Originally Posted by
Asturias56
The British shipbuilding industry was on the slide long before the UK joined Europe - a myopic and stupid management and owners, a set of unions straight out of "I'm all right Jack" and a Govt that never has a plan for longer than 12 months (or the next election). Typical was the use of slipways when the Koreans had covered construction docks that allowed all weather working. Try that on the Clyde or the Tyne.
Watched a program about a ship building company on the Clyde back in the '70's?: It was run like the UK class system - the bosses were the upper class, the workers were the working class. The bosses had their own private dining rooms, with servants, and two hour lunches; the workers had canteens if they were lucky, but more commonly a sandwich made by their wife.
Not surprisingly the workers resented the bosses having such privileges and cushy working conditions, while they, the workers had very poor conditions, with minimal health and safety and physically hard and dangerous labour. Workers joined the Left parties and the unions because they looked after the workers, and communism became a thing presumably because - in theory - communism made everyone equal.
The workers however, did not help themselves, because once they were all unionised, they resisted new, more efficient machinery and more efficient ways of doing things, because they thought that it would result in less employment. So the company gradually got less and less efficient until the point was reached where it could not compete, and closed down.
Very sad, because had the bosses not been such utter knobs, and had the workers embraced new machinery, the industry could have expanded and remained competitive.
The City of London realised in the '70's that the there was no big money in engineering of any sort - you make money by dealing in money - which is what has happened in the UK
.......yes and that way we end up with no manufacturing capability of our own, and become reliant on other country's manufacturing, which is not under our control.