Tony Dickson

The British State : governments and manufacturing decline

The collapse of manufacturing in Britain since 1979 is the culmination of a more protracted decline. Most sectors of the economy have been hit by the post-1979 recession, but it is manufacturing industry which has been most severely affected. Indeed, the process of ‘de-industrialisation’ is peculiarly, some would say almost uniquely, a British problem (see Smith, 1984, p. 34). No other advanced industrialised nation has experienced the contraction in manufacturing employment and the falls in output that have afflicted the United Kingdom. Whilst most OECD countries have suffered a setback in industrial production in the 1980s, they have, none the less, maintained production levels well above those of the UK.

The Politics of Closure

Closure of manufacturing plants in Britain and the general decline of manufacturing capacity is not part of an ineluctable process: this has been a recurring theme of the chapters in this volume. There is no single, universal and inescapable economic law of downturn and closure. Whilst companies and governments may seek to legitimise their actions by invoking immutable laws of economics, recourse to such legitimating devices is itself a political act. In these instances, impersonal economic rationality is called upon to obscure the discretionary choices made by firms and governments. In a simple and definitive statement of economics — that there is no alternative — the intricacies of political and social considerations can be dispensed with. What the preceding chapters have pointed to is that there invariably are alternatives — but that alternative strategies to closure are complex and contain contradictory elements.