Contesting steel closures: twists and turns on the path of decline in western Europe and the USA

While the process of creating new patterns of production and trade in the steel industry was an international one, it also had significant local and regional dimensions. With global demand static, growth in the newly industrializing countries (NICs) was matched by decline in many former steel centres. The pressures of competition increasingly led to question marks being placed over the future of whole steelworks and the communities which had historically grown up around them, especially during a particularly concentrated phase of restructuring from the late 1970s onwards (see Hudson and Sadler 1986).