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Not quite the conclusions of the article. As it points out the UK nationalised its shipbuilding industry in the 70s in a last ditch effort to turn it around, an

Not quite the conclusions of the article. As it points out the UK nationalised its shipbuilding industry in the 70s in a last ditch effort to turn it around, and despite operating it at a significant loss for a decade failed to make it even slightly competitive. In the 90s the industry was then privatised again once it was clear there was no saving it anymore. For the vast majority of its history the UK shipbuilding industry was completely private, and dominated by many small shipbuilders. Consolidation only started after the UK government stepped in to provide some kind of sensible strategy to improve the competitiveness of the industry, via government loans tied to longer term strategic goals to improve productivity. Ultimately it seems that the UK shipbuilding industry was kill by the thing that once made it so dominant. It was a highly distributed, extremely flat, high skilled industry, with little to no management. It made it easy for the industry to rapidly grow and shrink, and made it extremely effective at producing bespoke products. But as the world moved towards standardisation, those strengths became weaknesses. The lack of management structure made it impossible for the industry to properly recognise the issues, or effect change to fix the issues. And the world moved towards standardisation, which gave a huge advantage to shipbuilders that built up capital intensive infrastructure that allowed the use of lower skilled labour to produce standard design quick, cheaper, and to a higher quality, than the UK distributed, high skill, labour force.

vintermann 1y ago
> It was a highly distributed, extremely flat, high skilled industry, with little to no management. It made it easy for the industry to rapidly grow and shrink, and made it extremely effective at producing bespoke products. ... That sounds a lot like the Norwegian shipbuilding industry which I work for right now. Maybe not with little management exactly, but nothing crazy either - significantly less than a British multinational I worked for earlier. Of course the hulls are built elsewhere, and half of my colleagues are foreigners, but we're going fairly strong. So I'm not sure I buy this explanation. Why wouldn't the British do management equally well as us?
- pjc50 1y ago
  From the article re: Norwegian customers: "…every reported speech by a British shipbuilder in the Norwegian press usually comprised a list of excuses for poor performance, ranging from official and unofficial stoppages, shortages of labour, failings on the part of subcontractors, modernisation schemes not producing the anticipated results, to recently completed contracts having entailed substantial losses. The impression thus gained by the Norwegians, according to Holt, was of an industry where the shipbuilders had no control or responsibility over problems, and worse, had no ideas as to how to address the problems" I do think that British mismanagement plays a big role in the decline of the 1970s. I don't think it's a coincidence that the surviving car industry consists of two types of companies: - small bespoke high end companies like McLaren, with British management but comparatively small staff and throughput; - former British marques which are now being run more competently by foreigners (Jaguar Land Rover etc) My working theory is that British management over large groups of British workers collapses into class warfare.
  - boomskats 1y ago
    > My working theory is that British management over large groups of British workers collapses into class warfare. Interesting. Care to share a bit more about your reasoning here?
  - gausswho 1y ago
    Could you elaborate further on that working theory? Are there unique tendencies in British workforce that devolve into class warfare? Also, I don't want to misinterpret that phrase. Do you mean this about fiscal policies that tax the wealthy to a higher proporation or something more?
    - pjc50 1y ago
      This is absolutely not about money and entirely about interpersonal culture and class signifiers and prejudices. It's a little difficult to articulate to people who haven't grown up with it. I don't like the idea of attributing "no good" to whole swathes of people; it seems both prejudiced and inaccurate to say that either British workers were no good at working (although they were on strike a lot) or that British managers were no good at managing (although the businesses such as British Leyland were empirically not very successful) because, as we can see in more recent times than the BL era, there's still successful manufacturing industries. What I want to argue is that they existed as two cultures which were fundamentally different and in conflict with each other. The endless strikes weren't entirely about pay but a desire for confrontation in and of itself. Compare and contrast these two individuals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Edwardes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Edwardes vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist... (yes, the M word and the C word are involved, but those don't exist in a vacuum either) Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876617 mentions the "low social status of working in Trade" which is another aspect of the class system entirely among the management class.
oliwarner 1y ago
It's important to note that nationalising ship building was a last-ditch parachute for hundreds of thousands of manual workers, not the cause of its decline. Decades of state subsidy of it both directly and of its suppliers had failed and taking it on was far cheaper for the country than letting it and British Steel, and the National Coal Board all simultaneously fail.

vintermann 1y ago

> It was a highly distributed, extremely flat, high skilled industry, with little to no management. It made it easy for the industry to rapidly grow and shrink, and made it extremely effective at producing bespoke products. ... That sounds a lot like the Norwegian shipbuilding industry which I work for right now. Maybe not with little management exactly, but nothing crazy either - significantly less than a British multinational I worked for earlier. Of course the hulls are built elsewhere, and half of my colleagues are foreigners, but we're going fairly strong. So I'm not sure I buy this explanation. Why wouldn't the British do management equally well as us?

pjc50 1y ago
From the article re: Norwegian customers: "…every reported speech by a British shipbuilder in the Norwegian press usually comprised a list of excuses for poor performance, ranging from official and unofficial stoppages, shortages of labour, failings on the part of subcontractors, modernisation schemes not producing the anticipated results, to recently completed contracts having entailed substantial losses. The impression thus gained by the Norwegians, according to Holt, was of an industry where the shipbuilders had no control or responsibility over problems, and worse, had no ideas as to how to address the problems" I do think that British mismanagement plays a big role in the decline of the 1970s. I don't think it's a coincidence that the surviving car industry consists of two types of companies: - small bespoke high end companies like McLaren, with British management but comparatively small staff and throughput; - former British marques which are now being run more competently by foreigners (Jaguar Land Rover etc) My working theory is that British management over large groups of British workers collapses into class warfare.
- boomskats 1y ago
  > My working theory is that British management over large groups of British workers collapses into class warfare. Interesting. Care to share a bit more about your reasoning here?
- gausswho 1y ago
  Could you elaborate further on that working theory? Are there unique tendencies in British workforce that devolve into class warfare? Also, I don't want to misinterpret that phrase. Do you mean this about fiscal policies that tax the wealthy to a higher proporation or something more?
  - pjc50 1y ago
    This is absolutely not about money and entirely about interpersonal culture and class signifiers and prejudices. It's a little difficult to articulate to people who haven't grown up with it. I don't like the idea of attributing "no good" to whole swathes of people; it seems both prejudiced and inaccurate to say that either British workers were no good at working (although they were on strike a lot) or that British managers were no good at managing (although the businesses such as British Leyland were empirically not very successful) because, as we can see in more recent times than the BL era, there's still successful manufacturing industries. What I want to argue is that they existed as two cultures which were fundamentally different and in conflict with each other. The endless strikes weren't entirely about pay but a desire for confrontation in and of itself. Compare and contrast these two individuals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Edwardes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Edwardes vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist... (yes, the M word and the C word are involved, but those don't exist in a vacuum either) Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876617 mentions the "low social status of working in Trade" which is another aspect of the class system entirely among the management class.

oliwarner 1y ago

It's important to note that nationalising ship building was a last-ditch parachute for hundreds of thousands of manual workers, not the cause of its decline. Decades of state subsidy of it both directly and of its suppliers had failed and taking it on was far cheaper for the country than letting it and British Steel, and the National Coal Board all simultaneously fail.