ABSTRACT
THE 1930s are seen in popular memory as a bleak I decade, characterized by unemployment and poverty. This picture is only appropriate for part of the country. Areas such as the North-East, northern England and South Wales did struggle through much of the decade. These were regions which had depended largely on Britain's traditional 'heavy' industries, such as shipbuilding, coal mining and cotton, industries which entered a long-term decline between the two world wars. Each was to lose approximately one third of its workforce. Cotton fell from third place to eleventh in importance to British industry.
