Intervention in the 1970s: The Offshore Case

Abstract

Government intervened in support of the offshore supply industry in response to a variety of economic challenges centring upon the failure of British industry to rise to the opportunities presented by North Sea oil development. In the process the commitments of ministers and civil servants were altered and new areas of government endeavour emerged. The present chapter focusses upon these latter aspects of offshore intervention, and, in particular, attempts to specify what the offshore episode indicates about why and how government capabilities in the field of industrial policy have expanded since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Of course, this expansion has not been without limits, and these too are examined, as is the impact of intervention upon industry. Thus, what follows is an analysis of the dynamics, the constraints and the impact of offshore intervention and of the significance of these for other instances of industrial policy-making in the 1970s and 1980s.