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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
National
Tom Belger & Kate McMullin

Merseyside's forgotten flag and how it could be revived

Merseyside was not always the famous place it is today, so much so a flag was created to 'spread' the word of the county far and wide.

In 1974 the county council was launched and with it 'the flag of Merseyside'.

The flag was the official flag of the old Merseyside county council and it's design, with its white waves on a blue background and six stars had important meaning.

The waves on the flag were to represent the River Mersey, which is where the name Merseyside was adopted from.

Meanwhile, the six gold crowns was, at the time, to represent the six county boroughs.

But the authority only survived until 1986, when it was abolished by Margaret Thatcher’s government.

Merseyside had taken root though in law, geography and local identity, alongside other traditional counties like Lancashire and Cheshire.

Fire, police, transport and waste services have also survived on a Merseyside basis, covering the five boroughs Liverpool, Wirral, Knowsley, Sefton and St Helens.

But there are actually six gold crowns on the old Merseyside flag, not five.

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This is because they represented six so-called county boroughs at the time - Birkenhead, Bootle, Liverpool, Southport, St Helens, and Wallasey.

So does the flag have a future today, or is it a relic of history?

The safe money is probably that the flag will not be revived, because the county council is long gone.

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However, there are six boroughs in the Liverpool city region, not five - because it includes Halton - so the old flag’s six crowns could actually work today, if the flag was for the whole city region, not just Merseyside.

But whether people actually want the flag, is another question altogether.

Let us know in the comments what you think about Merseyside having it's own flag, should it be revived?

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