The South's pathetic contribution to the industrial heritage of England

[Alf Bentley]

I was having a conversation with my old man the other week about the decline of industry.

It occurred to me that almost every town in the North and the Midlands can be instantly associated with one or more major industry from over the years. For example: Leicester + hosiery / shoes, Derby + train building / textiles, Manchester and other towns in the North West + cotton mills, Sheffield + steel, various places + coal, etc. etc.

By the same token, with the small exception of the odd shipbuilding town such as Chatham, there are no places in the South of England with which I could make the same connection.

Where the frig did these Southerners work in the olden days? They can't all have been wanking off while the North and Midlands were busy making stuff?

Returning to the original post...

It's interesting that towns/areas should be so strongly defined by particular industries that mainly developed only in the last 200 years or so, even if some existed on a small scale previously.

For hundreds, if not thousands of years before that, the country would have been dominated much more by agriculture, plus the odd market town, administrative centre or trading port. Presumably, different locations were then identified much more by the type of farming that they did. Industry would have existed but it would mainly have been "craft industry" (blacksmiths, manual weavers, dyers, millers, fishermen etc.) - and spread pretty evenly around the country.

Funny how the industrial revolution, just 200 years ago, is seen as defining the identity of a particular place.

Some towns/areas in the south are strongly identified with particular industries (or occupations):

- Swindon: trains

- Plymouth/Portsmouth/Chatham: naval docks

- Dover/East Kent: coal mining/ferries

- Southampton: commercial/passenger port

- Cornwall: tin mining, china clay & fishing

- Colchester & Aldershot: army

- Bristol: commercial port (& slavery!)

There's also still a lot of light industry (e.g. pharmaceuticals, lemonade, where I grew up in E. Kent). Plus a lot of people would have been employed in transporting/loading/distributing/exporting the heavy industrial goods made in the North & Midlands, not to mention all the finance, law & admin in London.

The Wikipedia page on the Economy of London is interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_London

"London shifted to a mostly service-based economy earlier than other European cities, particularly following the Second World War....

For the 19th and much of the 20th centuries London was a major manufacturing centre, with over 1.5 million industrial workers in 1960. Manufacturing suffered dramatic decline from the 1960s on. Entire industries have been lost including shipbuilding, consumer electronics, aircraft manufacture and most of the vehicle construction industry. Today one of the last substantial industrial plants remaining is Ford Dagenham, a major producer of body panels and the largest diesel engine manufacturing site in the world. At 2.8%, London was the region containing the lowest proportion of employees engaged in UK manufacturing"

1.5 million industrial workers in London as recently as 1960....an amazing stat!

[Jon the Hat]

Sorry Jon, but as an ex-teacher the last part of your comment here just flat out pisses me off.

Teachers get on with the job they're trying to do, hamstrung by 'idiot politicians' who change the rules and regulations every few years in the name of the next 'new thing', which most of the time in fact has no effect on the most important thing: helping the students learn. All the teachers I know work damned hard both in and out of school, for zero appreciation from the public who through biased media reports think they're a bunch of incompetents. Which is so far from the truth it couldn't be seen with the Hubble Space Telescope on a really clear day.

God only knows why people still go into teaching when the lack of due respect for their profession has been eroded (by total know-nothings) so much. It makes me sick to the fvcking stomach.

Get more staff in to reduce class sizes and diversity of learning options for students, encourage respect for teachers in society, and give a little trust!

Rant over. Nothing personal, but bad-mouthing teachers is my beserk button.

Do agree with the idea that the Internet has made every political decision a talking shop. But the leading media opinion in this country (newspaper anyway) is decidedly right wing, not left.

I just picked teaching as an example. Change and innovation has become something that is opposed for the sake of it. I am sure the vast majority of teachers do their very best, and get fed up with change, but change happens in all industries & professions, and not everything works perfectly, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

[PWII]

Im assuming the op is stating the south as in London and surrounding area. The south west had many slate, copper and coal mines and many mills and work houses (Victorian) to add to that, more recently and still currently car manufacture in Bristol and Plymouth.

. Must admit though not much historical content of London and surrounding area being industrial.

[Saxondale]

I was originally referring to the Industrial Revolution period specifically.

I think that a lot of what are now major towns in the South were, at the time, reasonably small agricultural centres. Also, in defense of London itself, it was a massively busy and important port in that era.

I still find it difficult to macro-economically justify how the South has become the centre of the country's wealth during the 20th century. Surely it can't just be leaching from the commercial activity of London?

PS. Good post Alf.

[PWII]

I see your point, this is incredibly valid. I think there may well be a leach if you like. Owners of the factories moved to the suburbs and further to get away from the smoggy atmosphere of the city, taking with them erm cleaners etc, which led to towns developing, I guess.

