Gritty scenes of Liverpool in the 1970s

“Who gov­erns Britain?” Con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cian Edward Heath asked in his 1974 bid for prime min­is­ter, say­ing the qui­et part out loud.

A bril­liant strate­gist, Heath restored the Tories to pow­er in 1970, ush­er­ing in a new age of aus­ter­i­ty after two terms of Harold Wilson’s pro­gres­sive Labour Government.

“Heath took a much hard­er line against the trades unions,” says British pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mar­tin May­er. ​“Rank and file union mem­bers became increas­ing­ly mil­i­tant after the change of gov­ern­ment as infla­tion began to rise.”

May­er, who took up pho­tog­ra­phy in 1970, imme­di­ate­ly set to work at an emerg­ing left­ist dai­ly news­pa­per. ​“I vol­un­teered to help with the pho­tog­ra­phy as I felt at the time that it might make a real dif­fer­ence,” he says. 

Although based in Lon­don, May­er reg­u­lar­ly trav­elled the coun­try to get pic­tures of the day for the paper. While in the North West, he spent some time with a local jour­nal­ist who had a knack for fea­ture ideas. Togeth­er, they began work­ing on a sto­ry about the changes in Liv­er­pool under the guise of slum clear­ance and urban renewal. 

With the whole­sale demo­li­tion of old Vic­to­ri­an ter­races, May­er explains res­i­dents had lim­it­ed options. ​“They could either move into high rise flats, where it was not pos­si­ble for chil­dren to play out­side safe­ly; or they could move to one of the ​‘new towns’ like Kirk­by or Skelmers­dale, which had very few facil­i­ties apart from a few fac­to­ries and basic shops,” he remem­bers, so ​“record­ing this tran­si­tion seemed like an impor­tant thing to do.”

Inspired by the work of Bill Brandt, Bert Hardy, Dorothea Lange, and Walk­er Evans, May­er set forth to chron­i­cle the rad­i­cal changes to the city’s land­scape, col­lect­ed in the new book, Liv­er­pool 1970s (Café Roy­al Books).

Amidst the sys­tem­at­ic destruc­tion of the neigh­bour­hood, the chil­dren of the com­mu­ni­ty made a way, play­ing in the rub­ble and razed blocks, against a back­drop of board­ed up stores and res­i­dences announc­ing to the world ​“LIV­ER­POOL COR­PO­RA­TIONS ARE VAN­DALS” in big white block let­ter graffiti.

“Adults were pret­ty angry about what was hap­pen­ing and were gen­er­al­ly pleased that we were pub­li­cis­ing it, so most were hap­py to be pho­tographed,” May­er recalls.

At the same time, May­er doc­u­ment­ed labor issues includ­ing strikes and fac­to­ry occu­pa­tions, as well as the trans­for­ma­tion of Liverpool’s leg­endary water­front with the intro­duc­tion of con­tainer­iza­tion, a rev­o­lu­tion­ary car­go-mov­ing tech­nique dom­i­nat­ing the glob­al ship­ping indus­try with far-reach­ing local impact.

Although made half a cen­tu­ry ago, Mayer’s pho­tographs reveal deep con­nec­tions to the present day. ​“Every week it seems that today feels more and more like the ear­ly 1970s: fast ris­ing infla­tion, lead­ing to loss of buy­ing pow­er in most peo­ples’ wages, lead­ing to high­er wage demands, which are met by an intran­si­gent gov­ern­ment deter­mined to keep wages down,” he says.

“Hous­ing con­tin­ues to be a major issue. Today it is not so much about the demo­li­tion of old prop­er­ties but much more about the con­stant­ly ris­ing cost of hous­ing and rents, which makes it all but impos­si­ble to find any­where afford­able to live.”

Fol­low Miss Rosen on Twit­ter.

Enjoyed this arti­cle? Fol­low Huck onTwit­ter and Insta­gram.