ABSTRACT

Of a l the sectors of the British economy manufacturing has received the most attention from local and regional research workers. Although the number of people employed in manufacturing in the UK was estimated in 1990 to be 5.1 million, a fall of 3.4 million or 40 per cent from its peak in 1966, the sector remains paramount as a generator of wealth and a source of technological innovation. Moreover, despite the growing recognition that shifts in the location of several service industries may influence spatial trends in manufacturing and population as well as respond to them (Daniels 1983; see also Ch. 18), variations from place to place in the changing level of manufacturing activity are still the most important contributor to spatial variations in economic change. As Fothergill and Gudgin (1982: 47) noted, even during a period when British manufacturing was in crisis at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, cthe pattern of urban and regional growth depends more than ever on what happens to manufacturing employment9.