In the 1860s, the American Civil War shut off Britain's cotton supplies. This led to the great 'Cotton Famine' that made thousands of cotton workers unemployed.
Image: Science Museum/SSPL
Decline
Britain's successful factory system bred complacency. Godfrey Armitage recalled:
'If in... 1914 you had said to a Lancashire man: "My dear Sir, do you realise you are standing on the edge of a precipice?" his eyes would have popped out of his head...'
The First World War and Great Depression were the beginning of the end of the UK's textile factory system. Between 1950 and 1982 Britain's cotton-mill workforce shrank from 320,000 to 35,000 people.
