Deindustrialisation and State Intervention: Keynesianism, Thatcherism and the Regions

Abstract

Few aspects of the British economy have attracted as much attention and debate over the past decade as the ‘deindustrialisation’ of the nation’s manufacturing base. The term ‘deindustrialisation’ has acquired several different meanings and connotations (see for example: Blackaby, 1981; Martin and Rowthorn, 1986; Rowthorn and Wells, 1987). Yet whatever specific definition or explanation of deindustrialisation is adopted, the underlying conclusion is that since the mid-1960s, and especially since the early 1970s, there has been a progressive and debilitating decline in the relative and absolute contribution of manufacturing output, investment, exports and employment to the national economy. This is by no means unique to Britain, but in no other advanced capitalist economy has the scale of decline been so intense. In the same way that Britain was the first country to industrialise, so it has been the first to deindustrialise.