Radicalism on the Waterfront: Imagining Alternative Futures in Liverpool, Marseille, and New Orleans

Abstract

Post-industrial port cities are commonly portrayed as radical cities ‘on the edge’: rebellious, anti-authoritarian, and fiercely independent.¹ Liverpool is described as a ‘rebel city’, a ‘militant city’, and a ‘city of radicals’ (cf. Belchem and Biggs 2011; Frost and North 2013). Marseille is ‘widely seen as the last great working class city in the country; a fact which recently acquired positive connotations, but has more com monly been noted with nose held’ (Dell’Umbria 2012: 69). New Orleans has a long history of activist racial politics, which some scholars have traced to the history of free people of colour before the Civil War and to long-standing traditions of black community activism (cf. O’Reilly and Crutcher 2006; Regis 2001). These claims to radicalism in Liverpool, Marseille, and New Orleans relate to histories of casual dock labour, rooted in traditions of working-class solidarity and struggle, and to his tories of grassroots resistance in excluded migrant communities. These traditions have been reflected in post-war municipal politics, which have been dominated by left-of-centre parties in each city.²