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Clydeside: When the Workshop of the World Shut Up Shop |
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By the time the recession had fully set into 1920s society, the pre-war period was looked on with nostalgia. But it was Glasgow’s great, Victorian, industrial success and Clydeside’s specialism in heavy industries that contained the very seeds of the depression that would take hold of the region and never really leave again except when the war-machine required extra services.
The Scottish economy was over reliant on these industries; and areas in the South of England, which had diversified enough to bolster employment in the service sector and through catering for the needs a gradually awakening consumer society, recovered from the recession more readily than industry-dependent areas in the north of Britain. Glasgow and its surrounding area were looking at long-term unemployment, and this in itself stunted the growth of consumer society and produced a self-sustaining cycle of poverty.
But why did Clydeside fail so spectacularly in rediscovering its industrial glories after the war? Certainly many employers expected continued success, if not only to replace the shipping that was lost during the war. Full employment during the war was followed by the short post-war boom of 1919-1920, and even when the economy slumped in 1920-21, many employers tried to keep the backbone of their labour force in the hope that trade would resume as normal. However, competitors from the USA, Japan, Scandinavia and Holland had similar ideas, and for Clydeside the trade did not return.
To compound the problems, Clydeside took the brunt of the macro-economic decisions taken by successive governments to fight the Depression of the 1920s and 30s. In order to attract investment, primarily from rich American bankers, and stabilise Sterling, it was deemed necessary to rationalise British industry. This happened initially through wage cuts and downsizing of industrial capacity, and most of the Clyde’s industrialists supported the Bank of England’s decision to force cuts in order to deal with inflation.
By the early 1930s, Sir James Lithgow, with the backing of the Bank, bought up and then closed a third of British shipbuilding in order to rationalise the industry. The Clyde was not the only victim; Yarrow on Tyneside, for example, lost both its yards and the virtually whole town lost their jobs.
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