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In the four year Liverpool struggle, Taaffe was closely involved with developments, discussing with close friends and leading Liverpool Militant supporters, such as the former print worker Tony Mulhearn. He was President of the Liverpool District Labour Party during these events, in which the Liverpool City Council declared it was "Better to break the law than break the poor", agreed an illegal budget, and built 4,800 houses and bungalows, and improved 7,400 houses and flats (amongst other works), before the 47 councillors were surcharged and removed from office . Their opponents however argued that Liverpool was in chaos.
Taaffe wanted to take the Liverpool battle towards a split with the Labour Party at that stage. In the interview for the BBC Radio 4 programme The Party’s Over Taaffe makes the following remarks:
| “ | The defeat of the miners’ strike had an effect in disillusioning working-class people. Liverpool City Council was isolated and the right-wing nationally came for the Liverpool City Councillors. We made a mistake in 1986-87 when we allowed them to expel the leading Militants without taking counter-measures. We should have carried on with the Liverpool Labour Party. This would have met with success in council elections and so on. But we decided we would have to retreat. I was in a minority view in Militant at that stage; I said we should fight in this way. | ” |
The Liverpool District Labour Party, which Taaffe says in the same interview had a very large attendance of 700, was suspended by the Labour Party in 1986. Thus Taaffe here indicates that he argued for defying the ban, which would have been in all essentials a split from the Labour Party.
Read more about this topic: Peter Taaffe, The Liverpool Struggle 1983