The Decline of Declinism

The “de-industrialization” of Britain since the 1970s and the emergence of a negative balance of payments in manufacturing in the early 1980s have provided a receptive context for accounts of failure in British business and the British economy. We have political economies of decline;2 powerful polemics against the British elite; and a range of historical explanations of the decline of industries and firms. Although the agenda for much British business history is still dominated by the issue of “decline” it is clear that the whole issue needs clarification. First and foremost much discussion of decline relies on a failure to be clear about the difference between absolute and relative decline, a failure to differentiate between relative decline and “doing badly,” and on faulty and partial international comparisons. Hannah is rightly worried by a brand of history which “explains an outcome which never happened…by a cause that is equally imagined.”