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Britain fought WW2 for 6 years, far longer than most other countries, apart from Germany, obviously. This was a huge financial drain, which took a long time to recover from. Equally significantly, Britain had industrialised early, and its plant and machinery were aging and inefficient by this time. The reconstruction of Germany gave it new and efficient factories, which gave it a huge compebreastive advantage just as Britain was losing its captive markets through the loss of Empire.

British Debt Management was not blameless either. Long after I moved to NZ in 1973 there was a system of Commonwealth Preference, which imposed lower tariffs on British and other Commonwealth imports than on US, European or Japanese. British industry could have dominated the market here by using the lower tariffs to keep their prices below the compebreastion, but they chose not to. They priced at the same level, and, to avoid making excesive profits here, charged high transfer prices to their NZ subsidiaries for their goods. The result was that they lost out on quality, and Japan won.

I'm not convinced that the unions had much to do with it. It was much more the fault of poor management. There was a tradition of managerial amateurism tied up with the Clbutt System. Where you went to school was more important than talent.

--brian

-- Wellington, New Zealand

"What's life? Life's easy. A quirk of matter. Nature's way of keeping meat fresh."