The textiles and clothing industry is Britain's 9th largest manufacturing sector, with an annual turnover of around £17 billion. At the end of the 20th century, the industry exported £5 billion worth of goods.
But, alongside many of the industries which rose to dominate the world of manufacture in the 19th century, the story of textiles in Britain over the following hundred years is one of fluctuating but remorseless decline.
Presently, the industry is in the grip of an accelerating slump, so much so that the announcement of mill closure and job loss is barely newsworthy. There is a perceived inevitability about this process, usually accompanied by reference to terms such as globalisation to indicate remote forces beyond the control of anyone.
But closer inspection reveals that decisions which result in loss of jobs here are taken much closer to home.
Pulling out of Britain
In one of its last acts before merging into the new union called Community, the National Union of Knitting, Footwear and Apparel Trades (KFAT) conducted a survey of all the textile factories in its heartland area of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. The sobering facts were: over 3000 jobs lost in a six-month period, and a further 1800 about to go. Additionally, the two main garment industry employers locally, Courtaulds and Coates Viyella, were responsible for 75% of the redundancies in the North Midlands region. They in turn pointed the finger at Marks and Spencer for its decision to pull out of manufacturing and source more of its products from overseas.
The consequences of this British decision have had a powerfully depressing effect on the industry here, but the root lies in an inherent weakness.
In its transformation from a cottage industry to large-scale factory production, textiles retained many of the distinctive regional characteristics present from the outset. Clearly, Lancashire was to cotton as Yorkshire was to wool. But within that, different districts specialised in serving a particular market. Thus Burnley wove for China and Blackburn wove for India. In short, parts of the industry became utterly reliant on one outlet only.
With the decline of empire and renewed focus on the home market, this dependence simply transferred from reliance on one country to reliance on one (usually High Street) retailer. Reliance on a single retailer created a fault line running through textiles with catastrophic consequences when any retailer chose to look elsewhere.
Immediate impact
When Marks and Spencer chose, in 1999, to source more of its products from overseas, the impact on the industry was immediate. In a single year, the proportion of M&S clothing made in Britain slumped from 90% to 30%.
The principal reason given by retailers for shopping elsewhere, and by manufacturers for closure here is the same, cheaper labour costs abroad. In 1998 the Low Pay Commission surveyed wages around the world and published the following comparisons (in US dollars, per hour):
| Country | Labour Cost/hour |
| UK | $9.22c |
| China | 25c |
| Pakistan | 34c |
| Vietnam | 37c |
| Turkey | $1.48c |
Small wonder British manufacturers and retailers are licking their lips at the prospect of shifting production to countries in Asia.
As touched upon earlier, manufacturers tend to cite competition from abroad as the main impetus for closure here. What needs to be emphasised is that this competition is self-generated, often even within the same company. When Courtaulds in Bolsover, which specialised in men's underwear for M&S, closed in August 2000, it simply transferred production to its two factories in Sri Lanka.
Similarly, Coates Viyella transferred work on clothing and ladies' wear to Sri Lanka and Morocco. Its sock division moved to Costa Rica and shirts to Portugal. The company has opened a knitwear factory in Sri Lanka and a clothing factory in Vietnam.
It is acknowledged that the productivity of British workers is superior, but, as David Suddens, Chief Executive of William Baird, said in The Times in October 2000, justifying his company's decision to relocate to Sri Lanka where labour costs are one-tenth of the UK average, "You always know that they are going to suffer worse productivity than in the UK, but at that sort of wage cost you can afford low productivity."
Good news for British employers, bad news for British workers.
So the textile industry is down, but not out.
Competitive edge
There is clearly no way that workers in Britain can exist on the wage levels that would be necessary to make them competitive with textile workers in underdeveloped countries. If the British industry is to recapture a competitive edge it will need to be based on a highly skilled and innovative workforce coupled with practical government support, and government protection for the industry as well.
Speaking at a conference entitled "What future for the British Textile Industry" in 2003, Peter Booth, the TGWU's national organiser for manufacturing, drew attention to the government's investment in schools and hospitals and the fact that they would need carpets, curtains, furniture covers and that staff would need uniforms.
Strength
"The textiles industry still employs a quarter of a million people with a strong prevalence in the traditional textile regions, and exports in internationally competitive areas total over £6.5 billion.