Can't think of any other explanation really.

[Deucalion]

A problem with manufacturing in Britain following WWII was the country was still thinking as a great power.

The projects which were invested in were all big, capital projects, such as luxury cars and ambitious aircraft projects. The economies which did well, such as Germany and Japan, were restricted from investing in such big ideas and instead built their success on manufacturing small consumer items. As it turned out, this is where the big money was and Germany and Japan went from strength to strength while Britain lost it's manufacturing base and suffered from slow growth.

I think Britain now knows it can only produce aircraft in collaboration with Europe or as a subcontractor of the USA.

[Webbo]

A problem with manufacturing in Britain following WWII was the country was still thinking as a great power.

The projects which were invested in were all big, capital projects, such as luxury cars and ambitious aircraft projects. The economies which did well, such as Germany and Japan, were restricted from investing in such big ideas and instead built their success on manufacturing small consumer items. As it turned out, this is where the big money was and Germany and Japan went from strength to strength while Britain lost it's manufacturing base and suffered from slow growth.

I think Britain now knows it can only produce aircraft in collaboration with Europe or as a subcontractor of the USA.

Straight after WWII we still had an empire, captive markets. If the Jamaican police force needed a new fleet of cars the governor would just ring up Morris and order them etc, foreign companies never got a look in. This lack of competition meant that our companies could charge what they liked, they didn't need to innovate The unions could demand higher wages, no changes to working practices or redundancies. This combination of poor management and luddite unions meant that as we made the colonies independent and lost our captive markets we were still making poor quality, expensive,unreliable and because somebody was always on strike late delivered goods. It's no wonder so many of our industries declined in the 60s and 70s.

[Deucalion]

Straight after WWII we still had an empire, captive markets. If the Jamaican police force needed a new fleet of cars the governor would just ring up Morris and order them etc, foreign companies never got a look in. This lack of competition meant that our companies could charge what they liked, they didn't need to innovate The unions could demand higher wages, no changes to working practices or redundancies. This combination of poor management and luddite unions meant that as we made the colonies independent and lost our captive markets we were still making poor quality, expensive,unreliable and because somebody was always on strike late delivered goods. It's no wonder so many of our industries declined in the 60s and 70s.

I actually pretty much agree with that.

But things are different now. While we still have protection for employees, which I personally think is a good thing, the hangover from 'jobs for life' created for returning servicemen is pretty much a thing of the past. We also have good education and therefore should be pretty well placed to find the skills to capitalise on the innovative spirit which still seems to be present in this country and means the UK is always among the leaders when it comes to finding new technology.

The problem now is there is never any real investment in these new technologies. This is not a problem of the innovators or the workers in these industries, it is a problem with the owners of the necessary capital. How many times has a new product been developed on these shores, only to be made into a commercial success elsewhere?

Could it be that the fixed mindset of entitlement no longer resides with 'jobs for life' unions, but instead with a financial elite who cannot see beyond financial services?

[Alf Bentley]

I actually pretty much agree with that.

But things are different now. While we still have protection for employees, which I personally think is a good thing, the hangover from 'jobs for life' created for returning servicemen is pretty much a thing of the past. We also have good education and therefore should be pretty well placed to find the skills to capitalise on the innovative spirit which still seems to be present in this country and means the UK is always among the leaders when it comes to finding new technology.

The problem now is there is never any real investment in these new technologies. This is not a problem of the innovators or the workers in these industries, it is a problem with the owners of the necessary capital. How many times has a new product been developed on these shores, only to be made into a commercial success elsewhere?

Could it be that the fixed mindset of entitlement no longer resides with 'jobs for life' unions, but instead with a financial elite who cannot see beyond financial services?

Excellent post. It's not just the financial services slant that's the problem, though.

Investment in companies is much more short-termist in the UK, compared to Germany, for example, where it is quite common for a company to have representatives of both its bank and its employees on its board to oversee long-term investment and development. A "stakeholder" approach, if you like.

Here, investor expectations are much more for high returns earned quickly, high dividends, rapid increase in shareholder value. There also tends to be a much bigger gap between the pay of top executives and workers.

Not an easy problem to sort out, though, given the dependence of the UK economy on the City of London - and the fact that the investors are often institutional investors (pension funds, insurance companies etc.) effectively acting as agents of the people in a different role (earning money for our pension funds, to keep our insurance premiums low etc.).

Clever policies to encourage/target investment can do a certain amount, but major structural change is probably required long-term. If anything, though, "stakeholder"-type capitalist systems seem to be sliding more towards the US/UK short-termist model.