New Manufacturing Plant Formation, Clustering and Locational Externalities in 1930s Britain

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Notes

D. Massey, Spatial Divisions of Labour. Social Structures and the Geography of Production (Basingstoke, 1984); C.E. Heim, ‘R&D, Defence, and Spatial Divisions of Labour in Twentieth-Century Britain’, Journal of Economic History, Vol.47 (1987), pp.365–78; R.I.D. Harris, ‘Market Structure and External Control in the Regional Economies of Great Britain’, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Vol.35 No.4 (1988), pp.334–60.

Sources: Table 1 and Appendix Table 8. Estimate for new plants refers to plants with an initial employment of at least 25 people.

Board of Trade, ‘Survey of Industrial Development in 1932’, Board of Trade Journal, 29 June 1933, pp.iii–xv; Board of Trade, Survey of Industrial Development (1934–39); PRO, HLG71/1330, memorandum, n.d., c.1943.

Board of Trade, ‘Survey of Industrial Development’, p.iv; PRO, BT 104/20, memorandum, 28 Oct. 1935; M. Beesley, ‘The Birth and Death of Industrial Establishments: Experience in the West Midlands Conurbation’, Journal of Industrial Economics, Vol.4 (1955), pp.45–61.

For example, the ‘Leeds’ locality did not include suburban areas such as Armley and Stanningley; ‘Sheffield’ excluded similar areas such as Intake, Attercliffe and Ecclesfield; and ‘Glasgow’ excluded areas such as Pollokshaws and Govan.

S. Broadberry and A. Marrison, ‘External Economies of Scale in the Lancashire Cotton Industry, 1900–1950’, Economic History Review, Vol.LV No.1 (2002), pp.51–77.

E.L. Glaeser, H.D. Kallal, J.A. Scheinkman and A. Shleifer, ‘Growth in Cities’, Journal of Political Economy, Vol.100 (1992), pp.1126–52.

A. Marshall, Elements of Economics of Industry (London, 4th edn. 1907), pp.151–5; A. Popp, Business Structure, Business Culture and the Industrial District: The Potteries, c.1850–1914 (Aldershot, 2001).

D.B. Audretsch, ‘Agglomeration and the Location of Innovative Activity’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Vol.14 No.2 (1998), p.21; Marshall, Economics of Industry, pp.152–3.

Glasser et al., ‘Growth in Cities’, p.1130; V. Henderson, A. Kuncoro and M. Turner, ‘Industrial Development in Cities’, Journal of Political Economy, Vol.103 (1995), pp.1067–90.

Henderson et al., ‘Industrial Development’, p.1068; J. Jacobs, The Economy of Cities (New York, 1969).

Glaeser et al., ‘Growth in Cities’; Jacobs, Economy of Cities; N. Rosenberg, ‘Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry, 1840–1940’, Journal of Economic History, Vol.23 No.4 (1963), pp.414–43; P. Bairoch, Cities and Economic Development (Chicago, 1988); M.P. Feldman and D.B. Audreutsch, ‘Innovation in Cities: Science-Based Diversity, Specialization and Localised Competition’, European Economic Review, Vol.43 (1999), pp.409–29.

O.E. Williamson, ‘Transactions Cost Economics’, in R. Schmalensee and R.D. Willig (eds), Handbook of Industrial Organisation, Vol.1 (1989), p.142.

See P. Scott, ‘Women, Other “Fresh Workers” and the New Manufacturing Workforce of Interwar Britain’, International Review of Social History, Vol.45 (2000), pp.449–74.

P.S. Florence, Investment, Location, and Size of Plant (Cambridge, 1948), pp.34–5.

Assuming that regional differentials for new plants were broadly similar to those for all plants – given that regional plant formation generally reflected existing sectoral specialisations.

C.H. Lee, ‘Regional Growth and Structural Change in Victorian Britain’, Economic History Review, Vol.34 (1981), pp.438–52.

E.G.R. Taylor, ‘Discussion of the Geographical Distribution of Industry’, Geographical Journal, Vol.92 (1938), pp.22–39.

For data see Bairoch, Cities and Economic Development, p.254.

See M. Piore and C. Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity (New York, 1984).

K. Honeyman, Well Suited: A History of the Leeds Clothing Industry, 1850–1990 (Oxford, 2000), pp.81–4.

W.H. Chaloner, ‘The Birth of Modern Manchester’, in C.F. Carter (ed.), Manchester and its Region (Manchester, 1962), pp.131–46; J. Jewkes, ‘The Industries of the Manchester Province’, in H. Clay and K. Russell Brady (eds), Manchester at Work: A Survey (Manchester, 1929), pp.81–122.

Honeyman, Well Suited, pp.86–131.

For two plants, undertaking silk throwing and elastic web manufacture, this cannot be confirmed.

D. Nash and D. Reeder (eds), Leicester in the Twentieth Century (Stroud, 1993), pp.49–52; S. Chapman, Hosiery and Knitwear: Four Centuries of Small-Scale Industry in Britain, c.1589–2000 (Oxford, 2002), chapter 5.

Jewkes, ‘Industries’, pp.96–101; J.K. Walton, Lancashire: A Social History, 1558–1939 (Manchester, 2002), pp.338–41.

W. Bennett, The History of Burnley from 1850 (Burnley, 1951), pp.97–99.

Jewkes, ‘Industries’, p.90; Department of Employment and Productivity, British Labour Statistics: Historical Abstract, 1886–1968 (London, 1971), Table 102.

Bennett, History, p.108; M.B. Rose, Firms, Networks, and Business Values: The British and American Cotton Industries since 1750 (Cambridge, 2000), p.220.

M.W. Kirby, ‘The Lancashire Cotton Industry in the Inter-war Years: A Study in Organizational Change’, Business History, Vol.XVI (1974), pp.145–59.

