Abstract
If both industry and the public sector itself were perceived to require re-organisation, Britain’s ‘depressed areas’ were seen as another and central part of Britain’s economic problems. These regions — particularly South Wales, Central Scotland, North East England and Merseyside — had long suffered from a number of economic handicaps. They were hundreds of miles from the new industrial heartlands and markets of the Midlands and South East England. All suffered from specialising in the manufacturing industries of the industrial revolution, for instance coal and shipbuilding.1 Between the two World Wars, they experienced chronically high levels of unemployment, which rose to between 19 and 25 per cent in the early 1930s. Some small areas endured catastrophically high levels of joblessness of up to 90 per cent in the worst cases.2
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Notes
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© 2007 Glen O’Hara
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O’Hara, G. (2007). Regional Planning. In: From Dreams to Disillusionment. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625488_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625488_5
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