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Deindustrialisation and Uneven Development
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9 billion (largest ever) in 1976, leading to the ‘Winter of
discontent’ in 1978-79

• In response to this, there was large scale and deep deindustrialisation - decline of
manufacturing and heavy industry

Complexity of deindustrialisation

• Nature of spatial restructuring differs from country to country:
• Economic history, industrial structure, political response
• Competing definitions:
• Absolute decline in manufacturing employment and/or output, or;
• Relative decline in manufacturing employment and/or output
• Sign of failure or success?
• As industry innovates, the workforce gets smaller (so deindustrialisation here is
actually a sign of economic growth)
• E
...
relative decline as a consequence of faster productivity growth in
manufacturing than services
• Positive and negative deindustrialisation

• Rowthorn’s 3 main deindustrialisation ‘theses’ (1986)

Maturity Thesis

• Natural evolution of economics - economies naturally tend towards positive
deindustrialisation

• Tipping point = $4000 p/c GDP (1975) - $18,000 today - point at which
deindustrialisation occurs as the economy becomes more service-based

• ‘Wealth trap’ - as countries get richer, they create conditions which make it hard to
compete in terms of industry - e
...
higher wages, cannot export due to high currency
exchange rate

• Productivity is less in services - unable to automate many service sector tasks

• Assumes ‘trickle down’ - idea that wealth eventually reaches the poorest

Trade Speciality Thesis - applies more specifically to the UK

• Post-war imports were so expensive that domestic production was required

• Various factors changed this:

• Cheaper food and raw materials

• Productivity increases (technology) - so workforce size declines

• North Sea oil allowed huge revenue to be accumulated

• 1950s UK had to manufactured, but then diversified


Failure Thesis

• Underinvestment in manufacturing led to deficiencies of British industry and
management

• The ‘British disease’ - trade unions had too much power, labour vs
...


• Symptoms: firms and plant closures, structural unemployment and redundant skills

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5 million peak employment

• Deindustrialisation from 1960s, but pace rapidly increased from mid-1970s

• recession in 1979-1981/2

• election of Conservative government and Margaret Thatcher as PM in 1979

• Rapid and traumatic process

Political-economy of UK deindustrialisation

• Thatcherism - Political response to crisis

• Make ‘UK plc’ internationally competitive

• Neo-liberal economic policies:

• Roll back state

• Privatisation and the withdrawal of support for (uncompetitive) nationalised
industries 

• ‘Crowding out’ thesis

• Erase market distortions

• Reduce Unions’ power

1984 Miners’ Strike: ‘The Enemy Within’

• Remaking the British variety of capitalism - Minors; strike a pivotal moment

• ‘Long shadow’ cast over labour relations - weakened the labour movement:

• Union legislation

• Morale and confidence

• ‘Civil war’

• Conservative government vis-à-vis NUM

• Power of the state vis-à-vis unions

• Competition vis-à-vis protectionism

• Spatial shift of economic power from North to South

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Responses to deindustrialisation
Responses to restructuring: loss

• ‘Smokestack nostalgia’ (Cowan and Heathcott, 2003)

• Mourning of the loss of the old solidarity of the industrial working class (happier times,
UK was a bigger player on the worlds stage, people had jobs, worked hard)

• End of the era of working-class politics and power of organised labour

• Rose-tinted glasses? - e
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racism greater (organised about was predominantly
for white men)

• Growing importance of consumption as a process of identity formation, rather than
production

• Working and non-working poor - ‘flawed consumers’

Gender and deindustrialisation

• Redundant Masculinities (McDowell, 2003)


•

•

Low skilled men in peripheral deindustrialised regions are the most likely to be
socially and economically marginalised

Crisis of working-class masculine identity

• Local community and work place is lost

• Retreat into destructive localism; i
...
gangs, etc
...
e
...


• ‘Underside’ of service economy

• Intersects with race and rationality

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g
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Brexit
• Typical narrative ‘disillusioned, northern working class voters’

• Perhaps overly simplistic analysis…

• Majority of the leave vote came from the South (but this is where majority of
population is)


•

• …but uneven regional development was certainly a factor

Consequences for economy?

• Falling pound helping exports? - lower exchange rate

• Threat of financial flight

• Rod for own back


Examining the Vote

• Strongest leave votes most reliant on EU funding (Los et al

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