“Better to break the law than to break the poor.”
A lesson for the “Mamdani Movement”:
The Battle of Liverpool, 1983-’85:

A mass turnout to demand the money from ThatcherLiverpool, England, 1983

Introduction
The Mamdani Movement is already facing resistance not only from Trump and company, but also from the leadership of its very own party, the Democratic Party. How can this resistance be overcome? A battle carried out 40 years ago and across the Atlantic Ocean, in Liverpool, England, carries some valuable lessons. There are huge differences between these two situations, but the lessons of that struggle in Liverpool are still alive today. Here is a review of that struggle. It is largely based on interviews with Felicity Dowling, who was one of the Labour city council members who led that struggle.

Background
Liverpool first developed as a port; heavy industry only came there after WW II. Due to conflicts between the (largely Catholic) Irish immigrant population and the mainly Protestant native population, Labour had developed roots in the Liverpool working class but did not have a majority until the 1970s,¹ when the influence of the Catholic Church started to wane.

This was paralleled by a rise in unemployment due to two causes: First, according to Dowling, was the rise of containerization in shipping, which led to a sharp decrease in the number of workers required to unload a ship. Second was a decline in manufacturing, with 40,000 manufacturing jobs lost in the Liverpool area from 1966 to 1977²

Labour Roots
Dowling is an example of the roots Labour developed in that period, having joined the Labour Party in 1963 at 14 years of age. She explains, “I came from Irish traditions…. At family gatherings, the men and women would separate, and I went with the men, who gathered to talk politics. One of my many uncles was active in the Labour Party. It was just kind of the thing to do. Where I grew up, the Labour Party was kind of woven into the streets. If somebody had a housing or employment problem, they went to the Labour Party house to deal with it. The Labour Party was part of the fabric of society.”³

1981 Toxteth riots

Toxteth Riots
In 1981, there were several days of riots in the Toxteth area of Liverpool. This was the main black area of the city. Felicity Dowling happened to be walking through Toxteth on one of the nights of the riots. “I found myself in a huge battle with the police. They were throwing the lamp standards [lamp posts] across the street to stop the police. It was surreal,” she said.⁴ It was later revealed that Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Geoffrey Howe, had privately called for a policy of “managed decline” of Toxteth. “To regenerate Toxteth would be like trying to make water run uphill,” he reportedly had said.⁵

This comment lends credibility to the subsequent claims of some that the Thatcher regime was intentionally starving the City of Liverpool. According to Labour council members and their left supporters, “since 1979 the government had stolen £270 million in grants from the city.”⁶ Whether the claim that the national government had reduced its grants to Liverpool beyond what it had reduced grants to similar cities is true or not, there is no disputing that the grants had been massively reduced. The result had been horrific housing conditions, widespread unemployment and poverty in Liverpool.

The Labour city council members of 1983

Labour Majority Elected: Role of Working Class and of “Militant”
In 1983, a Labour majority was elected to the Liverpool city council. Labour, however, was not a monolithic bloc. Some were more “militant” than others. “We organized a broad left in the Labour Party. Included were Eric Heffer, Ken Steward and others who weren’t in Militant (see below). Huey Dalton, the chair of the council, had a long history of Marxism, but was workers stuff, not academic stuff,” said Dowling.⁷

Dowling also commented on the role of ordinary workers, as opposed to academics, in the Labour Party of Liverpool: “A lot of left wing people found it very annoying to have bin men (garbage collectors) stand up and contradict them and make points…. One (of those manual workers) was Eric Heffer (Labour Member of Parliament), who had been a joiner (carpenter). By his reputation, he could call workers on a building site out on strike if he just passed by and felt it was unsafe. We had a self-confident and self-educated and politically educated working class…. Then, also, (we had) lots of long time housing campaigners. Quite a mosaic of people.”⁸

Dowling refers to “Militant” (of which she was a member) in this and other comments. Organized as the “Marxist Workers Tendency of the Labour Party,” they considered themselves to be the revolutionary socialist wing of the British Labour Party. According to Sumner “out of the 51 Labour Councillors who got elected, only sixteen were believed to be Militant members.”⁹ But these played a key role, not only because they were well organized but, more important, because they were the clearest on what they were after. Dowling again: “So we win the election and Thatcher tells us we have to make cuts. Our line was we’re not going to make cuts and we are going to build houses and we are going to make jobs.”¹⁰

Significantly, Dowling does not specify to whom she is referring when she says “our line”. Was it the position of Militant, or the position of the left Labour Party councillors or the Labour councilors as a whole? Given that not a single other city council took the road that Liverpool took, and given that the national leadership was diametrically opposed to the position of the Liverpool city council, one could reasonably argue that the Militant minority of the Labour Councillors was able to influence the greater Labour majority. But the fact that Dowling doesn’t clearly distinguish between Militant and the Labour Party as whole shows her attitude. And how was a relative small minority able wield such influence?

