Industry was dying through the 70's as the UK failed to compete economically against its rivals. Large state-run enterprises were crippled by under reinvestment in new ideas, markets, men and machines. From the late 60's especially, the labour force was duped by the Marxist-led unions to become accustomed to striking and defrauding the system via things like false sickness claims and clocking on/off shifts when they were actually in the pub. I know, I witnessed it. All this combined to cause huge losses, layoffs an factory closures. Later, Thatcher saw this and allowed the trimming to continue but, unfortunately, far too much.
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