Liverpool transport firm Merseytravel backs campaign to eradicate The Sun newspaper from the city

Merseytravel is putting support behind ‘Total Eclipse of The S*n’ group

(Getty Images)

The company responsible for providing bus, rail and ferry services across Liverpool is to ask news vendors across its network to stop selling The Sun newspaper.

Merseytravel announced the plans after backing the ‘Total Eclipse of The S*n’ campaign, which aims to eradicate the newspaper from the city following the conclusion of the Hillsborough inquiry earlier this year.

The company, which is also a strategic transport advisor to the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, is drawing up a letter to be sent to its vendors in the region to stop selling the newspaper, the BBC reports.

Merseytravel’s chairman Liam Robinson claimed to the broadcaster that many people in the city are “offended to see [The Sun] on sale” and that people who have to sell it are “offended to touch it”.

“We are here to represent the traveling public and local people. [This motion] was backed unanimously by all political parties,” he told the BBC.

The motion was passed at a Merseytravel committee meeting, which members of the ‘Total Eclipse of The S*n’ group had been invited to attend, the Liverpool Echo reports.

Around 175 news vendors have reportedly stopped selling the newspaper since the campaign began, and the group has since taken its message to the streets, by having its logo branded across two taxi cabs.

The liveries read “Do not buy,”and, “Not welcoming in our city,” along with the campaign’s name and reminder of the 96 people who died during the Hillsborough disaster.