The moral economy of deindustrialization in post-1945 Scotland

"This paper contributes to the debate about Scotland’s distinctive economy by examining the post- 1945 employment effects of deindustrialization. It explores the connection between two issues, one empirical and the other more abstract: the changing distribution of industrial employment by sector from the 1950s to the 1990s, within the broader contraction of industry’s overall employment share; and the ‘moral economy’ arguments attached to these changes in employment. The paper develops from a study of the coal industry where job losses were accepted because two moral economy criteria were satisfied: colliery closures were generally secured through negotiation with the workers; and economic stability for individuals, households and communities was guaranteed, with redundant miners transferring to higher productivity ‘cosmopolitan’ pits, and alternative industrial employment created in the coalfields, encompassing opportunities for women also. This process was phased. Following coal’s post-war employment peak in 1957 there was a period of contraction and restructuring, 1958-67, followed by a decade-plus of stabilization, 1968- 79, and then accelerated contraction until 1990. Small remnants of deep coal mining survived in Scotland, but only until 2002. The moral economy framework was developed in the restructuring phase, and shaped the period of stabilization, as the growth of industrial alternatives significantly slowed, but in the 1980s was rejected by policy-makers and coal industry management. The paper applies this moral economy framework and the phased model to the broader process of post-1945 deindustrialization in Scotland. The process resulted chiefly from changing public policy priorities in the UK as a whole. The distribution of employment by industrial sector was deliberately altered by policy-makers seeking more rapid rates of economic growth: labour and capital resources invested in assembly goods manufacturing – especially in consumer goods, electrical-mechanical and then electronic engineering – would yield higher rates of return than in coal and other ‘heavy’ industries. This was seen as especially desirable in Scotland, where growth was persistently below the UK average from the 1950s to the 1980s. Regional policy was the main mechanism applied by UK governments from the 1950s to the 1970s, with incentives to manufacturers, including US multinationals, to locate in areas of lower economic growth and higher unemployment. So the employment problems of inward investment in the 1970s and 1980s – ‘branch plant syndrome’, ‘screwdriver jobs’ – were at least partly related to the moral economy expectations of Scottish workers, which had been raised by policy-makers in the 1950s and 1960s. Subsequent disinvestment and capital flight further transgressed Scottish moral economy expectations of stable employment and economic security."