).
Many commentators have made reference to the exceptional nature of Liverpools
history (cf. Waller, 1981, Mutch, 2003 and Belchem, 2006) although it was the Liverpool
Transport Strike of 1911 that provided the anchor point for the syndicalist character of the
city-region.2 This is however, a point that has sparked much debate among historians. Time
and space prevents a reproduction of the detail here, but important to note that syndicalism
is a complex term and that 1911 Liverpool has contested analyses. Some of these will be
outlined in a moment, suffice to say that the theoretical point to draw from this section of
the paper is that the characteristics of the Liverpool city-region have been shaped by its
syndicalist past and that we should expect, as a principle of anti-essentialism that the
complexity of enterprising behavior in the city-region reflects this in some way. This would
be the starting point to repudiate the notion that a syndicalist past is part of the barrier to
2

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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Listing characteristics is often theoretically limited, although with a strong focus on


the impact from the waterfront Lane (1987) has indicated the qualities of Liverpool people
including such attributes as being anarchic, disregarding of status, refusal to be servile,
independent mindedness, sceptical towards authority and a strong democratic inclination in
the way people think, feel and act rather than engage with politics. There is also an
entrepreneurial aspect to this, with informal types of trading regarded as socially acceptable.
The Cunard Yank, a term applied to young Liverpool seamen by locals 5 reflected the
swagger of those who adopted the idioms of US behavior, something that in some ways was
an entrepreneurial character of local labor leaders as shown by Beynon (1975) and still
evident today as we see below. At this time Harold Wilson, the Labor Prime Minister and
MP for local constituency Huyton, bemoaned that the 1966 National Union of Seamens
strike was being led by Liverpools band of communist agitators (cited in Towers, 2011,
p.281). Beynon (1975) captured not only the dynamics in workplace relations between
employers and employees, but the characteristics of the representatives of labour, the shop
stewards specifically in the Halewood Ford factory during the 1960s and early 1970s and
their relationship with workers.
Beynon describes the hiring of local people in Fords in the late 1960s:
These lads wanted the money. They dressed well, lived it up, with girls and
music [Fords] had nothing to offer them but money. They wanted to take
their Fridays off and have a good time. They didnt want to put petrol tanks in
motors. (Benyon, 1975, p.139)
And explains how these workers could only be pulled into the structures of the
workplace through their respect for the local union representative. For Lane (1987) this is
about the construction of Liverpool people with a common identity but always with
contradictions based around religion and ethnicity (Waller, 1981).
Nevertheless, this identity meant that the militancy seen in the UK as workplace
conflict arose in many nationwide companies became seen as Liverpool focused. Whether
Dunlops, Pilkington or Fords national industrial unrest had a very specific localised
causation.
The docks apart, it was events at Fords which more than anything else helped
Liverpool acquire its militant reputation. Ford workers were translated into
Liverpool workers and so when, for example, the press discovered an exiled
Liverpudlian at the head of the Pilkington strike in 1970, a front page headline
shouted SCOUSE POWER. The fact that almost anything Liverpool was
news in the 1960s contributed to the attention that Ford workers received - and
I do Lane (1987) a disservice here. Cunard was a major shipping company and the Liverpool Cunard
Yanks absorbed the democratic style of public manners they found in their contacts with East Coast
working Americans (p.108), an example of how Liverpool people have been affected by other cultural
norms based on the significance of the waterfront. Interestingly, Lane refers to Derek Hatton, a Militant
Tendency council leader, as a contemporary Cunard Yank, a typically assertive arriviste (1987,
p.160).
5

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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.

CREATING A CERTAIN DISCOURSE AND IMAGERY


The interwar post war UK industrial and regional policy did provide some alternative
factory employment, particularly in the outer districts such as Knowsley and Wirral
connecting these places to a network of national and multi-national corporation branch
plants (Meegan, 2003; Towers, 2011). Industries such as car making, pharmaceuticals, food
processing and factories producing textiles and household appliances were expanded or
introduced into the local economy. Yet it was membership of the European Economic
Community in the early 1970s that led to a shift in maritime trade away from the
Commonwealth, North America and South East Asia and towards Europe served by ports
on the east of England. This along with the crisis of global capitalism in the middle of the
decade led to the collapse of many branch plants on Merseyside as newer and existing
industries began to close at a time earlier than experienced in other parts of the country.
This view of an enterprise deficit in the Liverpool city-region has been perpetuated by
the popular media, policy makers and politicians to help explain the under performance of
the local economy and the persistence of poverty, which is over represented among the local
population. It provides a certain type of imagery, a discourse rooted in the 20th Century and
one that has constantly been repeated to provide a popular narrative of Liverpool city-region
as a deprived and downtrodden location. Part of this is to generalize about the population
and for instance, how they seem happy to engage in industrial militancy forming part of a
wider picture of an undesirable city (Wilks-Heeg, 2003) with a deficient character (Boland,
2008) and a lack of dynamism. Frost and North (2013) explain the views of the then Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher who despite having little to do with the city felt qualified to talk
about Liverpool people to a then local MP.
The problem with your constituents is that they dont start up their own
businesses. Theyve got no entrepreneurial spirit. Theyve got no get-up-andgo (Robert Kilroy-Silk, cited in Frost and North (2013, p.16)
There is some evidence more recently as the city has sought a renaissance, of a counter
narrative that has emerged mainly from governance officials (Southern, 2014). Yet Boland
(2008) explains that the construction of the Liverpool image, both place and people, has

