So it really is just entire coincidence that the company with no independent trades unions at all seems to have been the biggest culprit, over a long period of time?



There were negative aspects to trades union culture at the time. There was pisspoor management too. Indeed, pisspoor management seems to be a national problem, in all sectors. Businesses where it didn't seem to occur to owners that new plant might be worth investing in (we had this mentioned only recently here, in terms of the textile mills – still using machinery from the beginning of the 20th century in the late 1970s). It happened in car production and was a considerable shock to the Germans when they took over production of the mini, in an era well after privatisation and the attacks on the unions. No investment, no new training – nothing.

I've seen it myself on countless occasions in small, private businesses: pisspoor management, with the workforce always having to shoulder the blame and the consequences. And I'm talking about in non-union workplaces. Management that bullies; management that shifts responsibility for its own inadequacies onto others; management that has never even considered training – and so on.

But in your 'real world', it's only ever the plebs who dare to want a decent cut for themselves and – horror of horrors – actually get together to improve their chance of getting it.

It was a specific decision by the government of the day to change the balance of the economy, so that manufacturing was replaced by the service sector (including financial services and retail).

This was a central tenet of what was proposed by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economists, and was particularly popular and particularly enthusiastically embraced by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, for whom Friedman was their favourite economist.

The 'theory' was that the developed nations could stop manufacturing, because they had reached a point enabling them to do so, and they could switch their economies to service models, allowing the developing world to do the manufacturing and thus grow.

To do this relied greatly on deregulation. In the case of the UK, whole industries packed up and cleared off quickly – shipbuilding is a case in point. Entire communities were thrown onto the rubbish dump and left to rot. It was the start of the 'benefits' culture'. There had been large numbers of skilled, manual jobs – and those simply disappeared. They have still not been replaced.

The deregulation continued apace. Sunday trading laws were battered open – a move sold to the public on the grounds of inconsistencies in the law (you could buy porn on a Sunday but not a Bible was the prime example used). It was, however, much more to do with encouraging a vastly increased consumer culture. You needed cheap and far more readily available credit to fuel that – done. You needed to encourage people to be 'aspirational' (translation: wanting lots and lots more things) to drive that – done (although this cultural change took a little longer).

Selling off utilities, using the con of 'giving the consumer more choice', was also done. Result? Vastly inflated domestic fuel bills and companies pretty much acting as cartels. In the case of rail, a service that is actually more highly subsidised than before, but which fleeces customers ever more – just so private companies can make a profit: nothing to do with what is good for the nation as a whole or the general public.

Housing: persuade everyone they need to buy – and then refuse to let the funds be used to build more housing. Result? An increased housing shortage and a massive inflation of housing costs, requiring more deregulated mortgages, more debt etc – prime causes of the financial crisis.

The neo-liberal ideologues also, in spite of every piece of historic experience (including but not limited to the Great Depression, FFS) continued to prate on about 'trickle down': let those at the top have the freest rein possible and everybody else will benefit. It has never worked in the past and it has not worked in the last 30 years.

In the Western countries where neo-liberalism was followed most ardently – ie the UK and US – the income gap between those at the very top and everybody else has widened.

This core economic approach has been continued by successive governments for over 30 years.

These were not accidents. They were political, ideological decisions.

The decline of manufacturing was not inevitable.

And, as has already been pointed out, those attempting to claim that the only costs involved were in, say, the cost of a bag of coal, are ignoring the vast array of other costs of those policies – and then, in many cases, blaming the very people and communities who were dumped on for the consequences of that. And other countries, which did not follow the neo-liberal route in the same way, have largely done better than we have, have more manufacturing, have lower income inequality and, with that, lower social problems (see Wilkinson and Pickett, The Spirit Level).

Let us be quite clear: either Thatcher and her government, in making the decisions that they did, to start the process that they did, did not realise what the consequences of those decisions would be on ordinary human beings – or if they did, they did not care. Given "unemployment is a price worth paying", I am minded to the latter. Which begs the question of precisely whom government is elected to serve. Because increasingly, these days, it seems to be big business alone.

You have been given the evidence of successive elections, which were the biggest polls ever taken on the issue.

On the legacy ...

Since you mention 'answering questions', let's try this one for (IIRC) the third time of asking: do you consider the current financial crisis to be a good thing – ergo, the policies that led to it have served us well?

Minty 2 AJW71 0. FT

Possibly the best post i've ever read on here.

Many thanks.

I should have also mentioned (once again) the example of the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port, which was nearly closed a few months ago.

Why was it nearly closed?

Because we have deregulated to such a degree that the UK is now the easiest country in Europe in which to close an entire factory and sack thousands of employees. In the end, negotiations with the unions saved the plant – and the jobs.

The idea that further deregulation of employment is required to better the economy is utterly ridiculous, and is a cover for those who wish to drive down pay and conditions, and keep the employees nice and scared.

Which nation is the biggest manufacturer and exporter in the EU?
The same one that got to that position by their Unions and Management having constructive relationships.
Viz : Germany.

Yes, the same Germany with all its employment regulation.

Maybe, but Germany has kept unit labour costs down compared with other European countries. These things are not black and white.

At the end of the day, their success is down to producing quality products that people want and working hard. Those are two things the British, generally speaking, have got out of the habit of.

Strange, isn't it, that in the UK at least, labour is viewed as a 'cost' – something that is negative and which needs to be cut or held down.

Nobody ever seems to talk about other aspects of production (heat, light, raw materials etc) in quite the same way.

Little wonder that we do not, generally, value 'ordinary' employees and consider that investment in the workforce is exactly that – investment.

Instead, we have a culture where, ever more, employers (big business, at any rate) demands that young people leave school absolutely ready for the workplace (instead of ready for employers to train them specifically): all funded by the taxpayer, of course. Except for the same big businesses, which seek to pay less and less tax.

If you are in the business of making things to sell to people then of course wages are a cost of production (as they are in any business). The Germans have held unit labour costs relatively steady for years and their workers. That's why Germans are angry that are being asked to pay towards Southern Europe, where unit labour costs have gone through the roof. To produce things that people can afford to buy around the world companies need to control all production costs.