Liverpool's Socialist councillors - the Liverpool 47 - recount Merseyside's battle against Thatcher in 1984-7 Liverpool Labour councillors, the Liverpool 47, fought Tory Prime Minister Thatcher in 1984-1987
Liverpool's Socialist councillors - the Liverpool 47 - recount Merseyside's battle against Thatcher in 1984-7
Liverpool's Socialist councillors - the Liverpool 47 - recount Merseyside's battle against Thatcher in 1984-7 Liverpool's Socialist councillors - the Liverpool 47 - recount Merseyside's battle against Thatcher in 1984-7

  

Liverpool 47: Socialism on Trial

Liverpool's Socialist councillors, the Liverpool 47, recount Merseyside's battle against Thatcher in 1983 - 1987. 

The Liverpool 47 councillors present their own official history of Liverpool City Council's epic struggle against the hated Thatcher government.

If you agree with the ideas and objectives explained in this site, click here to join up and become active in the socialist movement. Click here to emai us

September 2004: Open Letter From Members Of The 47 Group Of Surcharged Councillors To Liverpool Dockers

Retrospectives: The Council That Took On Thatcher - 26 March 2004 and Liverpool- The City That Fought Back  20 September 2003

       

introduction

achievements

people

key events

key players

roll call

Liverpool's Socialist councillors built five thousand houses, created thousands of jobs, and opened more nursery schools in 1983 - 87 than any other city.

The Liverpool 47 councillors refused to transfer the burden of Margaret Thatchers' Tory government cuts on to the backs of the working people of Liverpool. 

The ' Liverpool 47' adopted the slogan of ‘Better to Break the Law than Break the Poor’ which was first used by the jailed councillors of Poplar in 1919. 

Liverpool's socialist-led council in 1983 - 87 was the only council which succeeded in extracting extra funding from Thatcher's Tory government. 

Because the Liverpool 47 socialist councillors carried out their socialist promises, the achievements of that council have been buried in an avalanche of distortion.

The purpose of this website is to rescue from obscurity the great events and the personalities of those years and to open them to the scrutiny of anyone wishing for a serious examination of this key period in Liverpool’s history.

 

Liverpool - A city that Dared to Fight

By Peter Taaffe and Tony Mulhearn. 500 pages

The momentous events in Liverpool 1983 - 87  

Penetrating inside story and political analysis of Liverpool city council's battle against the Thatcher government, written by leading participants.

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Legacy of the Liverpool battle:
  • 6,300 families rehoused from tenements, flats and maisonettes
  • 2, 873 tenement flats demolished
  • 1,315 walk-up flats demolished
  • 2,086 flats/maisonettes demolished
  • 4,800 houses and bungalows built
  • 7,400 houses and flats improved
  • 600 houses/bungalows created by ‘top-downing’ 1,315 walk-up flats
  • 25 new Housing Action Areas being developed
  • 6 new nursery classes built and open
  • 17 Community Comprehensive Schools established following a massive re-organisation
  • £10million spent on school improvements
  • Five new sports centres, one with a leisure pool attached, built and open
  • Two thousand additional jobs provided for in Liverpool City Council Budget
  • Ten thousand people per year employed on Council’s Capital Programme
  • Three new parks built
  • Rents frozen for five years

introduction | achievements | people | key events | key players | roll call

Produced by Tony Mulhearn, John Kennedy & Pete Mason

Pictures by Dave Sinclair

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