[avianlyric]

Not quite the conclusions of the article. As it points out the UK nationalised its shipbuilding industry in the 70s in a last ditch effort to turn it around, and despite operating it at a significant loss for a decade failed to make it even slightly competitive. In the 90s the industry was then privatised again once it was clear there was no saving it anymore.

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.

[vintermann]

> 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.

... 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?

[pjc50]

From the article re: Norwegian customers:

"…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.

[gausswho]

Could you elaborate further on that working theory? Are there unique tendencies in British workforce that devolve into class warfare? Also, I don't want to misinterpret that phrase. Do you mean this about fiscal policies that tax the wealthy to a higher proporation or something more?

[pjc50]

This is absolutely not about money and entirely about interpersonal culture and class signifiers and prejudices. It's a little difficult to articulate to people who haven't grown up with it. I don't like the idea of attributing "no good" to whole swathes of people; it seems both prejudiced and inaccurate to say that either British workers were no good at working (although they were on strike a lot) or that British managers were no good at managing (although the businesses such as British Leyland were empirically not very successful) because, as we can see in more recent times than the BL era, there's still successful manufacturing industries.

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.

[mrguyorama]

Except the Tories got their opportunity to demonstrate how unions held them back for most of 40 years and did nothing to improve the situation.

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.

[kranke155]

The class system in England is quite entrenched. You have to remember this is a country with an 1000 year old monarchy and noble families who still own a substantial amount of the land. England is both very modernist, quite progressive, and remarkably traditionalist in its makeup.

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.

[boomskats]

> 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?

[BeFlatXIII]

> My working theory is that British management over large groups of British workers collapses into class warfare.

May this spread to all other nations. Down with management.

[oliwarner]

It's important to note that nationalising ship building was a last-ditch parachute for hundreds of thousands of manual workers, not the cause of its decline.

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.