From Empire to Europe: The Decline and Revival of British Industry Since the Second World War
Renowned industrial expert Geoffrey Owen analyses the complex reasons behind the delayed modernisation of British industry.In 1945, following the economic hardship of the war years, British industry looked forward with confidence to re-establishing links with its traditional trading partners in the Empire, and in the years of reconstruction which followed enjoyed unprecendented growth and prosperity. But the emergence of an economically vigorous and fiercely competitive Europe forced Britain to come to terms with some fundamental industrial weaknesses and to question where her economic destiny lay as the ‘miracle economies’ of France and Germany began to overtake her own.Through case studies of key industries from textiles to pharmaceuticals, steel to electronics, Owen offers a vivid account of Britain’s industrial progress, and argues that since the late 1970s British industry has undergone a painful but necessary transformation which has rapidly modernised the UK economy.At the start of a new millennium, as Britain once again debates its relationship with an ever more unified Europe, Geoffrey Owen provides a timely appraisal of the often troubled path that Britain has taken from Empire to Europe.
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FROM EMPIRE TO EUROPE
The Decline and Revival of British Industry
Since the Second World War
GEOFFREY OWEN
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1999
Copyright © Geoffrey Owen 1999
Geoffrey Owen asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006387503
Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780008100889
Version: 2017-01-18
Contents
1Falling Behind and Catching up
PART I
Historical Background
2The Consequences of Coming First
3Britain, Germany and France after the Second World War
PART II
Industries and Firms
4Textiles: Misdirected Modernisation
5Shipbuilding: Imprisoned by History
7The Globalisation of the Paper Industry
8Engineering: From World Leader to Niche Player
9The Motor Industry: An Avoidable Disaster
10Electronics: A Shared European Failure
11Aerospace: Partnership with Government
12Chemicals: The Birth, growth and Break-up of a National Champion
13Pharmaceuticals: A Winning Formula
PART III
Institutions and Policies
15Training, Education and Culture
16Trade Unions and Labour Relations
In the summer of 1995, a ceremony was held at the Aylesford paper mill in Kent, one of Britain’s largest paper-making sites, to mark the successful commissioning of a newsprint machine. In forest-rich countries such as Canada or Finland, this would have been an unremarkable event. But for Britain the Aylesford project had a special significance. It was the first new machine to be built at the mill for more than thirty years. Based on recycled paper, it produced newsprint which was competitive in cost and quality with imports. The project was financed by two non-British companies, one from Sweden and the other from South Africa. By investing £250m at Aylesford, they were contributing to the revival of an industry which twenty years earlier had seemed in the grip of irreversible decline.
What happened in paper-making during the 1980s and 1990s illustrates the central theme of this book – the delayed modernisation of British industry. For the first decade after the war British paper-makers led a comfortable existence. Domestic demand was strong, and import competition was restrained by tariffs and quotas. These easy conditions came to an abrupt end in 1959 when the Conservative government under Harold Macmillan decided to participate in the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). This was a grouping of countries outside the six-nation Common Market, and it included Sweden and Finland, both of which had large, efficient paper industries based on cheap electricity and ample supplies of wood.>1
As tariffs among the EFTA countries came down, the Nordic paper producers used their cost advantage to increase their exports to Britain. British firms strove to come to terms with a difficult trading environment. Mills and machines were closed down, and some of the leading British companies lost faith in the industry’s future. But the economics of paper-making in Britain were not as unfavourable as the pessimists supposed. For some grades of paper, being near to the market turned out to be more important than being near to the forests. In addition, Britain had a man-made ‘forest’ of its own: improvements in recycling technology created new opportunities for using waste paper instead of imported woodpulp as the feedstock for paper production. The gloom began to lift in the early 1980s, and over the next fifteen years a remarkable transformation of the industry took place, involving new investment and changes of ownership. Some of the new projects, like the Aylesford newsprint machine, were undertaken by foreign companies. But there was also a new spirit of confidence among the surviving British-owned firms, targeting sectors of the market where a UK-based producer could compete successfully against imports.
