TECHNOBUREAUCRACY ANO CITY LIFE managing and directing, yet it has nonetheless preserved substantial inequalities of wealth and power » (4). The working class communities which developed around the growing industries of the 18th and 19th centuries dependent on proximity to raw materials, fuel and communications with markets, have found it increasingly hard to find a place in the new socia! arder. The industria! corporations which originally developed and grew in the same areas in the 19th century eventually started to adopt vastly different investment criteria. Investment in technologically advanced methods of production necessitated reductions in the work farce, and the location of factories became dependent on tax levels, financial incentives, politica! stability, and strength (or preferably weakness) of organised labour in countries around the world. The wider variety of goods produced by the multinationals and the vast resources they command enables these firms to exploit cheap sources of labour in various parts of the world and close down particular factories whenever it suits the investment strategy of the company to produce the same or other products elsewhere. In Canning Town, located in London's East End and once a thriving dockland industria! area, 24,000 jobs disappeared between 1966 and 1972. « Between 1966 and 1972, employment fell in the docks (42% fewer jobs), in ship repair (70% fewer), food jobs (down 30% ), chemicals (68% fewer), gas (completely closed), and most other sectors. Three quarters of the jobs were cut by just six companies - P&O, Tate & Lyle, Unilever, Harland & Wolff, Furness-Withy and Vestey's » (5). As far back as the 1930's new light industries became established in the areas where the traditional industry had declined attracted by cheap industria! premises and labour. Most of these new industries were the result of initiatives by large corporations. Whilst the growth of the new activities may have alleviated a part of the unemployment problem, they did not reverse the <ledine of these areas' economie bases and hence only served to disguise the full consequences of this decline. By the middle and late sixties much rationalisation (4) LESLIE HANNAH, The Rise of the Corporale Economy, Methuen & C. Ltd. London 1976. (5) CDP, The Costs of Industriai Change, Published January 1977 by CDP Inter-Projet Editoria! Team, London, p. 30. 11
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