Introduction

By the middle of the 1980s the world’s industrialised economies were entering their second decade of stagnant growth and persistent mass unemployment. Indeed, in some countries unemployment was still on the increase. Only the extended depression in Europe which occurred during the Great Slump of the inter-war period provides a parallel to contemporary experience. Neither neo-conservative policies, which eventually replaced traditional Keynesian remedies, nor attempts to redefine the measure of the number seeking employment, have succeeded in halting the inexorable increase in the unemployment statistics. Given the duration and extensiveness of the phenomenon, the stigma of failure to deal with unemployment has touched governments of all political extractions from conservative to liberal to social-democratic. Experience of the past decade has so dampened politicians’ and economists’ beliefs in their ability to deal with the problem that the emphasis of policy now seems to be on ways to adapt to conditions of massive unemployment on a long-term basis, rather than a concerted search for permanent remedies for the phenomenon. The ‘post-industrial’ society seems to have become a euphemism for a society which is no longer able to provide work for all those seeking gainful employment.