Sectoral Problems: Steel, Shipbuilding, Chemicals and Textiles

In recent years, since the early 1970s, several industries in Western Europe have experienced poor demand conditions which cannot be entirely attributed to the slowdown in growth in the world economy. They are the victims of structural change, part of the normal process of growth, whereby some sectors expand as others contract. During the ‘recession’, their problems have grown so much that their very future is in doubt. Public attention is focussed on their plight to such an extent that the counterpart existence of growing industries is ignored or forgotten.