The legacy of leaving old industrial Britain to rot is becoming clear | Larry Elliott
The hollowing-out of British industry since the 1980s is the single biggest change to the UK economy in the postwar era
Time to move on. That was the message from the home secretary when she announced that the government would not be holding a public inquiry into the clashes between police and miners at the Orgreave coking plant during the year-long pit strike 32 years ago. Different world in 1984, said Amber Rudd. It was a long time ago. No point in raking over the past.
The site of the coking plant is now Sheffield University's hugely successful advanced manufacturing centre, a place that brings together academics and business to ensure the best research has a commercial end product. To the extent that there was ever a plan in the 1980s, this was it. The mines, the shipyards, the textile mills and the engineering plants were being shut down because they could not compete but would be be replaced by gleaming-new centres of high-tech industrial excellence.
Related: 'Half of UK deficit is result of job destruction in older industrial areas'
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