Unions said they're under "attack" from the government after Rishi Sunak unveiled planned anti-strike laws limiting the right of public sectors to strike.
Such "union bashing", as one rail worker on a picket outside Lime Street Station described it, is hardly surprising for a Conservative Party whose hero Winston Churchill tried to break a strike by sailing a gunboat up the Mersey and having police baton-charge a rally of 80,000 people just across the road more than 100 years ago.
The city was in the midst of standstill caused by a general transport strike in August 1911. The docks and railway were closed, and no goods except bread and milk could move into or through the city without an escort from among the 3,000 troops stationed here.
