severnside gull
Well-known member
Despite what practically every contributor to this thread seems to think, the value of British manufacturing has risen consistently since the 2nd World War.
Traditional heavy industries were in terminal decline way before Thatcher, and anyone who cares to look at the experience of any other industrialised western country will find exactly the same trends as we saw in Britain.
Interesting graph. I so love stats and what they can be used to "prove".
From my perspective this might be seen to show the impact of key periods in the creation of modern "Tory Values" (ie. The periods of relative decline) and when adjusted for inflation even more so. Indeed if you build in inflation over the period it's even less inspiring. Of course as you so rightly suggest that is true for many nations who failed to adjust and failed to invest but then isn't inward investment largely a factor of government policy and direction? Factor in the number of people employed in manufacture vs service industries over the period for a more balanced picture.
It is interesting to look at other nation's efforts (the Germans and the French for example) and see their increasing dominance of our internal markets achieved through investment and ownership, initially at home, over the same period. One of the keys to their relative success (the German car industry for example and France's dogged preservation of its agricultural base and relative dominance in the utilities field) does seem to have been a considered determination to retain some key skill areas as being too valuable to the national psyche and sense of wellbeing to simply abandon. All could have been cast aside as being unsalvageable. There is a natural atrophy in all societies but the choices in how individual nations respond are down to political decisions and the differences can be fairly stark.
We could have retained a greater emphasis on key elements of manufacturing. We chose not to.
The tools we used were starvation of funds, vilification of any who dared to oppose the chosen direction of travel, and manipulation of media.
We are now where we are and I'm not saying that if others had opted for a different route and been successful it would have been any better or any worse. It would simply have been different.
It's down to choices.