"There can still be a bright future for the UK textiles industry, but it can't be on the basis of low pay, long hours and poor investment. The industry that will survive is one that will develop in technical expertise, with a highly paid workforce, well paid with good working conditions; supported by strong product development and marketing, with high quality product design.
"Our best bet for success is to combine the strengths we have to ensure a positive future for the textiles industry in this country."
For Britain to retain volume production, the government would have to defy European Union diktats and adopt a buy British policy. But away from volume production, in the sphere of technical textiles, Britain is a pre-eminent force.
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Manningham Mills, Bradford — once a thriving workplace, its chimney is still the dominating feature of the city's northern skyline. Now, in the words of Bradford's gushing website, www.city-of-bradford.com, "After several years of dereliction the mills are now being renovated and converted into stylish apartments, a development which it is hoped will further stimulate the local economy."
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Technical textiles
Britain has a buoyant and expanding technical textiles sector, supported by an acclaimed knowledge base. The sector is developing world-beating technologies for performance fabrics and non-wovens in a wide variety of sectors including automotive, transportation, construction, healthcare, aerospace, agriculture and IT. Britain is among the top five countries developing product durability and innovation, particularly in the area of fire resistance, where Britain is a world leader.
In December 2004, the Institute of NanoTechnology hosted a conference in London entitled "New Technologies and Smart Textiles for Industry and Fashion". A brief survey of the programme indicates some of the areas into which textiles is heading, along with current applications, and re-emphasises the need for Britain, via its more forward-looking manu-facturers and universities, to maintain its current position at the forefront of these developments.
Science and manufacture
Papers presented at the conference covered a staggering range of themes that showed the relationship between textiles, science and manufacture: fashion and technology in 2020; the importance of new technology to the survival and regeneration of Britain's textile industry; nano coatings for high functionality textiles; self-cleaning textiles for the clothing, hospital and aircraft industries; use of nano silver in creating hygienic textiles; wearable health care systems; and smart textiles in vehicles.
Under each heading, a guest speaker outlined potential as well as current applications. The range is enormous, and probably needs a degree in applied science to appreciate its breadth, but this is not science fiction. University departments and individual companies are seizing the opportunities presented by scientific advances.
Drawn together
More pertinently, technologists and designers are being drawn together, particularly at university level, to ensure that potential and practicality are considered from the outset.
Professor Carl Lawrence, Director of Technical Textiles Research at Leeds University, spoke about the way in which his own department was evolving.
"Leeds University have brought together the design activity at Bretton Hall with design activity at Leeds University to form a school of design in which I as a technologist work, and I think that's a good thing.
"I have been asked to become involved in getting more designers involved in technological research. Right, what I want to try to do is illustrate how these new technologies in a way will have an impact on design. How it's allowing technologists and designers to come forward with smart fabric innovations.
"Functionality, that's the name of the game. Functionality in my view is coming from what we call technical textiles. You will recall at one time there was a lot said about flame and fire resistant materials — all these sorts of materials were coming through and it wasn't long afterwards that we started to talk about puncture- resistant materials and bulletproof vests. On the medical side there was a lot of development in improving polyester to become compatible with the human body for use in arteries. And today, people are talking about tissue engineering and a range of different materials.
"We, in sport, can have sensors to monitor the heart, the respiration, the blood level and so on. Why can't we use that in ordinary garments. That's a concept and I think that will happen."
Through the innovative work of many of our universities and research centres, Britain is at the cutting edge of many of these developments, which point to a textiles industry of the future very different from its predecessor but nonetheless essential to our continued existence as an independent, self-determining nation.
Get up in the morning, put on your mobile computer system, and off you go...
One striking example of an application of technical textiles is a wearable mobile computer system, designed at the University of Bristol and dubbed the CyberJacket.
Modelled on an ordinary biker's jacket, the CyberJacket has a wealth of computer and communications systems built into its fabric. It features a Global Positioning Unit to tell wearers exactly where they are, and can also be used as an aid for the visually impaired. Pictures from a helmet camera could be converted to colourful images more easily recognisable to people with poor eyesight and then displayed on a special set of glasses.
Besides the Global Positioning Unit, the CyberJacket also features a card PC and a GSM mobile phone, plus a speech recognition system.
A gimmick? Well, perhaps. Certainly some anticipated uses seem provocatively pointless, like the jacket that tells you where the nearest pub is. But why not nearest hospital, railway station, bank? Why not design a jacket which warns you when your blood pressure goes up? The point is, it can be done.
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