For the vast majority of its history the UK shipbuilding industry was completely private, and dominated by many small shipbuilders. Consolidation only started after the UK government stepped in to provide some kind of sensible strategy to improve the competitiveness of the industry, via government loans tied to longer term strategic goals to improve productivity.
Ultimately it seems that the UK shipbuilding industry was kill by the thing that once made it so dominant. It was a highly distributed, extremely flat, high skilled industry, with little to no management. It made it easy for the industry to rapidly grow and shrink, and made it extremely effective at producing bespoke products. But as the world moved towards standardisation, those strengths became weaknesses.
The lack of management structure made it impossible for the industry to properly recognise the issues, or effect change to fix the issues. And the world moved towards standardisation, which gave a huge advantage to shipbuilders that built up capital intensive infrastructure that allowed the use of lower skilled labour to produce standard design quick, cheaper, and to a higher quality, than the UK distributed, high skill, labour force.
... That sounds a lot like the Norwegian shipbuilding industry which I work for right now. Maybe not with little management exactly, but nothing crazy either - significantly less than a British multinational I worked for earlier. Of course the hulls are built elsewhere, and half of my colleagues are foreigners, but we're going fairly strong.
So I'm not sure I buy this explanation. Why wouldn't the British do management equally well as us?
"…every reported speech by a British shipbuilder in the Norwegian press usually comprised a list of excuses for poor performance, ranging from official and unofficial stoppages, shortages of labour, failings on the part of subcontractors, modernisation schemes not producing the anticipated results, to recently completed contracts having entailed substantial losses. The impression thus gained by the Norwegians, according to Holt, was of an industry where the shipbuilders had no control or responsibility over problems, and worse, had no ideas as to how to address the problems"
I do think that British mismanagement plays a big role in the decline of the 1970s. I don't think it's a coincidence that the surviving car industry consists of two types of companies:
- small bespoke high end companies like McLaren, with British management but comparatively small staff and throughput;
- former British marques which are now being run more competently by foreigners (Jaguar Land Rover etc)
My working theory is that British management over large groups of British workers collapses into class warfare.
Interesting. Care to share a bit more about your reasoning here?
What I want to argue is that they existed as two cultures which were fundamentally different and in conflict with each other. The endless strikes weren't entirely about pay but a desire for confrontation in and of itself.
Compare and contrast these two individuals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Edwardes vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist...
(yes, the M word and the C word are involved, but those don't exist in a vacuum either)
Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876617 mentions the "low social status of working in Trade" which is another aspect of the class system entirely among the management class.
You don't get to blame Unionist culture on failures after Thatcher takes control. Unions were stronger during the times most western nations were doing better.
The government treated people like Derek as hostile foreign spies and enemies of the state, going so far as to sic national security agencies on them.
Derek had no power after he was ousted in 1979, and the workers at British Leyland voted against a retaliatory strike 14000 to 600.
If you want to suggest this is still "cultural" because the Tories were part of the "class" blaming and scapegoating laborers, 1) I agree but 2) Calling that a "two cultures" problem or ascribing blame to the laborer "class" for trying to fight off the Reaganisation of their country is absurd.
Guess what, the unions lost in most of the Anglophone world in 1980, are we really better off without them? Are we really doing better now that we don't let workers offset the power of Capital holders? To me it seems like all we have accomplished is to take a loan out from our futures to enrich the Capital holding class.
Surely if the unions were the problem, we would have clear evidence of improvement since they were thoroughly destroyed in the 80s?
Meanwhile, here in the US, we are still feeling the painful effects of killing the air traffic control union. Turns out people don't want to do an extremely stressful, extremely skill based job for dirt cheap, and the people who can do that job are fine at doing jobs that pay way better, and no amount of removing their collective bargaining power can offset individuals choosing not to get underpaid for a serious job.
It’s hard to explain when you’re not there. When people say “the working class” that has a very specific connotation in England - it means you aren’t a noble or a peer or someone like that. Of course the boundaries are blurred, but they are not that blurry yet in England.
