My father, Jim McCahy, who has died aged 89, had a ringside seat at the “managed decline” of Liverpool during the early years of Margaret Thatcher’s government. Appointed in 1975 as headteacher of the inner-city Catholic secondary modern school, Archbishop Whiteside, just off Scottie (Scotland) Road, he transformed it from a place where most of the kids skived off into a happy community where they were proud to represent the school, especially in cross-country running.
He had peripheral dealings with the Militant-led Labour party council that ran Liverpool in the mid-1980s and was one of the 30,000 council employees to receive dismissal letters in 1985, famously delivered by taxis. Caught up in a reorganisation of the diocese, Jim was moved on to manage two of the four locations of the new Our Lady of Fatima school; it closed in 2005. Disillusioned with senior management, Jim happily accepted a generous early retirement offer, aged 52, ensuring his varied post-work life lasted longer than his teaching career.
