The British are great manufacturers, which is why:

So many men born elsewhere chose to develop their ideas here;

So many overseas companies chose to buy British manufacturers

So many overseas companies chose Britain as a place to build manufacturing plants.

Why don’t British public companies agree with their foreign counterparts?

Why don’t British governments have the faith in their manufacturing sector and need to offer incentives to companies based outside the UK ?

The elephants in the manufacturing room used to include the unions which were blamed for just about everything. True, the unofficial strikes, the closed shops – all these caused damage, and perhaps so tainted manufacturing that the money boys in the city steered clear. The real damage was that steering clear. But it’s not just the city, it is also board rooms and government. Or is it?

Let’s look first at the city. It is interesting to read the business pages of the newspapers through the fifties and into the sixties. In the early days, journalists wanted to write about what companies did. This slowly evolved into endless columns on which company’s shares were worth buying. All this metamorphosed into hedge funds and a city of London obsessed with its so called ‘clever’ financial instruments and to hell with what a company actually does.

In the seventies, people would laud the German approach of private companies financed by banks. A British example was Ferranti, fiercely independent and held back in its brilliant and adventurous history by a shortage of capital. A more recent example of a company eschewing the equity market is Ineos, but it is caught up in the vagueries of international banking.

If the city was to blame, what of the boards of directors? Let me say at the outset, this is not an easy task. Let’s take some examples: Frank Kearton at Courtaulds buying British spinners and weavers to secure the market for his rayon; or Arnold Weinstock slimming down the bloated combination of GEC, AEI and EE; or the board of Vickers seeking a role in civilian manufacturing having had their core businesses nationalised? What about the dramatic turnaround of ICI under Sir John Harvey-Jones, only then to demerge the highly successful Zeneca leaving the remainder to be bought piecemeal. Lucas was an astonishing company. For those who condemn the British for inventing things but leaving others to exploit the inventions, Lucas did both and were all too happy to bring their manufacturing expertise to exploit the inventions of others. Weir Group is interesting for they were and are determined to remain in manufacturing but decided that better prospects were in overseas markets. Going back to GEC, all Weinstock’s years of prudent work went up in a puff of smoke under George Simpson who had done much the same for Lucas. In both cases he was seeking shareholder value. In the eighties in the midlands we looked upon Nigel Rudd of Williams Holdings as the example to follow. He secured shareholder value at Boots and Pilkington by selling out. Was that, were any of these the right decisions?

Could boards of directors have made better decisions?

I write more about the story of British manufacturing in my books How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines, which, and more, can be found on my British Manufacturing History site.