When the manufacturer’s organisation EEF asked people when they felt that the UK manufacturing industry was at its strongest, 74% of respondents answered with the 1980s. What’s more, nearly two thirds of respondents didn’t think that the sector was growing today. John Rooney, from CW Plant Hire, considers the growth of the manufacturing industry in Britain from the 1980s to today.
Indeed there was a peak for the industry during the middle of that decade, and in the north-east for example, a number of high profile firms were in operation supporting thousands of jobs, before the economic problems in the 1990s led to the closure of factories up and down the country.
Despite this perception of the 1980s as somewhat of a ‘golden era’ for British manufacturing, the recent EEF study has found that the manufacturing sector now produces more goods than it did during the 1980s. The sector now employs 2.6 million people, accounting for 11% of UK GDP and ‘driving the economic recovery’.
The sector actually experienced a number of problems throughout the 1980s, with national unemployment rising from 1.5 million in 1979 to more than 3 million by 1983, as well as Thatcher’s modernisation of Britain resulting in the closure of older factories and coal pits that were no longer economically viable. This picture of a sector that had peaked is in stark contrast with that of today, with the UK manufacturing sector growing at its fastest in three years in the three months to April of this year.
Further findings from the EEF study found that, despite the misconceptions over the industry’s growth, 91% of consumers view it as essential to the continuing economic recovery. It is also encouraging to see that 72% of respondents favoured purchasing British made goods compared to those made overseas.
“It is time to ditch the urban myth that Britain manufactured more in the 1980s than it does today,” said Terry Scuoler, chief executive of EEF. “The reality is that British manufacturing is a huge success story and is going from strength-to-strength.”
The optimism was shared by CW Plant Hire in Southampton, one of the region’s leading providers of construction equipment hire. CW Plant Hire’s Mark Wilson said: “We’ve definitely seen an uptick in demand for equipment in the last year or so. The whole industry took a massive hit following the [2008] crash, but there are genuinely encouraging signs that we are finally getting back to a situation where manufacturing is at the forefront of the British economy again.”
