Editing Bootle (section)

===Decline===
The docks declined in importance in the 1960s and 1970s,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.touruk.co.uk/merseyside/bootle.htm|title=Bootle tourist information|publisher=Tour UK|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090313072654/http://www.touruk.co.uk/merseyside/bootle.htm|archive-date=13 March 2009|df=dmy-all}}</ref> and Bootle suffered high unemployment and a declining population. The establishment of large office blocks housing government departments and the [[Girobank|National Girobank]] provided employment, filled largely by middle-class people from outside the Bootle/Liverpool area. In the early 1970s Bootle was absorbed into the new local authority of Sefton under local government reorganisation.<ref name=photos/> More fundamental than political change was economic change. The very reason for Bootle's existence, the access to the Mersey, became almost irrelevant as the docks closed and the new container port required far fewer workers than the old docks had. This in turn affected practically every other industry in the town. The problems slowly gathered pace until Merseyside hit crisis point in the early 1980s. Even by 2006 the area was one of the poorest in the country and had high levels of unemployment.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/shippingports/ports/ir/seaforthriver?page=13|title=Seaforth River terminal harbour revision order|publisher=Department for Transport|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090327170148/http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/shippingports/ports/ir/seaforthriver?page=13|archive-date=27 March 2009|df=dmy-all}}</ref>