We are now seeing a further extension of the North South divide. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Search for:. Lord Michael Heseltine, former Environment Minister. Posted In: Economy and Society Featured.
Leave a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Related Posts Economy and Society. Liverpool has no Conservative councillors. She would say 'industry has been modernised, look at the advance'," said Sir Malcolm. Some ministers thought Liverpool should be left to 'managed decline'.
Industrial unrest. A senior adviser to Mrs Thatcher warned that sending Lord Heseltine to Liverpool was a waste of money. The cabinet papers also show that a panicky Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir David McNee, told the prime minister at the height of the Brixton riots in July that he was unable to guarantee the security of the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer, which was due to take place the following month without the introduction of a modern-day riot act.
He raised the stakes by telling her that he had already raised it with the Queen. McNee presented Thatcher with a list of equipment he needed including riot shields, water cannon, rubber bullets and armoured vehicles — preferably painted blue rather than kept army grey, CS gas and even a "heli-telly" — an early mobile surveillance helicopter — during a midnight visit to Scotland Yard. He said he was especially concerned about the arrangements for the planned royal wedding fireworks in Hyde Park which foreign dignitories would watch from a stand without any cover.
The government responded by immediately providing 1, Nato riot helmets from army stocks, asked the army to provide more baton rounds and six water cannon to the police and opened three army camps to be used as prison overflows. A water cannon demonstration was also laid on but the use of troops was ruled out. The minister finessed the demands for a new riot act but conceded that the police should be given the discretion to use rubber bullets and baton rounds for the first time in mainland Britain.
In typical Whitelaw fashion he only made this concession after the chief constables had privately assured him that they would not use them. The riots were Britain's worst urban riots of the 20th century, running from April to July and involving violent confrontations between mainly young black people and police in Liverpool, Manchester and parts of London including Brixton and Southall.
Two aggressive teams, two centre forwards, two wingers. I know a lot of teams played then, but there was very little difference between the sides in certainly the middle and latter part of that decade. Without football, you wonder where Liverpool would have been and where they would have had their moments of enjoyment.
Football still is the most important thing in Liverpool, I think, really. I genuinely do wish both teams were at the top of the league. My mates are all Liverpool and Everton fans and I would like to see them all enjoy watching football and get the same level of excitement I get. Obviously the book entails Heysel, which is an important chapter.
There are a lot of myths that have grown about Heysel — some understandably and some unreasonably. Militant was a natural reaction to what was going on. Why would you not want them to get in? Liverpool has obviously still got the music scene, football and a few other things.
But it had to happen. At that time, Thatcher calls Liverpool a particularly violent part of the country. At that point, Liverpool becomes a collective for the first time really. It really angers me, to be honest. But I think I mentioned in the intro [of the book] that Liverpool or Scousers sort of filled a gap in the jokes in that period. Because you get a lot of left-wing comedians in that period who are moving racist jokes out and quite rightly making them unacceptable.
But what fills that gap? A rioter walks through a burning barricade on Smithdown Road in Liverpool, as around missile-throwing youths gathered in the Toxteth area of Liverpool in Finally, the question you mentioned at the start: Why do Liverpool people hate Thatcher? What conclusions did you come to? James Bulger is a very sensitive subject to talk about, particularly in the city at the time. If you look at the way it was reported, very few people reported on that dreadful event in a sympathetic way towards Liverpool.
Liverpool by that point had 14 years of Thatcherism. Walton, which is the most safe Labour seat in the country, the home of Militant, had very little investment. There was poverty and desperate problems there. Does the possibility of something as terrible as that increase in a place that has been subjected to all this [trauma] in that period of time?
Nobody was asking that question. In a lot of the media, Liverpool felt like it was on trial again. It was in the dock. So Liverpool took that stance, quite understandably, because of everything else it had been accused of at that point. But people looked at it as an extension of the way they are in a lot of cases. A fortnight or so after Hillsborough, Liverpool get their first chance of funding from the EU, which allows itself to start the process of rebuilding.
The conclusion must have been that that was their policy — just doing nothing, which is pretty much what they did. The mass selling off, privatisation has failed in a very short space of time. Maybe the telecommunications industry has got better, but all the other industries have failed. I just think the British government have failed the people in a lot of cases, but people keep falling for these demagogues, like Thatcher or Boris Johnson, with simplistic solutions to complex situations.
How much further can it go again, I wonder? Liverpool has managed to rediscover itself through the vision of the people. The history of the city makes it a fascinating place to go to and has allowed it to rediscover itself through tourism.
But where does it go from here? There are still a lot of problems if you go outside the city centre, there are still massive social issues. But I think poverty is showing itself in a very hyper-capitalist way now, which we saw in America 30 years ago under the Ronald Reagan government. The cost of living has gone beyond what their incomes are. That was between and , when the Liverpool City Council was still conservative.
Edward Heath was the prime minister then. And then, for one year, between and , when New Labour came in. Liverpool rejected that within one year and went back to Lib Dem. So Liverpool has always been a city in opposition. New Labour succeeded in some things, but failed in a lot of things and we were the first ones to reject it. People forget that, people forget 12 years of a Lib Dem-led Council in Liverpool. I think in the last 10 years, things have changed again.
So younger people are becoming a lot more politicised in Liverpool than maybe my generation was. More info here. Follow us: the Notify me of followup comments via e-mail.
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