As a new play about the controversial former Prime Minister opens at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre, we look back at her relationship with Liverpool
18:07, 02 May 2026
Margaret Thatcher on a trip to Liverpool
When it comes to notorious names in the city of Liverpool, there are few that are spoken about with more venom than Margaret Thatcher.
Considering the former Prime Minister left office 36 years ago and died in 2013, the hold she still has in the imagination of many in this city is remarkable in its strength and its toxicity. A lot of people associated with Liverpool view the long-serving Conservative leader as the key force behind the city’s generational economic and social crisis in the 1980s – and with good reason.
That fascination with Thatcher continues in the shape of the Everyman Theatre’s new production of The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, a new play based on Hilary Mantel’s provocatively titled short story. The plot focuses on a Liverpool man, with links to the IRA, who plans to kill the Prime Minister in 1983.
The play – adapted for the stage by Alexandra Wood and directed by John Young – runs at The Everyman from this weekend until May 23 and serves as a reminder of what a major topic Margaret Thatcher remains in this city today.
To explore the controversial former Prime Minister’s legacy, we spoke to British and Irish politics professor Jonathan Tonge, who is based at the University of Liverpool.
He says there is “no doubt” that Liverpool was the biggest victim of Thatcher’s economic policies, adding: “She was quite prepared to let what she saw as the lame duck, unprofitable industries go to the wall and Liverpool was particularly vulnerable because it was reliant upon shipping and transatlantic trade and it had declining ports.”
He says that it is “parody nonsense” to suggest that it was a case of the Prime Minister “sitting down with a map and saying let’s destroy Liverpool,” but that this city was “by far the biggest victim of her deliberately chosen economic policies”, adding that the government did not put anything in to ameliorate or alleviate these destructive outcomes.
Once the great port of the British Empire, Liverpool lost a remarkable 80,000 jobs between 1972 and 1982 as the city’s docks closed and its manufacturing industry halved.
It was against this backdrop of enormous unemployment and poverty that the city experienced rioting in Toxteth in 1981 and in which support grew for the ultra-left wing Militant tendency, which would go on to effectively run the city’s council and go to war with the Thatcher government.
Margaret thatcher in Liverpool
Professor Tonge explains: “So what you had was a whole generation of youngsters in Liverpool who were unemployed for years. “Youth unemployment was a toxic outcome of Thatcher’s policies across the country. But in Liverpool, it was chronic. Half of the city’s under-25s were unemployed at one point.
“There were high levels of crime, and there was a desperation within the city.”
So how culpable was Margaret Thatcher for this epoch-defining crisis in Liverpool? Professor Tonge adds: “Well it was her economic strategy that caused it, but as I say, without deliberately targeting Liverpool.”
While Margaret Thatcher would never have been welcomed in Liverpool when she was alive, one of her most senior ministers in government remains a much-respected figure in the city for his work here during those dark and difficult days in the 1980s.
Michael Heseltine was dubbed the “Minister for Merseyside” for his efforts to try and reinvigorate the city’s fortunes by spearheading regeneration projects around The Albert Dock and creating cultural events like the International Garden Festival. He remains that rare thing, a Tory who is welcomed with open arms in Liverpool.
But speaking to the ECHO last year, the 93-year-old Conservative grandee said it would be wrong to say that his boss was deliberately trying to run down the city of Liverpool as she was allowing him to carry out his hugely influential work.
He told us: “You have to recognise that the recovery and restoration of Liverpool’s fortunes took place under a Thatcher government.
“The most interventionist thing I did from the very beginning was, in fact, supported by the Prime Minister, against the Treasury. So she is entitled to credit for that decision. I could not have done it without her.”
Professor Tonge says he is certainly not dismissive of Heseltine’s comments and his genuine commitment to Liverpool, but adds: “While Thatcher was content for him to go and do this, I don’t think it was amelioration. Having garden festivals isn’t going to solve a city’s chronic unemployment problem.”
He does point out that the idea that she wanted to allow Liverpool to fall into a state of “managed decline” is incorrect, explaining that it was her then Chancellor Geoffrey Howe who had advised her on this policy for Liverpool after the Toxteth riots and that the Prime Minister rejected this and instead let Heseltine head to the city to help.
“But she didn’t engage in interventionism that was going to really rescue the situation,” adds Professor Tonge. “There was an indifference (to Liverpool’s problems). A sort of economic shrug of the shoulders.”
The fact that we are still writing about this period and that new plays are being put on in Liverpool about Thatcher shows the enduring legacy she still has in the city – as does the complete collapse of any electoral success for the Conservatives in the years that followed her time in office.
Margaret Thatcher at the Albert Dock
The Tories haven’t held a council seat in Liverpool since 1998 and the last Conservative Members of Parliament to represent the city lost their seats in 1983.
Professor Tonge says it is true that the Conservatives were in decline in Liverpool before Thatcher, but they remained a force. He adds: “To give one example – Liverpool Garston, a working-class constituency, in 1979, the Tories still won it. The Tories won it back.
“By 1987, once you’d had a few years of mass unemployment, Tories were just, you know, annihilated. And that’s just one example of, the Tories just crashing to lows they would never recover from in Liverpool.”
As the professor points out, the nadir of Thatcher’s toxic legacy in Liverpool came in 1989 as she and her government supported the lies of South Yorkshire Police, who sought to blame Liverpool fans for the Hillsborough disaster, which led to the unlawful deaths of 97 LFC fans.
“The full revelations of Hillsborough didn’t come out until she had left office,” adds Professor Tonge. “But it has added to her legacy of toxicity because straight away she simply backed the police instead of studying the accounts in detail.”
Speaking about that legacy more widely, he adds: “Any other Tory leader if they passed away, there wouldn’t be people partying. Whilst you don’t like to see that, let’s face it, if Michael Howard or Theresa May passed away, there would be no response.
“She was a very different type of Tory leader and one who presided over the city’s worst times and whose economic policies produced Liverpool’s worst crisis of the 20th Century.”
Tickets for The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher at The Everyman are available here.