What a great thread. And great stories of handworking to great precision.
However, I hope it's not too churlish of me to bring up Sir Stanley Hooker's story about how the RR Merlin drawings had to be totally redrawn to Packard's standards - as used in motor car production.
Could it be that British manufacturers, with far cheaper labour costs, were actually too dependent on the hand skills of its labour force. Later, when labour costs rose, the companies concerned were slow to change the manufacturing culture and so many jobs went away.