ABSTRACT
In the last quarter of the twentieth century profound changes have been experienced in social structure and social policy in the UK, as they have in all other advanced industrial countries. Within the labour market in the UK in the 1990s therefore there has been experience of exclusion and marginalisation, rather than inclusion and social solidarity. British government statistics reveal growing levels of unemployment in the 1980s, with a decline towards the end of the decade followed by a further rise in the early 1990s. Formal unemployment has been accompanied by a major growth in economic inactivity especially amongst male ex-workers. Job insecurity is a product of reduced employment rights as well as alterations in the forces of production. Escalating unemployment and labour market marginalisation have been a major concerns for policy action by British governments in the 1980s and 1990s. Inadequacies in labour supply were promoted as the cause of unemployment and therefore the focus for policy action.
