Paul Dooley Sells His Fathers Liverpool Legacy-To The Highest Bidder-Shame On You Mr Dooley.

Does Paul Dooley give a damn really about the legacy that was left in his fathers Seel St studio

. It seems as soon as was possible he got in there and grabbed what he could.

It could be said that he owns it. But was it not held by a trust so that the Legacy of Arthur Dooley could have been kept alive.

It now seems it is at the mercy of speculators of which it looks like his son Paul, is one. He has been knocking out a load of......finished off stuff on Ebay since Alan Johnstons death, when there was nobody around to keep the collection together. 

When we say collection, what we really mean is a load of rejected stuff that was shoved into the studio/workshop when Arthur died in 1994.

The basement space had remained in tact since his death and it was hoped that something could be done to open it up to the public, as what happened in 2008 when The Liverpool Acadamy of Arts(sic) were awarded a £50,000 plus grant to further the memory of one of Liverpool's sons by opening it up to limited numbers of interested visitors.

They also made a packet by staging a selling exhibition of his work.

Although this exhibition did bring together an assemblage of his work so it could be seen, they were more than well paid for it.

We had tried to alert the public to the need to get together to do something about the threats from property developers who give Dooley junior access as soon as they could to alleviate themselves of the burden of the works.

So they could get in there and turn it into an apartment, no hold on a luxury apartment.

The whole of Liverpool is going to turn into a giant sterile flat with no character just shops and coffee bars selling frothy cappuccino's to snotty nosed kids who don't know the meaning of struggle or strife or hard work, that think that money just comes out of a hole in the wall, that will never understand what Liverpool was like in the post war blitz society who couldn't just pop to the nearest Tesco to buy food, because the shops didn't have any. We don't want to return to that time but this is an era that spawned Arthur Dooley, a tough working class hard drinking, hard punching Communist catholic of Irish decent.

That didn't disown the city like the others that buggered off to make their name, he stayed here and sweated it out.

 He was able to articulate his Liverpool language on a higher stage as he was often featured on the BBC, talking affectionately about how the city made him tick, how it was part of his soul. 

He hoped that his soul would be part of the city and he would leave behind something. It is said he was once short and asked the city council to take a sculpture in loo of unpaid rates at his workshop near Woolton and they refused.

So now his son Paul has got his grubby hands on a load of works, mostly half finished and rejected commissions, some of which that should not be sold as individual sculptures, but mostly rejected pieces that have now been polished up by Paul who it is said is a stonemason.

He is giving them attributions such as Hillsborough memorial that are not being questioned, but enhanced by middlemen auctioneer Adam Partridge who are only interested in the commission money.

Has he donated any work to any local institution? No.

Did he bugger off out of Liverpool at the earliest opinion? Yes.

Does he care about his fathers name? No, in our opinion.

Is all he is interested in money........well you decide.

Will Arthur be turning in his grave.

Paul Dooley J'accuse.