Voices of Postwar England

In the following excerpt Dolly Lloyd talks about how her local community around Scotland Road in Liverpool worked together with other local organisations and churches to provide facilities for people to meet during the 1970s and 1980s when the inner city of Liverpool experienced wide scale slum clearance.

Dolly: Nineteen sixty-nine, right, we had some empty buildings and that’s when it all started, all these projects really started was when a team come from the Home Office to this deprived part of Liverpool for the poverty and the deprivation and the, the bombing and the factories were gone, you know even the, the port, the ships, the docks, it was alive but no life and this really did have an effect you know, on people. But the only thing was, the church, the priest welcomed us down here and he said “I would like volunteers” you know, he said, to help us. He said “with the second Mersey Tunnel happening”, he said, “make a cup of tea and that for the elderly people you know, around.” So I put me hand up, you know I thought oh well what not, something to do. So three of us put our hands up and on a Wednesday, whatever day you want to pick so, it used to be on a Wednesday afternoon and they’d have a little get together, a sing along and that you know, just socialising. […] I gets in touch with some of them in the dwellings, that lived, they had a tenants association and I approached them and they said “oh there’s a big meeting up in the Silbestian[18.55], there’s a team coming from the Home Office and they’re going to start something, so why don’t you go down?” I thought oh I will. Anyway it started from there and that was the community development team that had come from the Home Office. They were in municipal buildings but they come, they held their meetings in the Vauxhall and looking around, working with the universities, there was an awful lot, arts, everyone was involved and what they, they turned around at the meeting, they said “What we want to do, we’re looking for volunteers to do this, help with these projects that’s needed in the area. So what is needed in the area?” And different views were coming across. What we doing now, what’s she doing now? She’s got pensioners together and she’s helping them because of what’s happening down there, the second Mersey Tunnel. So I ended up that I had them all coming down, this was St Olly’s, St Anthony’s and Eldon Street. Three parishes coming down, which was over a hundred people. Everybody started going on holidays and days out, it was just absolutely magnificent.

Hilary: How would you describe yourself today Dolly? How, if you, if somebody asked you what, to describe yourself, what would you say? […] Like um, like who you are?

Dolly: Who I am? Oh I’d just describe myself as a, a campaigner, I do believe in having a lovely community and a real spirit community and I’ll never be any different and I would put myself out in any way to have that, I really would, which I have done in the past and I would still carry on to do it until we really got what people want in their minds. Not what people are telling them but what they want, to hear their choices, you know. They got us involved, the HAT, to get us involved in our communities. Now that we’re in communities and we’ve, we’ve got what we wanted, we’ve got what we wanted. Well leaseholders have a different thing, alright that’s different but since this property pool, you know to, the buy in the city has come on, it’s made people really, it’s caused a lot of apathy.