Lancashire's Last Stand: Declining Employment in the British Cotton Industry, 1950-70

Abstract

After a brief respite during the 1940s the secular decline of the British cotton industry resumed its course. This article seeks, by the application of an accounting procedure, to estimate the relative contributions of falling exports, rising imports, dwindling home demand, and increasing labour productivity to the decline in employment in cotton between 1950 and 1970. It concludes that the significance of each of these factors, as an immediate cause of decline, was subject to considerable variation over the period in question.