The Bridewell and the Boys from the Blackstuff

Much of Alan Bleasdale’s acclaimed TV drama was filmed at a former police station on Prescot Street.

The Liverpool Scene – and beyond

In the 1970s and 1980s Merseyside poets dared to be popular – challenging the idea poems can’t be ʽgood’ unless they are elitist.

International Garden Festival: a treat for ʽcomfortable Britain’

The Garden Festival in 1984 attracted more than three million visitors and helped to regenerate Liverpool. But what benefit did the visitors get from it?

Arthur Dooley, sculptor

The former shipyard welder who turned scrap metal into art.

Merseyside Unity Theatre

Drama and agitprop in the 1970s: an account by one of the theatre’s founders

From word games to Dial-a-Poem

How the Windows Project spread new forms of creativity among children and adults.

Colonialism in the classroom: books for children in the 1970s

Amid concern that Liverpool’s schools were not preparing youngsters for life in a multi-racial society, the Community Relations Council carried out a study of racist attitudes in books written for children.

Police, drugs and ‘agriculture’ in Toxteth

In 1971 there were two notable court cases where black men accused of possessing cannabis were acquitted after claiming police had planted it.

The battle to save Fisher Bendix

The Fisher Bendix factory in Kirkby had been built with government help to ease unemployment in the area. It wasn’t a success and in 1972 when the owners tried to shut it down workers occupied the factory in an effort to save their jobs. Three years later they began running it themselves.

Trade unions? No thanks! We’re Marks & Spencer

M&S, in its own estimation, was such a good employer that unions were unnecessary. In theory, staff were free to join one if they wished, but the company had ways of making sure that unions didn’t gain a foothold.

How Netherley women organised a ‘carnival in Alcatraz’

The bleak council estate of Netherley was nicknamed Alcatraz because people living there often felt like prisoners. In 1976, though, a group of women took the first step towards building a sense of community – and organised a carnival. Maria O’Reilly describes how they did it and what it achieved.

The NHS watchdogs that were allowed to bark but not bite

 

 

 

 

 

In 1974 the government established Community Health Councils throughout the country to monitor NHS performance and represent the views of patients and the public. In Liverpool, Sylvia Hikins chaired one of them for nine years, but her hopes of improving health services were constantly battered by spending cuts and closures.

Concrete is beautiful: the Shankland master-plan

Graeme Shankland was a planner hired by the council. His vision for Liverpool was to tear down much of the centre and replace it with “robust and manly” new buildings encompassed by an inner motorway on stilts. His plan has since been described as “notorious” and “a nightmare”, and fortunately most of it was eventually abandoned.

The Civic Centre fiasco

In the 1960s Liverpool council embarked on a plan to bring all corporation offices under one roof in a massive city-centre building to be known as the Civic Centre. They spent years buying up properties that stood on the site but the new building became unaffordable and a public inquiry condemned its design as “oppressive” and “overpowering”.

Filming the community: Old Swan festival, 1976

Old Swan was a rather drab part of Liverpool but for a few days in 1976 it became an extraordinary place where residents held a community festival described as “an explosion of colour and noise”. In the midst of that, though, it wasn’t always clear where reality ended and the entertainment began — which in a way added to the fun.