TNAG-0303-FCO40-339-Effects-of-tariffs-on-imports-of-cotton-textiles-to-UK-from--1971 — Page 13

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4. All this would be happening at a time when the traditional textile areas in Lancashire are facing a difficult employment problem.

UNEMPLOYMENT

5.

The main threat to Lancashire textile jobs has lain in the disruption that could occur. in 1922 from imports if the present action were not taken. The textile employment situation so far is not too bad.

6.

Unemployment in the Lancashire 'textile belt'* at 4.3 per cent is slightly above the national average (4.0 per cent). This is true also of the figures of wholly unemployed (textile belt 3.8 per cent; Great Britain 3.7 per cent). There are local variations both below the average eg Rawtenstall 3.5 per cent unemployed and Bury 4.0 per cent, and above eg Wigan 5.2 per cent, Leigh 4.7 per cent and Rochdale 5.1 per cent, but much of the Rochdale rate is short time.

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?: Unemployment has almost doubled in the past year in the textile belt' with an increase of 16,000 of which 14,000 is an increase in wholly unemployed, of which one in 7 was last employed in textiles. This rise and worsened rates in individual

towns are due to national economic conditions and not particularly to difficulties of the textile industry. Of the 9,000 or so declinem the textile labour force this year, only 2,000 are wholly unemployed; some 7,000 retired, gave up working altogether or found other jobs. Jobs have become more difficult to find with general worsening of unemployment but the problem will ease with national economic recovery. In the North West Region as a whole there were 136,444 unemployed (4.7 per cent in November) of which some 8,000 were ex-textiles and of these 6,600 were wholly unemployed.

MILL CLOSURES

8. Up to September 58 mills in the cotton and allied textile sector have closed this year and a further number have announced their intention to close; this compares with 54 closures in the whole of last year. There are still some 200 more mills left in the industry than the Textile Council thought would be needed by 1975. Despite the recent spate the shrinkage since 1968 has been no more than the Council forecast as necessary. Not all the closures necessarily represent an overall loss of employment since the Council also recommended that the industry

*Textile belt' Travel to work areas; Bolton, Bury, Leigh, Oldham and Shaw, Preston, Rochdale, Ashton-under-Lyne, Wigan, Accrington, Blackburn, Burnley, Nelson, Rossendale, Todmordon ie the NE Lancashire Intermediate Area together with those districts stretching in a semi-circular belt north of Manchester which have an appreciable proportion of the total labour force engaged in textiles.

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