The experience of Tees Valley, and in particular the Middlesbrough and Stockton area, over the last 5 decades, may be said to be representative for many other smaller, Northern cities in the United Kingdom, specifically places once specialised in particular branches of manufacturing such as Hull and Stoke.
Over the period since the early 1970s, these smaller, formerly industrial cities generally experienced slow output growth, and poor – often negative – growth in employment. Because of their reliance on one or two dominant industries, these places were often heavily affected by deindustrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s.
This paper explores in more detail the case of Middlesbrough and the Tees Valley, examining both the process of deindustrialisation and the policy responses, and how this relates to the wider national picture.