This book is the first comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the New Deal and examines how far the programme has succeeded in responding to the diversity of conditions in local labour markets across the UK.Argues that profound differences in local labour market conditions have exerted a telling influence on the New Deal’s achievementsIncludes extensive new research data on the current conditions of local labour markets in the UK and local impa...

This book aims to understand the predicaments of ‘left behind places’ and the scale of the policy challenge of ‘levelling up’ their economic prosperity. Drawing out lessons of wider international significance, it examines how places (cities, towns and localities) have grown apart over recent decades amidst deindustrialisation, post-industrial transition and the disruptive shocks of the global financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic. Using the UK case to illustrate its arguments, the analysi...

Since the beginning of the 1980s, British trade unions have experienced a dramatic retreat, marked by rapidly falling membership and declining industrial power. The authors examine the regional dimensions of this retreat of organised labour, paying particular attention to: The resilience of the unions' historical heartland areas. The impact of economic restructuring on local union traditions. The shrinking landscape of industrial militancy. The geographical decentralization of the new indu...