Thursday 9 April - De-industrialisation Lecture
Published: 4 March 2015
University of Glasgow's Professor Jim Tomlinson will deliver a lecture at Columbia University on the De-industrialization but not decline of Great Britain since the 1950s.
Our very own Professor Jim Tomlinson will deliver a special lecture at Columbia University on De-industrialization but not decline: Britain since the 1950s.
The lecture is due to start at 5.00pm and the venue will be Room 411, Fayerweather Building (Morningside Campus) at 1180 Amsterdam Ave, NY 10027.
Please email alumni@gla.ac.uk to sign-up.
‘Deindustrialization is good for the UK’ (Samuel Brittan, Financial Times 3/7/1980).
The dominant narratives of post-war Britain offered by economic historians tend to revolve around issues of growth and alleged ‘decline’, with many recent versions adding a further, post-Thatcher, twist of a growth ‘renaissance’ and reversal of ‘decline’ since the 1980s. This paper argues that this growth/decline narrative is in many respects unhelpful for understanding the most important economic changes in post-war Britain, but the main purpose is to make the positive argument that a better ‘meta-narrative’ would focus on the process of de-industrialization and its effects. The claim is not that de-industrialization is a Casaubon-style ‘key to all mysteries’ for post-war Britain. But, it will be argued, starting with de-industrialization can help us better understand major and diverse features of UK economic, social and also political development over approximately the last sixty years.
Prof Jim Tomlinson, University of Glasgow
Short CV:
Jim Tomlinson was educated at LSE (BSc (Econ) Modern Economic History 1973; PhD 1977) and spent the years 1977 to 2004 at Brunel University, where he became professor of economic history and Head of the Department of Government. From 2004 to 2013 he was Bonar Professor of Modern History at the University of Dundee, and from 2006 to 2010 Head of Research in the College of Arts and Social Sciences. From July 2013 he became Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. He has published widely on the historical political economy of modern Britain, and his latest book, Dundee and the Empire: Juteopolis, 1850-1939, was published by Edinburgh University Press in June 2014.
First published: 4 March 2015
