Love Lane Lives
The history of sugar in Liverpool and the effects of the closure of the Tate & Lyle sugar refinery, Love Lane
Viva Paddy Shennan, former Chief Feature writer of THE ECHO
Written by Ron Noon at 13:22 on Wednesday, April 28th 2021
First of all here is a short extract from a very long letter to Paddy.
“Hi Paddy, I wanted to write to you about whether you might be interested in doing a feature on Liverpool Tates Pensioners and the imminent 25th anniversary of the end of Sugar Cane Time in Liverpool Love Lane? There are various dimensions to this story and the very obvious one culminates in a party reunion of the old boys and girls from the white stuff at the Eldonian Village Hall on the 28th April.
That bash will be financed by a FTSE 100 company not registered as a charitable organisation, but which has effectively been “shamed” into reactivating its former philanthropic reputation. For a number of years I have vaingloriously tried to “bring back Christmas for the Tates Pensioners” but this time the letter sent off to the Sugar Giant down in Sugar Quay, had Jimmy McGovern, Alan Bleasdale, Jack Jones, Tony Benn, Brian Reade and Tony McGann’s names on it. I’ve been an irritant to Tates for a while, because of the nature of my corporate watch on them, but a few letters in the Guardian about “subsidy junkies” were for them containable. It was the famous scouse names and that of Wedgy Benn’s that alerted Tates to the dangers of a possible PR implosion “if” they ignored this “reasoned” request for a 25th anniversary do. It reminded them we were serious and so we now have a committee of boys from the whitestuff (and an Evertonian lecturer) organising how to spend £12,500 pounds on a party!
(There’s a letter from Jack Jones attached to this which I’m made up about and which I’ll read it out on the 28th. There’s also attached the “victory” letter I received from Tates as well as the letter that started off my “party” research in December 1999.The one with Mr Cube in the bottom left hand corner.)
I don’t want to bore you with too many details Paddy, especially after Saturday’s game, but here’s a bit of background to the the 25th anniversary of the closure of Love Lane on April 22nd 1981…
