Weekend Economists Volvemos a Puerto Rico May 22-25, 2015

[MattSh]

32. As the UK has discovered, there is no postindustrial promised land | Business | The Guardian

Anyone puzzled by Scotland’s increasing disaffection should take a look at a book called British Enterprise. Written by Alexander Howard and Ernest Newman, and published in 1952, the immediate afterglow of the festival of Britain, it consisted of short descriptions of each of more than 100 then world-beating British manufacturing companies.

It strikingly illustrates how much more geographically balanced the British economy was in those days. In common with latter day Germany, every region of 1950s Britain had plenty of industrial prowess to boast of.

The Midlands had the British car industry, the world’s second-largest by total output and No 1 in exports. Wales had toys, steel, and domestic appliances; Nottingham had bicycles; Newcastle and Belfast led the world in key areas of heavy engineering; and, of course, Lancashire had cotton.

Then there was Scotland. Its roll call of exporting titans included Renfrew -based Babcock and Wilcox, which made boilers for the world’s power stations. Other major Scottish exporters included North British Locomotive and the William Beardmore castings company. In Dundee there was National Cash Register’s major British subsidiary and in Kirkcaldy the Nairn linoleum company.

The list went on and on, and at the top was the John Brown company. Although then one of the world’s most technically advanced manufacturers, John Brown is largely forgotten today. Its products, however, are not. They included the Lusitania, HMS Repulse, the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, the QE2 and others. John Brown was the cornerstone of a Clydebank shipbuilding industry that built nearly a third of the world’s ships.

Complete story at - http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2015/may/18/as-the-uk-has-discovered-there-is-no-postindustrial-promised-land