can anyone help me?

[nynysuts]

I am researching for a book i may write about Liverpool in the 1970s/early 80s, and i was wondering if anybody could help me. I would like to know if anybody has any accounts of:
-being moved away to make room for blocks of flats
-people losing their jobs at the docks, and also what type of jobs were done by a school leaver
-the Toxteth riots
-the city becoming metropolitan
-what leisure activities a 15/16year old would do
-how unemployment effected families
-how young mothers were looked upon.

If anybody can help me with ANY of these things, however great or small, i will be eternally grateful. I am a new, young author and this is my first stab at writing something that is not about the second world war. I want the book to show real life in the 1970s especially from the point of view of teenagers. think Blood Brothers and you're almost there. Thank you very much for your time, I look forward to hearing your replies! :PDT_Aliboronz_11:

[PhilipG]

There's always old newspapers to read.
4th floor of the library in William Brown Street.

[Ged]

Hiya nynysuts. Blocks of flats were all usually built by then and it was people in fact being moved out of them to make way for the Kingsway tunnel and inner city ringroads etc - the breaking up of Communities.

Good accounts of the Toxteth riots can be googled. My recollections of it are that Ghost Town by the Specials was eerily at No.1 that summer and living near to St. Anne street police station there were police being coached in from other counties to help deal with it. My mates and I mosied on up towards Toxteth to see what was going on but were stopped by police on Clarence st pfft.

The stop and search sus law was prevalent and we used to walk through St. John's precint of a night - out of boredom and were forever stopped by the bizzies, one of my mates who was a mod has a fishtail parka with loads of badges on it ala Quadophenia and as a copper grabbed his lapel, so a couple of badges came off and went down a grid - tut tut said the copper, the rest of us grinned.

16 year old were ushered into Maggies new YOP/YTS/WEP schemes, varying each year between being called Youth opportunity programmes, Youth training schemes or Work expreience Programmes. I was first an apprentice mechanic, then a warehouse/storeman, then a jobber working on a site, then an office junior - doing the round with a shipping firm, delivering and collecting Bills of lading. If you were lucky, the boos would keep you on after the 6 months were up but many abused it as cheap labour.

Oh and in 1980 - Gerard celebrated his 30th.

[nynysuts]

Oh, Ged, that is fantastic! Thank you so much! Another thing i forgot to put was what were houses like at that time? by this how many bedrooms, how small. I'm talking terraced houses here. Thank you all for reading this! Nyika

[Ged]

Nyika, terraced houses are terraced houses, they ain't changed in donkeys years. Small, two up two down usually. I think estate agents call them cosy and compact, it really means tiny but many have them as palaces inside.

[lindylou]

There are so many different types of houses: two up & two downs as Ged says, then there were terraces with 3 bedrooms that didn't have the outside toilet - they had a bathroom.
Most terraced houses have back yards but there are those with little gardens - usually to the front of the house ( like the ones in Cherry lane) :)
Council houses of course having gardens back and front.

[PhilipG]

I'm presuming that if someone is going to write a non-fiction book that they would already have a greater knowledge of the subject than the average person?
I don't mean to sound personal, but if it's the case that the author doesn't know too much about the subject, how can they do it justice?

[Ged]

I'm getting that impression, if a person needs to know about a terraced house. Lindy - get yer book written and published poste haste :)

[lindylou]

Nyika, terraced houses are terraced houses, they ain't changed in donkeys years. Small, two up two down usually. I think estate agents call them cosy and compact, it really means tiny but many have them as palaces inside.

yeah, 'cosy and compact' and sometimes they call them 'bijou' - and the backyards they call a patio or if it's a big backyard, a courtyard :rolleyes: .. if there are a few plants it's called a city garden or something. :D

[Ellyjo]

Hi, My family were lucky enough to be housed in a brand new corporation house, with FOUR bedrooms, and a garden ! it was on Luke street L'pool 8, and faced the rent office there by Sussex gardens, just at the side of us were also new maisonettes, rather odd looking area as Sussex gardens was quite a lot older, For our pastime we used to sneak on the ferry and go backwards and forward to Birkenhead, Most weekends were spent at the boating lake in Sefton park, not that anyone could afford to go on the boats, but sometimes we would all chip in together and have a wonderful hour messing around in the water,
Plenty of good times were also had in Princess park, ice skating was all the rage as well, lots of things changed after the riots,
If you go to the library you can find loads of old news paper to do some research.
Good luck with your book Ninysuts, I will look forward to reading it,

Ellyjo

[Gnomie]

I'm presuming that if someone is going to write a non-fiction book that they would already have a greater knowledge of the subject than the average person?
I don't mean to sound personal, but if it's the case that the author doesn't know too much about the subject, how can they do it justice?


agreed phil, but credit to nynysuts for having a go.

do a lot of research first nynysuts

[nynysuts]

Can i just say, that is the reason i am researching. What i wanted to know about the houses was things like furnishings and that. Oh, and it is a fiction book. I have only just started researching, and plan to spend a whole year doing this, so that is why I do not know so much on the subject. It is just a subject that interests me a great deal and even if by the end of my researching period the book doesn't work out I will still be a lot richer for my knowledge of liverpool. Thank you.

[Gnomie]

Whatever you write dont forget the clothes. real smart we where in them days.

