Liverpool in the 1980s

The 1980s saw Liverpool's fortunes sink to their lowest point. In the early 1980s unemployment rates in Liverpool were amongst the highest in the UK, an average of 12,000 people each year were leaving the city, and some 15% of its land was vacant or derelict.

In 1981 the infamous Toxteth Riots took place, during which, for the first time in the UK outside Northern Ireland, tear gas was used by police against civilians. In the same year, the Tate and Lyle sugar works, previously a mainstay of the city's manufacturing economy, closed down.

In 1989, 96 Liverpool fans died and many more were severely injured in the Hillsborough disaster at a football game in Sheffield. This had a traumatic effect on people in both cities, and resulted in legally imposed changes in the way in which football fans have since been accommodated.

The city became known to the world during the 1960s as the home of The Beatles, whose wisecracking effrontery and ironic, often cynical sense of humor were regarded as typical of the disillusioned--and sometimes despairing--outlook of Liverpool's working classes.

A native resident of Liverpool is called a Scouser. The word comes from scouse, a simple stew consumed by the working class, and made from the cheapest cuts of meat.  Scousers are generally welcoming, proud, fun loving, and hardworking people.