ABSTRACT
Within the last five years, Wearside has seen the closure both of its last remaining shipyard and coal mine. The industries which were the staples of the Wearside economy since the last century have now gone. These decisive events are in one sense merely the culmination of a process of contraction affecting so-called ‘sunset’ industries over several decades; yet the fact of their disappearance, and the government’s reluctance to act to save them, shocked and angered many in the area. In fact, to the government, the final disappearance of these industries is important symbolically. Tory governments since 1979 have re-cast the objectives and mechanisms of economic management, as they relate both to the national and regional economies. State support for industries which are uncompetitive has been withdrawn; supplyside policies have been introduced to support private enterprise and to increase the UK’s attractiveness as a location for international production. Shipyards and coal mines-large subsidised state-owned plants, overmanned, with toopowerful unions and outdated labour practices-were regarded as synonymous with past policies and failure. In contrast, the emerging new industry based around Nissan’s greenfield car assembly plant, was seen as offering a basis not just for economic but cultural and political transformation within this old industrial area.
