The ransacking of Britain: why the people finally rose up against ‘sod you architecture’

The interview did not go well. I was in Liverpool as a journalist being shown a model for the city’s future by its proud architect, Graeme Shankland. I told him I regarded his city as the most magnificent port in Europe. He corrected me and said Liverpool was “glaringly obsolete”. His plan, produced in 1965, was to demolish two-thirds of the city centre as well as much of Everton, Toxteth and Sefton. A new metropolis of towers and slabs would rise, pierced by swooping motorway overpasses and tunnels. A few historic buildings might be allowed to survive.I was horrified and said so, making a tactless reference to the RAF’s “Bomber” Harris. I was much moved by a visit I had just made with a colleague to see a similar scorched-earth project in Manchester’s Hulme. We watched as Mancunians were herded on to buses with their belongings, to be dumped miles from their old homes on out-of-town estates. Many were in tears or dazed. We compared them with wartime refugees. They…