ABSTRACT
From 1983 to 1985 the city of Liverpool was the site of one of the most remarkable political struggles of the Thatcher years as the local Labour council, led by the Trotskyist Militant Tendency, clashed with the Conservative government over the question of local government finance. This chapter critically examines the role of Militant in Liverpool and challenges both the 'enormous condescension' of the commentators who have seen only the 'capture' of a moribund party and a crude 'blackmail and bankruptcy' strategy and the self-promotion of the supporters of Militant. It explores the significance of the principle, central to classical Marxism, of 'self-emancipation' for the political leadership of popular protest. Collective action is rooted in the character of a local regime of accumulation but is constructed by politics: a form of 'structured agency'. In the 1970s and 1980s the Port and the Branch Plant regimes collapsed leaving a de-industrialized city to cope with mass unemployment and its attendant social problems.
