Yorkshire common sense and a fine, dry sense of humour carried Alfred Stocks for 35 years through the constant traumas of political life in Liverpool, which he served as a solicitor, assistant Town Clerk and finally, for 12 years, as Chief Executive.
It was during his tenure at the top that Labour's Militant Tendency and other hard left elements took control of the council. Stocks' first task in those years was to build, if he could, a working relationship with these new political masters. It meant overcoming an ingrained suspicion that the council officers, because of their identification with earlier administrations, would sabotage the new policies and plans.
That Stocks managed to cross this divide and instill sufficient trust for council business to be carried on was in part due to his own early days in Liverpool when, as a young Cambridge-trained lawyer, he was responsible for the legal work on slum clearance.
Asked once by his assistant whether he was gifted with second sight as he so often seemed to know what course to take, Stocks vigorously denied it but added that he had sought direction from the Almighty all his life and naturally did so at moments of crisis. There was nothing fancy about this in his view, but he often found the essential initiatives or the insights into what was in others’ minds which would show a way through an impasse.
When he died, many felt the city had lost not just a great public servant but a friend.
