Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Add Reply
Reason for Poor British Economic Performance after World War II?
Topic Started: Oct 31 2015, 04:07 AM (365 Views)
Delta Force

The United Kingdom was one of the most industrialized, scientifically advanced, and wealthiest countries going into World War II. While it was embargoed and bombed during the war and had to fight a multi-front war to defend its Empire, it did not fight a single battle on its own soil. At the end of World War II it stood alongside the Soviet Union and United States as one of only three world powers. It led both of them in key technologies such as computers, nuclear technology, and jet engines (having major firsts in all three), and also made major contributions to rocket technology.

However, the economic performance of the United Kingdom from World War II onwards has been appalling (World Bank data here). Around 1960 the four big economies of Europe (France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom) were around parity in GDP per capita, but then the French and Germans took off, leaving Italy and the United Kingdom behind. In fact, between 1985 and 1997 Italy had a higher per capita GDP than the United Kingdom.

So, what happened? Did British companies grow too accustomed to working within the Imperial System, falling to foreign competition in the liberalized global economy that followed World War II? Was it something else?
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Simon Darkshade
Member Avatar
Nefarious Swashbuckler
Gosh, how long have you got? This has been the subject of many, many books.

It was a combination of many different factors. The British Empire was regarded as one of the three superpowers; without the Empire, Britain is smaller in size, population, power capacity and potential compared to the continental superpowers (the USA and the USSR). It punched above its weight until the late 1960s when the real slowdown occurred.

The 1950s and 1960s saw some of the highest British growth of the 20th century; it was less than its competitors, which narrowed the gap between them.

Britain had experienced relative economic decline due to being the first to industrialise and had been experiencing slow growth since ~1870. Its industrial plant was smaller in scale and older than that of the USA and the newly rebuilt US models in West Germany, Japan, France and Italy and to some extent was worn out; as a generalisation, it was a limiting factor.

Militant unions played a role in lower productivity and issues of quality control. Britain had lost a lot of export markets to the USA during the war and had deep balance of payments problem. Many political decisions contributed to Britain's performance.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Basil Fawlty
Member Avatar
Post Tenebras Lux
I've heard it attributed mainly to the union and factory structures being built more for the 19th century than the 20th; it is a case where being first can prove to be a curse.

Not being bombed may have been a mixed blessing inasmuch as the others could be rebuilt along more modern lines, as Simon already said.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Simon Darkshade
Member Avatar
Nefarious Swashbuckler
It was one reason among many.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
JBK
Member Avatar

I wonder, can Unions really be blamed? The Netherlands, Germany and France all have strong, strong unions and long traditions of strikes.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Basil Fawlty
Member Avatar
Post Tenebras Lux
Not the unions as much as the union organization from what I have been told. It was more suitable for something fifty years in the past.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Simon Darkshade
Member Avatar
Nefarious Swashbuckler
Yes they can. A look at the history of the British car industry, shipbuilding, steel and above all coal has a common thread. 'In Place of Strife' was written for a reason.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Basil Fawlty
Member Avatar
Post Tenebras Lux
Why were the British unions so much more... implacable, I suppose, than their counterparts elsewhere? The U.S. has seen a steady drop in union power and membership in the last 50 years, and it hasn't seemed to alter the economic landscape much. Some of the best years of growth were when they did have power. They never seemed obstruct life like you hear about in Britain.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
John
Member Avatar

Well, I always got the impression that the unions in Britain had a more socialist lean. That had not been the case in the United States. Our unions were rather convinced of the superiority of capitalism, even if they wanted it somewhat restrained in favor of workers.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Simon Darkshade
Member Avatar
Nefarious Swashbuckler
Britain always had a hard Red element that did not exist in the USA; there were no counterparts to Red Clydeside, Red Robbo, Arthur Scargill and the Labour Party. The political Left was further left than across the Atlantic.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Matthew
Member Avatar

I imagine the larger scale of the country made it harder to coordinate as well, and for economic issues to effect enough of labour in the same way across the country at large for them to be able to find too much common cause.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
JBK
Member Avatar

I think its the huge cultural difference between the upper class which runs Britain and the lower class who form most of the workers. Instead of understanding that they had to work together to make a country great they fought each other. Now the unions are gone and England is hardly the better for it. Good unions, like those in the countries I mentioned before, are better than no unions at all.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Basil Fawlty
Member Avatar
Post Tenebras Lux
I'm not quite sure where I stand on unions in principle. In theory, there is nothing bad about them. They can act as a good check on excesses if a company is run ruthlessly, as many sadly were back in the late 1800s when unions got their start.

In the United States, though, unfortunately, many unions have become exactly what they were fighting against: organizations run by an elite group who are more focused on furthering their own interests than those of the common man, and which are in bed with a political class (Democrats instead of Republicans, this time). That fits most people's description of the Gilded Age robber-barons.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Simon Darkshade
Member Avatar
Nefarious Swashbuckler
I'm not sure which version of Britain it was where the evil upper classes won and the unions disappeared. It certainly wasn't this one. Britain had an oversupply of communist unions and communist unionists that did not want to make the country stronger, but wanted it to be the puppet of another country. It took a purge by Kinnock to get rid of Militant Tendency.

They have become irrelevant as people joined the middle classes en masse. The power they once wielded through control of the Labour Party was even then out of proportion to their level of representation in society. Bringing down elected governments with strikes and destroying whole industries through spite are not the courses of action that made the country great.

The Netherlands and Germany? They are around Australian levels, with 18% of the workforce unionised. France is at 7 and Britain at 26.
Edited by Simon Darkshade, Nov 1 2015, 09:02 PM.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · History · Next Topic »
Add Reply