To: [log in to unmask]

 

9 Mar 2024

 

I sent the email below to Susan Calman on her website. But just in case it does not reach her, I am writing to ask you to forward it to her.  I very much hope for a full response!

 

Marika Sherwood

 

  

Good afternoon!

 

I watched your program on Liverpool yesterday. You appear to be uninterested in the real history of the city. or maybe you just dont want to publicise such history. Liverpool grew, and grew rich, from the trade in enslaved Africans and their produce on plantations in the Americas. There is a superb museum about this in the city which you did not explore. You visited many areas but not Toxteth, which used to be  the home of the Black community - and of Pastor Daniels Ekarte who did so much there.  Nothing about the conditions of the seamen and work force. And no Black historians - in fact not one Black face.

Should you be labelled as a supporter of racial and social discrimination?

 

Marika Sherwood

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First response from Channel 5:

From: Customer Services <[log in to unmask]> 12 March 2024

Your Reference:  VE/97219/CS (Please quote this reference in all further correspondence)                                                              

 

Dear Marika Sherwood

Thank you for getting in touch regarding Susan Calman’s Great British Cities series. The series aims to celebrate each city by finding entertaining characters and stories that reveal new and little-known angles on the history of each location.

The remit was to provide viewers with alternative locations and stories to enjoy, rather than those that feature prominently in guidebooks and are already well-known areas in the locations.

In the Liverpool episode, this led us to tell the story of Irish immigrants to the city with a profile of Kitty Wilkinson and how she played a key role in saving the poorer population from disease.  

However, in other programmes we feature a range of stories that represent minority communities and feature contributors from individuals from diverse backgrounds.  For example, in our Leeds episode our main story is that of Arthur France, the man responsible for the first Leeds West Indian Carnival whose passion and determination to unite communities arguably has, over three generations of his family, given the city the multicultural vibrancy it enjoys today.

Great British Cities is not a heavyweight history series outlining the full and complete stories of our grand conurbations. It’s a selective and more idiosyncratic journey with some of the hidden historical characters and stories that have made them.  For example, with Kitty Wilkinson and philanthropist Joseph Williamson, we were able to pay tribute to some individuals whose contribution to the city is perhaps lesser known.  

Liverpool and its diverse communities have featured prominently in other series we’ve made in the past.  For example , an episode of the Walking Victorian Britain series, presented by Dr Onyeka Nubia, examines Liverpool’s connections to the slave trade and can be watched online using My5 (our video-on-demand service).  For reference, Liverpool features in episode 2 and might be of interest.

I hope you continue to watch Great British Cities with all of this in mind. We are sorry that the lack of a story relating to the Maritime Museum itself has prompted you to get in touch. If this was a full history of the city, then that would have featured. And we would point you to the remaining programmes to fully appreciate the approach to the portraits of our great cities in this series.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Chris

VIEWER ENQUIRIES MANAGER

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My reply,  13 March 2024

 

Thank you, dear Chris.

 

But, if ‘The series aims to celebrate each city by finding entertaining characters and stories that reveal new and little-known angles on the history of each location’ how could you omit the international Slavery Museum? And not recognise in a ‘very loud voice’, so to speak, that without is hosting a large proportion of Britain’s trade in enslaved Africans and their produce from the plantations, Liverpool would have remained a small port for fishing and local trade with Ireland. The town really only began to develop from about the middle of the 17^th century – with the new trade in enslaved Africans and their produce on the plantations in the Americas.  I have seen reports that 80% of this British trade was from Liverpool. So: in 1700 the population was c. 6,000; by 1800 it was c. 77,000; and in 1831 it was c. 165,000. And, though slave trading was declared illegal in 1807, Liverpool continued illegally – until the early 1860s.

You also wrote: ‘Great British Cities is not a heavyweight history series outlining the full and complete stories of our grand conurbations. It’s a selective and more idiosyncratic journey with some of the hidden historical characters’.  So how you could omit an explanation for the growth of this ‘conurbation’? And for example not tell the story of Dorothy Kuya’s work on the city’s history,  or that of Pastor Daniels Ekarte in support of the workers, both Black and white in the Toxteth area? Your  ‘selective’ history has omitted anything that is not ‘pleasant’, that does not put England/Britain into a ‘glorious’ light…..

That Onyeka’s program told this story is irrelevant – as is what I have written about it – to the content of this new program.

I think you should insert some sort of apology for the omission of all this history in this program series.

 

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After some reminders, Channel 5 Response: : 28^th March 2024

 

Your Reference:  VE/97219/CS (Please quote this reference in all further correspondence)                                                              

 

Dear Marika Sherwood

 

Thank you for further emails regarding Susan Calman’s Great British Cities series. We have taken note of your points and thank you for getting in touch.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Chris