So walking around there you get the feeling that there is absolutely a two tier system, some people go to Eton and Oxfridge some people do not. Of course they have allowed a lot of foreign millionaire and billionaires into the system.
But the overall feeling is very much us vs them sometimes and it certainly feels like both sides can despise each other. The working class, as famously depicted by Gillian Anderson as Thatcher in The Crown thinks the nobles “don’t do anything” and the nobles etc because of their Etonian and Oxford education think the lower classes are low IQ.
May this spread to all other nations. Down with management.
Decades of state subsidy of it both directly and of its suppliers had failed and taking it on was far cheaper for the country than letting it and British Steel, and the National Coal Board all simultaneously fail.
This sounds like a modern version of Golden Age nostalgia. First, I am not at all sure that people had longer visions; some probably did, but the entire nations? Not so sure.
Second, there is a certain wisdom in accepting that you don't know how the world will look in 50+ years. 50 years ago, China was an extremely impoverished country that no one would take seriously as a competitor for global influence, Iran was US-friendly and the USSR was on the peak of its power.
When France built their nuclear programs, or railways, it was a massive investment, the people in charge when these decisions were taken were long gone by the time the projects were completed. It wasn't seen as a cost but as a national interest, now we're cutting everything down because everything is seen as a short term cost regardless of the long term benefits.
> I am not at all sure that people had longer visions; some probably did, but the entire nations? Not so sure.
Nations don't matter, the 10 or so people truly in charge do, when they have a spine at least, now that we have business men thinking about the next quarter it's more complicated.
> Second, there is a certain wisdom in accepting that you don't know how the world will look in 50+ years
History doesn't just happen... countries with long term visions make history, of course if you check out of the race you're at the mercy of whatever other people decide for you. China didn't automagically get where it is today, the planned economy helps in that regard.
That does not seem to support your idea that "everything gets cut down over short term costs now". There is a massive amount of long term spending happening right now.
FYI: China produces >70% of windmills blades, solar panels and lithium batteries
What I meant by vision is securing the long term independence of your country through home grown technologies, for example France got cheap/clean electricity and nukes from their program. What you're describing is just the continuity of the lack of vision we had since the 70s, we outsourced everything to Asia and kept "services", which aren't worth much when shit hits the fan.
Don't worry, those "services" are now being outsourced too this time around.
What's left is stakeholders, scrum masters and managers to boss those offshore workers around while they use ChatGPT.
It's all a big comedy show and we are born just in time to get the front row seats.
However I just returned last night from a trip to London (I live in Sweden now) and I have to say, the decline is precipitous and pronounced, London gets all the investment so if it's decaying this way then I shudder to think about the rest of the nation.
I think a lot of people outside the UK believe that because the UK had an empire that everybody was rich. This is decidedly not the case, the first people the British elite subjugated was the British themselves, that's why most of the food we're mocked about is so bland: it's poverty food, so when I say that it feels like a decline, please keep it within the context that most of us have our entire family tree in the underclass - not because we were once rich.
Most infrastructure has not been invested in during my lifetime, and it was old when I was a child.
I live in the UK and not in London either, and it constantly feels like everything is just decaying and the country lives in the past not the present. Everything is just dilapidated, falling apart, or shut down. The streets are full of rubbish, dirty and local infrastructure doesn't get fixed up for months if someone damages it. Local councils are saying they will shut down care homes soon because there is no money for anything. And it's not even a private vs state funded issue - our local pharmacy literally looks like something out of afganistan, you walk in and there is actual dirty carpet on the floor, the shelves are 50% empty and there are several broken lights in the ceiling - with 4 people working behind the counter packing prescriptions. And that's operated by a private company! Which I believe is only doing it because they are required by an NHS contract, otherwise they would have shut the place down. And don't even get me started on the NHS - a friend with suicidal thoughts was told he needs to see a psychiatrist, the current wait time for one is 260 weeks(just short of 5 years). Honestly if I were cynical I'd say the system prefers if he kills himself, less of a burden.