J.R. Cotton, ‘The Changing Industrial Structure of an East-Lancashire Town – Blackburn from 1919–1970’ (unpublished part II thesis, Geographical Tripos, University of Cambridge, 1970). There were another 13 wholly or partly empty cotton mills for which full information could not be found.

S.R. Dennison, The Location of Industry and the Depressed Areas (London, 1939), p.93.

Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops for 1934 (Cmnd 4931 of 1935), p.17; ibid., 1935 (Cmd 5230 of 1936), p.11; ibid., 1936 (Cmd. 5514 of 1937), p.12.

P. Garrod, ‘The Bradford Worsted Industry and Foreign Competition, 1870–1939’ (unpublished M.Phil. thesis, University of Leeds, 1981), p.vi.

Garrod, ‘Bradford Worsted Industry’, pp.121–201.

M.T. Wild, ‘The Yorkshire Wool Textile Industry’, in J.G. Jenkins (ed.), The Wool Textile Industry in Great Britain (London, 1972), p.227.

S. Pollard, A History of Labour in Sheffield (Liverpool, 1959), pp.290–91.

PRO, HLG/1330, memorandum, 22 Sept. 1943. Regional classifications are based on definitions current at the time of the SIDs.

G.C. Allen, ‘Labour Transference and the Unemployment Problem’, Economic Journal (1930), pp.242–8.

Rosenberg, ‘Technological Change’, pp.414–43.

R. Lloyd-Jones and M.J. Lewis, ‘Business Networks, Social Habits and the Evolution of a Regional Industrial Cluster: Coventry 1880s–1930s’, in J.F. Wilson and A. Popp (eds), Industrial Clusters and Regional Business Networks in England, 1750–1970 (Aldershot, 2003), p.240.

Michael Beesley, ‘Changing Industrial Advantages in the British Motor Car Industry’, Journal of Industrial Economics, Vol.6 (1957), pp.47–57.

G.C. Allen, The Industrial Development of Birmingham and the Black Country, 1860–1927 (London, 1929), pp.330–36.

PRO, BT177/2330, report to the Clay Committee on the inter-war industrial development of the West Midlands conurbation, by M. Beesley, May 1955.

P.W. Carr, ‘Engineering Workers and the Rise of Labour in Coventry, 1914–1939’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 1978), p.251; B. Lancaster, ‘Who's a Real Coventry Kid? Migration into Twentieth Century Coventry’, in B. Lancaster and T. Mason (eds.), Life and Labour in a Twentieth Century City: The Experience of Coventry (Coventry, 1986), p.70.

See P. Scott and P. Walsh, ‘Patterns and Determinants of Manufacturing Plant Formation in interwar London’, Economic History Review, LVII, 1 (2004), pp.109–141.

For a further plant the exact location was not clear.

See Scott and Walsh, ‘Locational Externalities’.

Ibid.

A.C. Godley, ‘Immigrant Entrepreneurs and the Emergence of London's East End as an Industrial District’, London Journal, Vol.21 No.1 (1996), pp.38–45; P.G. Hall, The Industries of London since 1861 (London, 1962), pp.54, 167–82; Nuffield College Social Reconstruction Survey Archive, Nuffield College, Oxford, C1/113, report on Greater London by G.R. Mitchison, April 1943.

Hall, Industries of London since 1861, p.65.

J.E. Martin, Greater London: An Industrial Geography (Chicago, 1966), pp.29–30.

See P. Scott, ‘Industrial Estates and British Industrial Development, 1897–1939’, Business History, Vol.43 No.2 (2001), pp.73–98.

PRO, BT 56/38/CIA18002, Ministry of Labour memorandum by W. Eady, 23 Feb. 1931.

W. Davies, ‘The Nature and Significance of Trading Estates with Special Reference to the Treforest and Slough Estates’ (unpublished MA dissertation, University of Wales, 1951).

London Metropolitan Archives, MCC/MIN/65/3.

M. Ball and D. Sunderland, An Economic History of London, 1800–1914 (London, 2001), pp.129–34.

D.H. Smith, The Industries of Greater London (London: 1933), p.104.

London School of Economics, The New Survey of London Life and Labour, Volume II: London Industries (London, 1931), p.7; idem, The New Survey of London Life and Labour, Volume V: London Industries II (London, 1933), pp.26–7, 200.

Dennison, Location of Industry, p.80; PRO, BT56/40/CIA1800/71.

Slough Estates Ltd, Slough: London's Industrial Centre (n.d., c.1934).

For similar evidence regarding other Slough firms, see M. Savage, ‘Trade Unionism, Sex Segregation, and the State: Women's Employment in “New Industries” in Inter-war Britain’, Social History, Vol.13 No.2 (1988), pp.209–30, 221–2.

J. Armstrong, ‘International Influences on the Development of London Business: The Case of the Park Royal Industrial Estate between the Wars’, unpublished paper.

PRO, HLG27/32, memorandum presented to the Barlow Commission by Sir Noel Mobbs, Chairman, Slough Estates, 3 Feb. 1938; London Metropolitan Archives, Acc. 2720/1/71/1, memorandum by South Wales & Monmouthshire Council of Social Service, n.d., c.1939.

For a review of this data see P. Scott, ‘The State, Internal Migration, and the Growth of New Industrial Communities in Inter-war Britain’, English Historical Review, Vol.CXV (2000), pp.345–6.

This may have been partly due to the concentration of new furniture plants in these localities; many ‘other manufacturing’ products, such as toys, brushes and sports goods, were often made of wood.

Smith, Industries of Greater London, pp.42–50.

Hall, Industries of London Since 1861, p.90.

G.W. Sturges, Edmonton: Past and Present (London, 1941), p.37 of chapter 7.