ABSTRACT
During the postwar period Britain has undergone a dramatic change from being a highly industrialized country to one in which the service sector accounts for three-quarters of employment and two-thirds of output. De-industrialization— that is, a decline in the proportion of employment in the manufacturing sector—had started in the late 1960s, but it was accelerated by Britain’s entry to the EC. After entry, her output of manufactures fell because imports from the other EC Member States ousted her home-produced goods from her own market. Her increase in exports to the other Member States was not sufficient to compensate for this and, in any case, some of these extra exports appear to have been diverted from the rest of the world. So far from participating in a rapidly growing market her rate of growth fell; indeed, it became negative from 1979–81.
