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5 - Budget Crisis 1985

Diane Frost  and
Peter North
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Summary

The battle against rate capping

The struggle over the 1984 settlement had taken so long that Liverpool was into conflict with central Government over the 1985 settlement almost immediately. Having won concessions from the Government, Liverpool believed it was in a strong position to do so again, in alliance with other local socialist councils. The council knew that it would have to continue to campaign hard to keep together the movement it had built up. Mike Hogan was a member of the central campaigns unit. He recalls the feeling at the time:

The Conservatives capitulated at that time, and everything seemed to be settled around a compromise and we were there to fight another day. Well, we knew that we had to fight another day. I was one of those who was involved in the campaign unit which was set up specifically to campaign amongst private industry workers.

We were visiting Ford's, visiting factories to explain the situation because there was a little bit of a history of council workers within Liverpool … we'd just come off the back of the Winter of Discontent and there was a real campaign against council workers and public sector workers amongst private sector workers so we thought we have to counter this, we have to explain to people what we're doing on their behalf as residents of Liverpool and so on. So that's what we set out to do within the campaign units.

We were very well received by the activists and then we'd speak to some meetings, but it's hard to gauge how we were received by the shop floor. The activists understood what we were doing, were members of the Labour Party, so we were well received there. (Mike Hogan interview, 2012)

In contrast, the Government, believing that it had lost the propaganda war with Liverpool, was anxious not to be drawn into specifics again. Patrick Jenkin refused to meet any delegation which included Derek Hatton, arguing (according to Taaffe and Mulhearn 1988: 186): ‘I can see no basis for a meeting on the terms that you propose…. you appear determined on a rerun of the disruptive and damaging campaign you ran last year.’

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Militant Liverpool
A City on the Edge
 , pp. 95 - 122
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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