WIGAN MILLS
Lancashire SD 58116 05465
The value of goods manufactured in Britain has
doubled since the 1950s
The woven cotton cloth produced in the great industrial mill towns of Lancashire such as Burnley, Manchester, Oldham, Preston, Rochdale and Wigan accounted for half of the entire British export earnings in 1830. Such was the
scale of this flagship industry. It produced nearly 6 billion m2 of cotton cloth,
employed 620,000 people in Lancashire alone, and imported nearly 1 million tons
of raw cotton at its peak output in 1913. Who could have foreseen that by the
1960s and 1970s mills would be closing at a rate of one per week?
A small section of a Lancashire cotton
mill in 1917. © Getty Images
Slow take up of new technology and competition from Asia reduced Britain’s
textile industry to a core of traditional woollens and specialist fabrics. The
industrial legacy of cotton remains in the austere and grand mill buildings, now
mostly converted to offices and flats as in this image above.
Britain’s changing manufacturing industry We hear much about industrial
decline and the ‘good old days’ of British manufacturing. But our manufacturing
has not gone; it has simply changed in response to a changing world economy.
The value of British manufactured goods in 2010 is, allowing for inflation, more
than double what it was in 1950. And Britain continues to rely on its knowledge
and inventiveness to develop new products in areas where we can compete and
lead in the world today. Whereas in 1764 we
invented the Spinning Jenny to produce cotton
yarn much more efficiently, today we turn our
attention to products such as pharmaceuticals.
But this technology-driven industry needs only a
very small workforce.
A mill town in the mid 20th century; industrial emissions
and poor air quality characterise parts of the developing
world today. © Getty Images
The Ten Hour Act Today, the British
work longer hours on average per week
than people in many other European
countries. And yet we led the world in
introducing reforms to working hours
and conditions during the 1800s. In
1847, for example, the government
passed the Ten-Hour Act regulating
working hours in the mills to no more
than 10 hours per day. Prior to this, 70hour working weeks were common;
hours not unheard of in the City of
London now.
A modern manufacturing plant.
© Jason Hawkes
DID YOU KNOW?
With its damp climate, plentiful water power, soft water and abundant labour,
Lancashire had the ideal conditions for a cotton weaving industry.
Almost half of the cloth Britain produced was exported to India until Mahatma
Ghandi called for a boycott on British cloth as part of the campaign for Indian
independence in the 1940s.
The three highest value British exports today are pharmaceuticals,
armaments, and food and drink. Each contributes more than £10 billion of
exports a year.
© Content created and copyright of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)