Honestly, I feel so weird. One one hand, I work from home on a tech worker salary and I'm very comfortable financially - but I take a step out of my house and you don't feel like the 5th wealthiest nation in the world. Our local library had to be closed due to lack of funding recently. A library. What kind of 3rd world behaviour is that? And honestly I don't think even 3rd world countries are closing down libraries, it's just unthinkable.
I'm very jaded about it, I keep trying to find positives and there are some but generally I've learnt to expect that things are broken, forgotten or just in poor state in some way or another, because there is never any money to do anything. It's a poor country cosplaying as a superpower.
I do think there used to be more middle class public/civic pride, and you can see this in some places that have retained it and cleaned themselves up. I see the various "transition towns" (Totnes, Bristol etc) as one way forward: they have a vision of a future involving local people, not just a vision of the past.
> Our local library had to be closed due to lack of funding recently. A library. What kind of 3rd world behaviour is that?
Closing things down in order to avoid having to put up taxes is extremely first world behavior now.
Revolving doors, blatant corruption, and downright incompetence lead to absolutely no repercussions; what's there to lose? Schröder is the poster child of this.
We are creating generations of people with no stake in society (no housing, no family because it's costs too much and no time anyway) while at the same time having a complete lack of ethos as a civilization, with a terrible ruling class. Europe (and the UK) are in a horrible position.
That said, I think this was more a case of when the rot in the UK became visible rather than when it started; the British government hasn't been competent for a very long time, and still isn't. With the caveat that I'm not a historian and have only an amateur knowledge of the events, I'd say the problems set in even before the peak of the British Empire, which itself I place at just before the outbreak of WW1 owing to how Pyrrhic that victory was.
With the exception of the Royal Navy, the British Empire was spectacularly incompetent. It’s a running joke that the British stumbled into being the largest empire in history.
That said, I don’t think it’s unique to Britain. The Roman Empire has many tales of staggering incompetence and wild idiocy throughout its expansion. If you have the time, The History of Rome is an excellent podcast that covers the entire time period.
I suspect it’s the truth of human nature that it isn’t possible for such large organisations to be competent throughout, just by virtue of how many people they take to operate.
Hm. Well, I can't say I know any better than that, I was rather assuming that becoming the biggest empire was itself due to something approximating competence.
Certainly, if one takes the view that all large organisations are mediocre, the British Empire is unambiguously an example of "large organisation".
Edit:
Just to check, the Empire podcast by Anita Anand and William Dalrymple?
Absolutely! I think all governments can safely fall under "large organisation" as it's pretty much necessary.
> Just to check, the Empire podcast by Anita Anand and William Dalrymple?
That's the one.
That appears to take precedence over anything else. It may have "saved" the UK from revolutions or major clearouts of its governing structures and legal system, and results in a system that is delightlyfully quirky on the surface.
But it's also a way of governing that seems to lead to managing decline over fixing things because managing decline is less risky in the short term.
People plan quarter to quarter.
The turn away from nuclear power around the turn of the century was probably the decisive moment. From then on it hasn't been possible to articulate a vision of a prosperous society with a realistic path to get there.
Nuclear has a negative learning curve: the more plants get built the more expensive they have turned out to be.
Which is a policy choice that people were pretty clear on when they bought the policies in. That is basically the only way to get a negative learning curve on an exciting new tech like nuclear. Bet you that China is seeing a more natural learning curve.
Would be energy barons like it because it really begs for concentration of generation from a political perspective, as every marginal unit of distributed generation hurts the P&L of the nuclear generator.
Are you sure this isn't about Britain, and how the finance industry gave that county its own version of "Dutch disease", making it comparatively unprofitable to do anything but managing assets?
The issues were longer-term and revolved around a failure to update working methods as the rest of the world developed.
There’s a reason why the docks in every rich country have given way to condos and esplanades. The financialization of everything was an accelerant, not a root cause.
1. manufacturing doesnt scale
2. in peace time, globalization is really good with no downside. while factory is not in the western soil. the owner is still largely western company
This gives some idea of what happened: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O7PVEaPh6Fw&pp=ygUgYWRhbSBzbWl...