The crisis in postwar Lancashire: a rejoinder

Abstract

am grateful to Jim Tomlinson for his thoughtful criticism of my work on the postwar cotton textile industry. His main contention is that the decline of the British cotton industry during the I950s and i96os would not have been so calamitous if the employers had been sensible enough to reequip their mills in the late I940s, when profits were high and government investment grants were available. Tomlinson argues that other west European cotton industries followed a more vigorous investment strategy than Lancashire. Data are produced to suggest that this more adventurous approach by the French, Germans, Dutch, and Belgians enabled them to maintain or increase their export markets despite the ravages of Asian competition.2 On initial inspection these data appear particularly damning to Lancashire's capitalists, but further reflection indicates that it would be unwise to reach a hasty conclusion about this complex issue. There is strong evidence to support the view that Britain and its west European neighbours experienced significantly different conditions in their major export markets for cotton textiles. In I950 70 per cent of British cotton piece goods exports were consumed in the Commonwealth and empire countries. Exports to these markets fell from 572 million square yards in I950 to 23i million square yards in i960, accounting for 69 per cent of the total decline in cotton cloth exports.3 The Commonwealth and empire countries offered Lancashire little protection against rival cotton textile producers. Under the provisions of the imperial preference system, cloth from India, Hong Kong, and Pakistan had access to all these markets on the same terms as cloth woven in Blackburn and Burnley, and this was the crucial factor in explaining the collapse of British exports. For example, the Cotton Board calculated that Indian cotton piece goods exports to British West Africa increased from 4.98 million yards per quarter in I952 to i8.09 million yards per quarter in I955. Exports to South Africa were hampered by subsidies to local firms helping them to compete with imported cloth. What is more, Commonwealth and empire markets were accessible to Japanese exporters; the British weaving employers were distraught at the discovery in I954 that Japanese cotton cloth exports to the colonies would be increased by almost 45 per cent as a result of the new