I remember me and me mates heard that there was a reward for the Yorkshire ripper. we went to look for him in Childwall woods. :PDT_Xtremez_42:

The flats in Belle Vale and Netherley where real horror shows.

playing football or cricket all day , even when it was dark we carried on. lots of kids involved in games. nothing to keep us indoors then. The riots meant my dad would not let us visit our rellies in the Dingle:disgust:

I worked in Childwall stables from age 12. did the YTS thing in Childwall College, Pottery, Photography, Woodwork and Gardening. went on a 6 months one with a building firm and stayed there 15 years.

My dad was involved in The Dockers and Miners stikes. he did a hell of a lot. on marches and pickets. lots of speaking and campaigning. he was a shop steward who fought for many peoples jobs. i was lucky as the unemployment never touched me, but others struggled in what was really a hopeless situation as Maggie ground the country down.

I remember Park Road and all the shops and the Market. They had a chip shop by the Farmers Arms pub, mmmmmmmn nice grub there. its sad to see it as it is now, i have great memories of playing up there as a kid. and the Albert Dock. not as fancy as it is now. all Sludge and dead pigeons in them days.

you should watch the film" Our Day Out" nynysuts . if only for the haircuts and clothes.

[lindylou]

I was lucky not to have experienced poverty. My dad was a factory worker and my mum a shop worker. They struggled to buy their own house and between them they made it into a lovely home. My dad was a keen DIYer and my mum very house proud so they made the house like a palace.
I was brought up alongside the era of the more affluent 1960s when people were better off.
I remember us getting our first fitted carpet and the neighbours came in to have a look at it - ha,ha. not many had them in those days. We were very glam getting our 'American style' carpet. :)
We had a lovely pink bathroom suite and fitted cupboards which my dad made in the kitchen.
I was 16 when my dad got our first family car - can't remember what it was but it looked like a grey tank !! :)
We didn't have many holidays though. Went once for our first holiday in N Wales when I was about 11. Then didn't go again until I was 14.

Our street (Wolverton st) was a quiet and respectable road (apart from the Wallace murder of course !!) :eek: :D - we had nice good living neighbours and us kids respected our elders - no cheek and you did as you were told.
it was a clean area, no litter or graffiti, no broken glass. Most neighbours went to church every Sunday and the kids to Sunday school. Or you joined the Cubs or Brownies.

I was lucky not to have experienced living in bad area - although very unfortunately the same cannot be said for the present day Anfield. :( (don't start me on that one !!) - Anfield was a good area in those far off days and a desirable place to live. The decline started approx late 1970s early 80s. but that is an another subject.

[Ged]

As you say Lindy, those few decades apart seem worlds apart now. We may have progressed in technology and living standards but selfishness and greed has replaced community spirit in lots of cases.

[Gnomie]

As you say Lindy, those few decades apart seem worlds apart now. We may have progressed in technology and living standards but selfishness and greed has replaced community spirit in lots of cases.

Sadly How very true Ged.

The world was a nicer place then.

[Sloyne]

I was lucky not to have experienced poverty. My dad was a factory worker and my mum a shop worker. They struggled to buy their own house and between them they made it into a lovely home. My dad was a keen DIYer and my mum very house proud so they made the house like a palace. Lindy, did you ever read the book by Helen Forrester 'Tuppence to cross the Mersey'? It was resentment of the above type of things which seemed to permeate her writing. The book, IMHO, gushed with resentment of how the working class neighbours in Liverpool were able to manage to stay clean, feed and still lavish their children with love and attention.

I once sat next to Helen Forrester on a flight from London to Toronto and had a very lengthy conversation with her. She agreed that what I have said above, about her story, does seem to come across as resentment but she never meant it to come across that way. I wonder?

[lindylou]

No I havn't read that book.

The Helen Forrester and Catherine Cookson type books .. read one and you've read them all. Always a predictable style if you know what I mean.

I don't go for those type of books as I don't like that style of writing. :)

[chippie]

I,ve got about 100 of these fictional books, I read them from time to time to see how the author,s mind works. It,s like watching a chef making a meal, a little bit of fiction, a dash of truth. Some truth with a helping of fiction.:rolleyes:

[lindylou]

I remember when Catherine Cookson was hugely popular during the 1970s when her books first came out. Everyone used to buy them or go on the waiting list for them in the library. My mum had all of them - I did read them in those days when I was young and my reading tastes were undeveloped shall we say :) but I wouldn't go for that kind of book now.
In the wake of Cookson's popularity there started to emerge lots more of these style of books, written in a similar vein and centered around various regions, a lot being northern, Merseyside or Liverpool based.

very popular with housewives and pensioners. :) :) :) - tongue in cheek - but you know what I mean. :) There is usually a queue for those kind of books in the library.

Nothing wrong with them if you like that kind of thing.

[nynysuts]

I've read a few 'Liverpool' sagas in my time, but I hope to aim this book, when I get round to writing it, at young people in their late teens. I don't think the libraries need any more predictable books set in Liverpool, so far I've planned a book with a bit of a twist. The basic story is about how friendships and feelings change over time, focussing on a boy and girl who are childhood friends. Think that sounds OK? I've not finalised anything yet, although I've written about ten first paragraphs! I can't decide when to start!