ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of the current recession on industry and employment in the North-West region. In what follows, we seek to analyse events within the manufacturing sector of a peripheral regional economy at a time of deep recession. It is, however, our primary intention to go behind the aggregate statistics in order to reveal something of the deeper processes of regional industrial change and their complexities. The analysis is, at this stage, far from complete and we set out here to offer a preliminary contribution to debate rather than definitive conclusions.
