The Mecca of Birkenhead

Dear readers – for decades, the Mecca bingo hall in Birkenhead provided a regular meeting place for residents of all ages. Now, in the midst of the town's chaotic regeneration, it is being forced to close. Those that attended the bingo every week are worried about what will happen to the town's aging population, stripped of an important social place they once relied on for a sense of community. David Lloyd headed to the bingo hall this week to witness its final days – read his piece below. But first, your Post briefing.

Your Post briefing

Mersey Tunnel monument recreated: In news that will no doubt be a relief to anyone who makes regular use of the Queensway Tunnel, a replica of one of the two monuments either side of the entrances has been recreated. In 1934, two identical structures were designed by architect Herbert Rowse to sit at the Liverpool and Birkenhead mouths of the tunnel, but the Liverpool one was removed in the 1960s — probably because it looks like one of Nikola Tesla’s experimental towers gone awry. But never fear, lovers of symmetry: Liverpool City Region combined authority has ponied up the cash for a replica. The original black granite monument “stood as a symbol of the ambition and confidence that shaped Liverpool," said metro mayor Steve Rotheram — perhaps this counterfeit in reinforced concrete is also a symbol of some kind?

St Helens ditches Refugee Week: George Woodward, the new leader of St Helens borough council after Reform took control last month, has announced any Refugee Week activity will have to go without the authority’s funding this year. The previous Labour administration provided financial support to the event, which celebrates the "contributions, creativity, and resilience of refugees”. But Woodward said withdrawing this support showed the now Reform-led council’s commitment to "putting British people first", and that the definition of a refugee had become “corrupted.” "We're trying to plug these gaps because this is what makes this event amazing," said Emma Bamber, director of the non-profit Laziz Project who organise a a street food festival as part of the celebrations. "The music, the art, it's all part of culture and the idea that they could just withdraw all these things, it's just heartbreaking." A council spokesperson said the money put aside for Refugee Week will now go to other projects, such as supporting "refugees in resettlement". 

Echo by name, Echo by nature? And perhaps some collective amnesia at Echo HQ this week, after they reported on the resignation of Writing On The Wall’s trustees and credited their own reporting on the WhatsApp message debacle. We hate to remind The Echo, but we first reported on that story in November last year — nearly six months before they picked it up. While we’re all for sharing here at The Post, we’d at least like a little credit for our hard work. And we’d prefer it if you didn’t nick our headline, too…

We’ve sent a friendly email to their news desk asking for a correction. In the meantime, why not read our original reporting on the Writing On The Wall saga, here?

The Mecca of Birkenhead

Sue and Chris are holding each others’ hands as they walk into the hall. It’s 11am on a Saturday, and the place is already filling up. Tears are rolling down their faces. For almost thirty years they’ve sat at the same table at the Mecca in Birkenhead. This will be their last National, their last Cash Dash, their last chance to share an evening with a friendship circle built up over a generation. The Mecca is polishing its balls for its very last weekend.

Now in their late 70s, the friends - from just up the road in Oxton - tell me this will be a bittersweet afternoon: “We dreaded this day coming,” Sue says, “but the writing was on the wall. The council made it so hard for people to even get here, it never stood a chance.”

The Mecca club, hunkered beneath the town’s empty new office blocks, its decimated market hall and the shrinking roll-call of shops in the precinct, was the only sign of life in this blighted corner of downtown Birkenhead — but even that was dwindling. Now it, too, is closing this weekend after Mecca admitted that the town’s dithering regeneration - the closed car parks, the general air of chaos and confusion - has played a part in the once-popular Bingo hall’s demise. 

“We don’t know what we’ll do when it closes,” Sue tells me. “This isn’t our Bingo hall, it’s our little world. We know everyone here. We’ve seen mums and daughters come, and the daughters carry on the tradition with their friends when their mum dies. We get lots of young couples too. The council has just hung us out to dry. They don’t care about us - see how they’ve treated the market. If they’d have shopped there, they’d have treated it with more respect.”

As I look around the steadily filling-up hall, I get a sense of who this hall is for. It’s for the kind of people we’re slowly engineering out of our city centres. Take a look at the next artists’ impression you see promoting Birkenhead’s ambitious new plans and you’ll see bright young things on e-bikes, young families flying kites, groups of lunching office workers giggling over ciabattas. Sharp suited entrepreneurs pointing up at shiny highrises.