In the 1980s, Mrs Thatcher (Prime Minister) was selling off all the public
  industries to the private sector. The privatisation of the bus industry
  took place on 26th October 1986. Management and unions were united
  in their efforts to prevent this happening, but it went ahead. The
  management of Merseyside Transport put two buses at the Union's
  disposal to decorate and use to campaign on the streets. One was
  Atlantean 1271 (BKC 271K) which appears in this video. The other was
  Metropolitan 4068 (HWM 68P). This was painted yellow and named
  "The Battle Bus". I have no colour pictures of this, but if anyone can
  supply one, please contact me.

Mary Kelly, whose late husband Charlie was a driver at Garston depot, recently found the old vinyl 45 record, made by the "Penny Lane Busmen" back in 1985. It was sung by five drivers who worked for Merseybus at the time. (See the photograph below the video). The photographs used in the video (which I made in June 2010) are from the collections of John Cartwright and John Salmon, with a few of my own thrown in.

INSTRUCTIONS: Make sure you've stopped the website music first, then click the middle of the picture to watch the video. (If it fails to play, click the YouTube logo to watch it on the YouTube site).

Then scroll down to see some photographs at the bottom of the page.....