One explanation is that their “line” expressed the experiences, views and needs of the great majority of the Liverpool working class. How could it be otherwise?

Expressed Deepest Views of Working Class
Their original campaign in 1983 had been based on the commitment that they were going to hire more city workers, tear down the slum council housing and build more council (public) housing. Dowling describes what the old council housing was like: “I remember going to Tommy White’s Gardens in Netherfield Road. It was an absolute hell-hole, with soil pipes seeping excrement right on where the kids were playing.

We said to people if you vote Labour we will demolish these and build new houses, and within 18 months we had.”¹¹

The new socialist Liverpool city council set about replacing slum housing like this with new council housing.

“Better to Break the Law than Break the Poor”
Why would that not be popular? When told that it was illegal to set a deficit budget (which was what they were advocating in effect), the Militant members responded, “it’s better to break the law than to break the poor.” ¹² How could that have not resonated with “the poor”? And especially considering how they went about planning the new housing. Dowling, again: “Our position was demolish these particular blocks of flats and rebuild, all done in 18 months – build houses with gardens… Not just houses. Urban centers, parks, shops…. when we wanted to build something, we would show them what we planned to demolish and what we planned to build… to get their feedback…. Tony (Byrne, the council member responsible for this) sent gold edged invitations to these poor women who lived in slums and sent limo’s to bring them to get their feedback and made all the bureaucrats to treat the women with absolute respect…. When we were designing the houses, we invited the people, the residents, to come in and look at the models…. One thing we learned, for example, was that people wanted bigger kitchens…. They could move the walls on the models and people could say what they liked…. Now, 30 years later, the houses are still there and look good….”¹³

In addition to the living conditions, unemployment was a huge issue. The Liverpool Labour council was the only one in Britain during those years that actually hired more workers, instead of laying city workers off. Over the course of two years, they created 16,000 jobs and built 6,000 council homes!¹⁴  (NOTE: Felicity commented on this article that the 16,000 jobs were just direct hires. There were many more newly put to work outside of city employment, for example building trades workers working on the new council housing.) As one newly hired worker explained at the time: “I started last week for the council. I’d been on the dole (unemployment) for a year. I’m a fan of the council. I couldn’t repeat what I’d think (of those opposed to the council). I’d be ‘effing’… all over your tape (recording).” ¹⁵

Conflict with Labour Leadership
These policies not only violated the law, they also conflicted with the policy of  Neil Kinnock, who led the Labour Party, and whose policy was to avoid any open conflict with the Thatcher government. In the course of the struggle, mass demonstrations were organized, one of the first of which was held on November 19, 1983. According to Militant, some 20,000 turned out. Militant quoted a local housewife: “I am not in any political party, but I will be there. I’ll just turn up myself and make my own demonstration. It’s important, you know, to help your council.”¹⁶

Significantly, 1983 was the year in which Thatcher was preparing to take on the British coal miners – one of the most powerful unions in the country. Then, starting in early 1984, the miners fought a year long strike which galvanized the entire country. Had Thatcher taken on the Liverpool working class at the same time, she would have been fighting a war on two fronts. So, she caved in, and her government granted the City of Liverpool tens of millions of pounds extra. (Dowling recalls it as being around £94 million¹⁷.)

1984 Council Elections and Beyond
The combined result of actually winning something concrete (jobs and housing) and of actually valuing the input of workers as well as of mobilizing them showed in the 1984 council elections. During an election held outside of national elections, when turnout was usually very low, the Liverpool city elections received a 51% turnout, and returned an even greater Labour majority to the council.¹⁸ In 1984, as the battle with the Thatcher government heated up, the Labour council called a mass demonstration to show support. It is estimated that between 50,000¹⁹ and 60,000²⁰ participated in this demonstration, truly a show of great force.

By 1985, however, Thatcher had defeated the miners, which was a major blow to the British working class. Not only that, but the Liverpool council stood alone: Some five other local councils had joined together in a pledge to violate the prohibition against a deficit budget, but this time through a complex process of refusing to set a “rate” (local tax). In order to avoid breaking the unity, the Liverpool council went along with this tactic, but in the end they were left alone as every other council backed down to Thatcher.

