In the four-year Liverpool struggle, Taaffe was closely involved with developments, discussing with close friends and leading Liverpool Militant supporters, such as the former print worker Tony Mulhearn. He was President of the Liverpool District Labour Party during these events, in which the Liverpool City Council declared it was "Better to break the law than break the poor", agreed an illegal budget, and built 4,800 houses and bungalows, and improved 7,400 houses and flats (amongst other works), before the 47 councillors were surcharged and removed from office [https://web.archive.org/web/20050525094402/http://www.liverpool47.org/]. Their opponents however argued that Liverpool was in chaos.