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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 May 2019
The papers presented in this Special Issue were originally delivered at the workshop ‘The De-Industrializing City: Urban, Architectural, and Socio-Cultural Perspectives’. It was jointly organized by the Society for the Promotion of Urban Discussion (SPUD) and the German Historical Institute London. We would like to thank both institutions for their support in organizing the workshop and encouraging this publication. We would like to extend a special thank you to Simon Gunn (Leicester), Shane Ewen (Leeds Beckett) and to Urban History.
1 The Specials, ‘Ghost Town’ (2 Tone Records, 1981).
2 On the riots of the early 1980s, see Peplow, S., Race and Riots in Thatcher's Britain (Manchester, 2019)Google Scholar; Marwick, A., British Society since 1945, 4th edn (London, 2003), 227–32Google Scholar; Harrison, B., Finding a Role? The United Kingdom 1970–1990 (Oxford and New York, 2010), 525–6Google Scholar; and, in a more populist vein, Beckett, A., Promised You a Miracle: Why 1980–1982 Made Modern Britain (London, 2015), 59–80Google Scholar.
3 Compare Reynolds, S., Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984 (London, 2005), 281–303Google Scholar. Reynolds stresses that the innovation consisted, in considerable measure, in a return to the musical styles and aesthetics of the 1960s.
4 Wilson, H. and Womersley, L., Change or Decay: Final Report of the Liverpool Inner Area Studies (London, 1977), 1Google ScholarPubMed.
5 Kitson, M. and Michie, J., ‘The de-industrial revolution: the rise and fall of UK manufacturing’, in Floud, R., Humphries, J. and Johnson, P. (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, vol. II: 1870 to the Present (Cambridge, 2014), 302–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 The Oxford English Dictionary records the first use of the verb ‘to de-industrialize’ as far back as 1882, the first use of the noun ‘de-industrialization’ in the context of Nazi Germany's economic restructuring plans for occupied Europe in 1940. But it was during the economic crisis of the 1970s that the term gained new traction as a ‘vogue Whitehall phrase’ (Daily Telegraph, 13 Dec. 1979, 21). See Oxford English Dictionary, entry ‘de- prefix’ (online edition): www.oed.com/view/Entry/47600?redirectedFrom=deindustrialisation#eid119212182, accessed 3 Jun. 2018. See also Johnson, C.H., ‘Introduction: de-industrialization and globalization’, International Review of Social History, 47 (2002), 3–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; High, S., ‘“The wounds of class”: a historiographical reflection on the study of deindustrialization, 1973–2013’, History Compass, 11 (2013), 994–1007CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arnold, J., ‘“De-industrialization”: a research project on the societal history of economic change in Britain (1970–90)’, German Historical Institute Bulletin, 34 (2012), 34–60Google Scholar, at 36ff. In the Federal Republic of Germany of the 1970s and 1980s, the term appears to have been far less common. In the historiography, too, the term plays a subordinate role only. See Raphael, L. and Doering-Manteuffel, A., Nach dem Boom: Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970, 3rd edn (Göttingen, 2012)Google Scholar.
7 For contemporary politicized usages of the term see, for example, Benn, T., Morrell, F. and Cripps, F., A Ten-Year Industrial Strategy for Britain, Institute for Workers’ Control Pamphlet No. 49 (Nottingham, [1975]), 3Google Scholar; House of Commons Debates, vol. 979, col. 635, 21 Feb. 1980 (contribution by Jack Dormond MP (Labour)); Killip, C., In Flagrante (London, 1988)Google Scholar, foreword: ‘I don't believe that anyone in these photographs [believes in the objective history of England] as they face the reality of de-industrialisation in a system which regards their lives as disposable.’ For a contrasting usage, see S. Brittan, ‘De-industrialisation is good for the UK’, Financial Times, 3 Jul. 1980.
8 On the state of the historiographical debate, see the landmark collections Black, L., Pemberton, H. and Thane, P. (eds.), Reassessing 1970s Britain (Manchester, 2013)Google Scholar; Jackson, B. and Saunders, R. (eds.), Making Thatcher's Britain (Cambridge, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Robinson, E., Schofield, C. and Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, F., ‘Telling stories about post-war Britain: popular individualism and the “crisis” of the 1970s’, Twentieth Century British History, 28 (2017), 268–304CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; on urban history more specifically, see Gunn, S. and Hyde, C., ‘Post-industrial place, multicultural space: the transformation of Leicester, c. 1970–1990’, International Journal of Regional and Local History, 8 (2013), 94–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, O. Saumarez, ‘The inner city crisis and the end of urban modernism in 1970s Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 27 (2016), 578–98Google Scholar; Föllmer, M. and Smith, M.B., ‘Urban societies in Europe since 1945: toward a historical interpretation’, Contemporary European History, 24 (2015), 475–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zimmermann, C. (ed.), Industrial Cities: History and Future (Frankfurt and New York, 2013)Google Scholar.