Attack on Militant
Perhaps related to this was the fact of the official policy of the Kinnock leadership of the Labour Party, which was not to set an illegal rate nor to openly conflict with Thatcher. As Peter Kilfoyle, a regional organizer for the Labour Party commented about the Liverpool council in general and Militant in particular, “They were in breach of Labour Party policies. They sought to go illegally against the government of the day when Labour Party policy was not to.”²¹

Tabloid newspapers like this helped lead the campaign against the “Militant maggots”

A harsh campaign started against the most determined wing of the Liverpool Labour Council – the Militants. One aspect of this campaign was through the capitalist mass media. According to Sumner, of sixty articles analyzed, six were “objective” with only two being “favorable” towards Militant while 52 were hostile to Militant. “It should be equally noted that the majority of press coverage did not distinguish between the (Labour Council) and Militant,” Sumner writes.²² The tabloid “Sunday Mirror” newspaper, for example, ran an article with the screaming headline “Terror reign of ‘Militant Maggots’ SECRET DOSSIER ON RED WRECKERS” (12/1/85)²³. It was at this time that the Labour Party leadership initiated a purge of Militant from within its ranks. The purge was justified on the grounds that Militant was “a party within a party”, but the statement of Kilfoyle (see above) shows otherwise; the fact that Militant was leading a charge that violated Party policy was central. The union leadership also joined in on this. Most of the top leaders not only supported the purge, but in a key moment, when the Liverpool city council called for a city-wide general strike to oppose Thatcher’s plans for the city, the union leadership managed to get the members of some of the key white collar unions to vote against the strike.

In other words, according to both the capitalist media and the Kinnock leadership, Militant was a parasite (a “maggot”), an artificial growth imposed upon the Labour Party from outside the working class. Contrast this with Dowling’s experience: “We were not separate from the Labour Party. We came from the Labour Party. We had friends and family in the Labour Party…. We were an aspect of, not distinct and separate from it. My mum had a gang of family members in the Labour Party…. So, when I went to those (Militant) meetings, I was sitting with people who had known my family for 30 years. We were part of the movement.”²⁴

Thatcher Regains Control
Ultimately, the Thatcher government intervened and removed the 47 Labour Councillors who had voted for an illegal budget (a few had capitulated) and “surcharged” them tens of thousands of pounds. If they could not pay, they were threatened with losing their homes. In a final example of working class support, the entire amount was raised by a fund appeal to the British working class and not a single one of the 47 surcharged councilors lost their home. (This was before the days of Paypal and crowd sourcing, too!) With a legal budget set by a Thatcher government-imposed regime in Liverpool, and with the defeat of the coal miners, the battle of Liverpool was largely over and the working class activism declined. However, to this day those council houses still stand, and the memory of that battle lives on in the minds of some.

Conclusion
Several points are clear from this history:

• The battle of the budget in Liverpool was won for two years by the active support of the Liverpool working class – both in terms of turning out for elections as well as turning out for public protests, etc.
• This activism was connected to a leadership that gave voice to the deepest feelings – borne of experience – of masses of working class Liverpudlians.
• That leadership and the policies it fought for – which were the policies of the Liverpool working class itself – ultimately could not defeat the combined strength of the representatives of British capitalism along with the leadership of many of the unions and of the Labour Party without the active support of the entire British working class.

Felicity Dowling sums it up: “It is possible for people to be… in office, to keep their word, to say they’re going to do something and then do it. But it’s not the individual, it’s the movement behind them that makes that possible…. We rode a wave of working class solidarity and an understanding in the class of what we were doing and why, and there’s been a rupture since then; the idea of fighting together towards a common goal, to improve things for everybody, that tradition’s been lost…. Now, you have to explain that basic idea…. That break in continuity has happened. It can be mended, but it has happened.”²⁵

An understanding of the Liverpool Battle of the Budget can help in regaining that “continuity” as Felicity Dowling calls it.

A future article of Oaklandsocialist will discuss how some of the lessons of this struggle can apply to the Mamdani Movement. If you found this article useful, we urge you to subscribe. Subscriptions are free and your name and  contact information will not be passed on to anybody else nor will you be sent annoying notices. The only function of subscribing is that you will receive an email every time we publish a new article.

25Dowling. op. Cit.

A mass turnout to demand the money from Thatcher