RE-IMAGINING ENTERPRISING ACTIVITIES IN THE LIVERPOOL CITY-REGION

169

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

Scouser is the name given to local people, born in Liverpool.

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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.

AND SO TO AN ENTREPRENEURIAL FUTURE


The Liverpool city-region has a particular structure for enterprise now because of the
way economic and social relations developed around the waterfront and specifically,
because of how these have changed in recent decades. Historically the city-region had a
very different industrial structure than many northern cities; around a third of all
employment in the city-region was in manufacturing in the period after World War II,
significantly lower than the national average of 52% and much less than other
manufacturing intensive northern cities (Towers, 2011). Liverpool city-region experienced
a marked industrial decline although unlike the post-1970s industrial restructuring in other
cities, it was the slow and gradual decline of the port and the related industries of what was,
essentially a port and maritime-led local economy that proved to be most significant.
While jobs were being lost in manufacturing, the decline in services employment was
because of the city-region reliance on maritime and port industries. This occurred at a time
when other places had tentatively begun to experience growth in the service sector (Lloyd
and Reeve, 1982). According to Lloyd and Mason (1984) Liverpool city-region was an
environment not likely to be an attractive proposition to budding entrepreneurs. Yet this
was something of a paradox
... while the demand for some form of new enterprise on Merseyside has never
been greater, the logic of the background conditions for new firm formation
would seem in this case to suggest that the supply of such firms is likely to be
seriously limited. (Lloyd and Mason, 1984, p.211)
New businesses that were being started in the city-region tended to differ from those
starting up in more affluent areas in the south of England. It would seem the characteristics
of place mattered as responses to industrial restructuring were identified.
The contemporary characteristics of the city-region tend to reinforce that the cityregion is still a place not able to stimulate levels of enterprise in comparison to other places.
For example the city-region has experienced population decline since 1981 and only from
2001 is there evidence to suggest some of this is being reversed (Southern, 2014). For the
city-region what this means is a reduction in the potential tax base and it also reduces the
potential for local markets. The 2011 Census of Population shows managerial expertise,
argued to be an influence in new business start up at 3% lower than that for England, while
there are 2% more of the workforce in semi skilled routine occupations. We see the
Knowsley district of the city-region particularly low on managerial positions and high on
semi skilled workers. The rate of new businesses formed per 1,000 economically active
people in the city-region stood at 5.96 in 2011 compared to 8.55 for England. The business

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171

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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173

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)

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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.

CONCLUSION: RE-IMAGINING ENTERPRISING ACTIVITIES


IN THE LIVERPOOL CITY-REGION
The idea that syndicalism might have some association with enterprising activity,
with entrepreneurialism and enterprise may appear to be counter intuitive. The former has
been associated with revolutionary action, a resistance to capitalism and against the primary
source of wealth creation while the latter certainly in the recent period, is linked with
support for capitalism and wealth creation. Yet such an association is being theoretically
posited here; that the contemporary practice of entrepreneurship in the Liverpool city-region
should be considered to be influenced by the experiences of people across time and place.
In concluding, we might suggest that by exploring place based entrepreneurialism in
this way we acknowledge how enterprise is critical in wealth creation in an urban economy.
However, we can also see it in other ways. For example, the entrepreneur of the self may
be a contributory factor in the reproduction of disadvantage, inequality and low incomes.
We may find aspects of entrepreneurial behavior that are self-exploiting. And in quite a
contrary perspective we may categorize some types of entrepreneurial behavior in a way
that reflects a political character of a place, consistent with notions of rebellion, antiglobalization and against neo-liberalism. Taking such an approach helps us to re-imagine
enterprise in urban economies, providing greater possibilities for understanding current
dynamics that stimulate entrepreneurship in places like the Liverpool city-region. That the
meaning of place is based on a diversity of experience supports the argument that the
syndicalist past of Liverpool city-region can help us to understand entrepreneurial activities
today. This is also consistent with contemporary views about a generalized opposition to

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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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