The re-birth of British manufacturing industry - how to do it.

How can a post-industrial country such as the UK recreate its manufacturing industry? 

In the past 30 years it is the media and services that have been the centre of the British industrial zeitgeist. This has been successful but has imbalanced the economy so that Disc Jockeys and Salesmen are valued more highly than scientists and engineers.  The creation of this media zeitgeist has been especially problematical because it is self promoting and DJs will call engineers "nerds" and "geeks" to emphasise their superiority.  It is interesting that in the 1950s, when the zeitgeist blew towards technology, DJs would have been regarded as ill educated windbags and real men of substance would have been scientists and engineers.

What sort of zeitgeist and social environment is needed for manufacturing?  The life histories of great manufacturing entrepreneurs might provide a clue (all taken from Wikipedia):

William Morris, the founder of Morris Cars, was born in 1877. He left school at 15, and worked in Oxford, first as a repairer and maker of bicycles, then of motor cycles and finally of cars.

Soichiro Honda obtained an apprenticeship at a garage in 1922, and after some hesitation over his employment, he stayed for six years, working as a car mechanic before returning home to start his own auto repair business in 1928 at the age of 22.

George Stephenson realised the value of education and paid to study at night school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic—he was illiterate till the age of 18. In 1801 he began work at Black Callerton colliery as a 'brakesman', controlling the winding gear of the pit.  In 1815, aware of the explosions often caused in mines by naked flames, Stephenson began to experiment with a safety lamp that would burn without causing an explosion. Stephenson designed his first locomotive in 1814, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway, and named Blücher after the Prussian general Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. It was constructed in the colliery workshop behind Stephenson's home, Dial Cottage, on Great Lime Road

Masaru Ibuka co-founded what is now Sony. He graduated in 1933 from Waseda University. After graduating, he went to work at Photo-Chemical Laboratory, a company which processed movie film. In 1945, he left the company and founded a radio repair shop in Tokyo.

The key feature in all of these life stories is that the entrepreneurs were able to start manufacturing or engineering in a small way.  Manufacturing entrepreneurs are independent people who do it themselves.  Little wonder that manufacturing is not favoured by modern governments who are full of apparatchiks.

There are other essential components for the successful rebirth of manufacturing. I have visited the emerging manufacturing giants such as India and China. In these countries the grubby backstreets on the edge of town have metal stock holders, electronics component sellers, tool and machine tool sellers etc.  British towns used to have these crucial manufacturing materials suppliers forty years ago but they have now largely disappeared.  Government intervention is essential to provide these resources in the early days of the rebirth of manufacturing. The government's first intervention to stimulate manufacturing should be to create subsidised technology centres in secondary schools.  These would work like evening classes but provide materials and tools for adults to experiment with manufactures in the evening; obtaining manufacturing supplies would be a crucial role of these centres.

Universities and colleges should ask their engineering and design students to spend an hour a week at local technology centres as part of their course and base lower technology practical work there.  This will stimulate the centres and create a habit of practical involvement amongst potential entrepreneurs.

The key to the microeconomic management of the rebirth of manufacturing is to provide respect for technologists and scientists in the media, to set up technology centres that not only teach children but are open in the evening and to introduce taxes and incentives that make large scale manufacturing less competitive and small scale manufacturing more competitive.

It is the zeitgeist that is most important.  The government might commission exciting films on the drama of George Stephenson's life or the sheer drive of the Wright Brothers or Frank Whittle.  Headmasters might be asked to tell short stories about the manufacturing "greats" at school assemblies.  The engineers and scientists are not nerds and geeks, they are educated and able people who can change the real world.

On the larger scale the government could choose a handful of large projects that are designed specifically to stimulate UK suppliers of advanced manufactures. The stimulation would be directed towards producing components that could be also be used by foreign companies and consumers. The key to evaluating these projects would not be how successful they are themselves but how successful they are for stimulating UK based manufacturers. 



See also

Economic policies for recovery


A New Taxation System

EU membership and laying up treasure from overseas

Getting richer every day in every way: income and wealth

What is Socialism?

Is Labour any more than the Public Sector Party?