This year the city of Liverpool has been celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the year in which 75,000 local workers from numerous trade unions, and their families, threatened to bring Britain to a standstill in the name of union recognition and a decent standard of living. So worried were the British government that year that they sent several thousand troops, including cavalry, and a warship, HMS Antrim, to point its guns on the slopes of Everton. The Liverpool Transport Strike is celebrated because of the solidarity shown by all the different trade unions involved; nobody went back to work until ALL had seen victory for their demands. The Strike is also remembered because the women of Liverpool attacked troops escorting arrested workers to Walton Prison. Liverpool, rightly, earned a reputation as the most ‘radical’ city in Britain. In the same year that the Transport Strike took place the city of Liverpool also unveiled the Royal Liver Building, Britain’s first skyscraper, radical architecture went with the radical people! But why not? Liverpool was, in 1911, the second city of the British Empire, its port dealt with more trade than any other in the world, yes including those upstart ports of New York, Hamburg and Shanghai, and that other upstart port – London. Liverpool had a thriving docks system that had been purpose built by the people of Liverpool and in 1911, the workers wanted their fair share of the wealth that flowed through the port. In addition to its busy docks, Liverpool had St. George’s Hall, the largest neo-classical building in Europe, and the Walker Art gallery, the largest art collection outside London – all built by Liverpool people and Liverpool money. Meanwhile, Liverpool Corporation supplied its citizens with water, gas, electric, public transport, education, libraries, swimming baths, waste collection and public health facilities and had even built social housing, one of the first authorities to do so.

Fast forward one hundred years and the councillors of Liverpool cannot visit the toilet without seeking the permission of London or Brussels. The city council is closing down care homes and youth clubs because London is cutting the budget. And to put the final seal on the humiliation Liverpool must wait for the London government to grant permission for cruise liners to operate from the city. Yes, the city that was once the largest port on earth must go cap in hand to some Westminster politician for permission to operate as a port! London’s interference is neither wanted nor useful. In the 1970s Liverpool lost a third of its population as a Tory government carved new authorities – Knowsley and Sefton - out of its suburbs and deprived the city of Liverpool of their rates. And then it complains that Liverpool is too dependent on government subsidies! All of this is because the UK is the most highly centralised country in the world, so much so even Stalin would blush if he rose from the dead. And where once Liverpool was the envy of ports like Hamburg, now Hamburg is one of the richest cities in the world with a high standard of living and low unemployment. Why? Because Hamburg is City-State, controlling its own destiny in a way that Liverpool does not. Where Liverpool and its surrounding districts is run as an undemocratic City-Region, with little power for local politicians, Hamburg can run its own affairs free of any interference from the German government. In fact, in Germany the local governments of the Lander (States or City-States) have a direct influence over the policies of the government in Berlin. Berlin comes to the Lander for money, not the other way around as in Britain. That is why the Germans don’t get involved in senseless wars; the local governments control the purse strings. If that same situation applied in the UK, we would not have been in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, and we would not have bailed out the Greeks and the Irish. So now it’s time for a political revolution in the UK and it’s right that it should start in Liverpool, the city of radicals.

A group of radicals have been meeting in Liverpool for some time and in November 2011 will declare support for a Liverpool City-State. What does that mean in practice? For a start we want the present Liverpool City-Region to be given a democratic overhaul and for councillors to be elected to a new City-State assembly. Then we would like to see the following unveiled over a given period of time:

  • The City-State to keep control of ALL taxation within the area.

  • The City-State to establish local banking and proper, mutual building societies

  • The City-State to run its own police and Justice system.

  • The City-State to control its own transport, education and environmental policy.

  • The City-State to run its own trade and industry department.

    A free City-State will not be tied to the trade policies of the 20th century – Europe – that does not benefit Liverpool anyway, but will look to the BRIC countries and to the rising Far Eastern and Middle Eastern economies for trading links. Liverpool will discover its old ways of looking outwards to the wider world and not be tied down to subsidies from the EU and London to keep quiet. When the people of Liverpool built the docks system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they did not go begging to London, but stood up and raised the cash and built the systems from within their local resources. That is what we seek again. Yes, we will need to re-build local banking and financial structures, but that can be done with the will of a determined and radically minded people. And let’s face it, if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can run their own affairs why can’t the people of Merseyside through a Liverpool City-State? 
A century on from that radical dawn, the people of Merseyside can dare to dream again and build a future for our children that no London government, whether it be Tory or Labour, will ever allow.

More policies and thoughts on the City-State to follow on our Merseyside Radicals page, under construction.
                              
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