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>The postwar British disease was labour relations, which were handled far better in Germany with worker representatives at board level. Interesting, UK went so

>The postwar British disease was labour relations, which were handled far better in Germany with worker representatives at board level. Interesting, UK went socialist after WWII while Germany went social democratic. I wonder what made the difference. Perhaps part of the answer is that the aristocracy retained more power in the UK? I have read that socialism in the UK was supported by the aristocracy as a way to keep control of the economy, but I am not sure if that is correct. Also, Germany was under US occupation for a number of years, I would suppose that made a difference, since the US is quite anti-socialist.

pjc50 10y ago
"Socialist" is almost a useless label these days, it's used to mean too many things that the US doesn't like. It's true that some of the aristocracy (e.g. Tony Benn) supported Labour and some very left-wing politics. But that was a small part of the whole. What is true is the Fabian Society proposing incrementalist socialism as an antidote to revolutionary socialism - a way for the aristocracy to keep their heads. The UK nationalised a lot of industries after the war but then failed to run them effectively. After a few decades of this the Thatcherite response was to just privatise everything and give up on trying any form of state management. This leaves us in the bizarre situation where Germany, France, the Netherlands etc have state-owned rail companies running UK railways recieving UK subsidy.