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The post-war period has witnessed considerable interest in the spatial allocation of resources and, though government intervention has varied both in the means employed and the vigour of execution, the degree of government involvement has undoubtedly increased over the past two decades. In the immediate post-war period of Labour government, there was an active policy of regional assistance but this wavered and faded out of sight during the Conservative administrations of the 1950s. Indeed, by the early 1960s, it was widely felt that the ‘regional problem’ had been solved. However, with economic stagnation, even depression, in 1962 and 1963, there was a marked re-awakening of interest in problems of regional development (Chisholm, 1962) and the advent of a Labour administration in 1964 gave great impetus to this change. The following five or six years saw a veritable flood of legislation directed towards correcting regional imbalance (McCrone, 1969). In 1970, when a Conservative administration was returned to power, it appeared that the tempo of legislative change would slacken. In the event, the first years of the 1970s have seen plenty of changes and it is clear that whatever the political colour of the government, there will be a continuing commitment to active intervention in the spatial allocation of resources (see Chisholm and Manners, 1971).
At no time have the policy objectives of regional intervention been spelled out with great precision but two main intentions can be identified. The first has been the abiding concern to reduce the levels of unemployment in Ulster, Scotland, parts of northern England and elsewhere to something nearer the national average. Regional and intra-regional differences in unemployment rates have been remarkedly persistent throughout the post-war period and these differences are rightly regarded as both socially unjust and economically wasteful. The second main reason for an interest in regional development lies in the problems of congestion, etc., arising from the previously uncontrolled growth of the conurbations in general and of London and Birmingham in particular. Strenuous efforts have been made to limit the growth of employment in these two conurbations.
In pursuit of the first objective, two main strategies have been employed, both predicated on the general assumption that it is better to stimulate employment in areas with a large proportion of the workforce out of work than to encourage migration from these areas to places where the demand for labour is chronically in excess of the supply. While there is dispute about the precise importance of structural changes in the economy as a cause of spatial variations in unemployment levels, there can be no doubt whatever that the run-down of employment in certain industries has been of major importance. Coal mining, cotton textiles and ship-building are perhaps the three most familiar industries in this context (but see Chap. 5). In each case, special provision has been made to reduce the rate of decline. The coal industry has been protected by a tax on fuel oil, restrictions on coal imports and pressure on the Central Electricity Generating Board to use coal in preference to other fuels, notably oil. Cotton textiles have been helped by massive subsidies for re-equipment and by import quotas. In the case of shipbuilding, aid has been forthcoming in the form of special investment incentives, by the placement of government orders for naval vessels and as special aid for the restructuring of the industry on the Clyde.
If the effect of these and similar policies has been to reduce the rate at which regional economies have had to experience adjustments in their employment structure, another group of policies has had precisely the opposite effect. With varying degrees of vigour, post-war governments have taken positive steps to discourage the growth of employment in the London-Midlands part of the country and to steer expansion into the less fortunate regions, variously designated as Development Districts, Development Areas, Intermediate Areas, etc. In pursuit of this purpose, two categories of policy are to be noted. The first is general inducements, such as investment grants and the Regional Employment Premium, for which ‘indigenous’ and ‘immigrant’ firms are equally eligible within the defined geographical areas. The second category is the use of powers to encourage firms to move from one part of the country to another: the main instrument is the machinery governing the award of Industrial Development Certificates but the process has also been aided by the building of advance factories, special housing provision for key workers, etc. In recent years, employment in offices has been subject to controls similar to those applied to manufacturing industry, with the aim of decentralising office work from London and Birmingham in particular.
The main purpose of policy measures to affect the geographical distribution of employment through IDCs, etc., has been to increase the aggregate number of jobs in the less fortunate areas. However, the means for achieving this imply the introduction of industries new to the less fortunate regions, or the fostering of industries which are under-represented. Consequently, it is to be expected that in the areas of high unemployment the policies pursued by government should have had a marked impact on the employment structure—and in general toward the diversification of job opportunities, as new industries replace the jobs lost through the run-down of traditional staple industries like coal-mining and textiles.
Evidence collected by Howard (1968) relating to mobile manufacturing plants in the period 1945 to 1965 certainly yields material to suggest that mobile industry ought to have had a quite detectable impact on the employment structure of some regions (Table 1.1). The eleven standard regions covering the United Kingdom fall into three fairly well-defined groups. At the top of the table are four regions, where the flow of immigrant firms has generated employment far in excess of that lost by the out-migration of plants and on a scale to make a large impact on the regional economies. Four other regions occupy the bottom of the table, with out-moves exceeding the importance of in-moves, though to an extent less marked than in the case of the first group. Finally, the middle group of three regions experienced a moderate excess of in-movement over out-movement.
Now, if the mobile plants were distributed among the industrial classes in such a way that the structure of in-moves and out-moves for each region exactly matched the stock of industries in the respective regions, then no change in industrial structure would occur. However, this is not only an inherently implausible proposition but is clearly refuted by the evidence in Table 1.2, showing that nationally the structure of mobile industry is very different from the structure of total industrial employment. Therefore, we may conclude that the movement of manufacturing plants from one region to another is likely to cause changes in the distribution of employment within the standard regions to an extent closely associated with the magnitude of the excess or deficit of in-moves over out-moves.
Table 1.1 United Kingdom: employment in manufacturing plants mobile during the period 1945–1965 as a percentage of total industrial employment, 1966, by regions.
Standard region | Inter-regional moves to region | Inter-regional moves originating in region | Total Employment, mid-1966 |
| % | % | 000 |
Wales | 28⋅7 | 2⋅6 | 326 |
Northern Ireland | 21⋅3 | — | 187 |
North | 19⋅6 | 1⋅1 | 458 |
Scotland | 12⋅8 | 0⋅7 | 740 |
South West | 9⋅1 | 2⋅7 | 408 |
East Anglia | 8⋅9 | 5⋅7 | 188 |
North West | 7⋅7 | 2⋅1 | 1,364 |
East Midlands | 4⋅3 | 5⋅0 | 623 |
Yorks & Humberside | 3⋅5 | 4⋅8 | 897 |
South East | 1⋅2 | 8⋅5 | 2,603 |
West Midlands | 0⋅7 | 7⋅4 | 1,259 |
Source: Howard, 1968, p.9
This idea can be explored somewhat further on the basis of Howard’s data. Employment at the end of 1966 in mobile plants is analysed by the twenty-four SIC Orders for three groups of standard region, as
X1 | South East and East Anglia |
X2 | West Midlands, East Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, North West (excludin... |
