Being born in 1960’s Britain, the importance and legacy of industrialisation was all around – and as a result was mainly taken for granted. There was no doubt that there was a certain ‘grubbiness’ of the industrial landscape which seemed a different world compared to that of the rolling green countryside of my childhood in South West England and so childhood holidays with my grandparents in the industrial mill towns of Lancashire presented an opportunity to reflect on why the countryside had become industrialised and what the benefits of this were to most people.

My father and both grandfathers were engineers and so I was introduced at an early age to the concept of making and repairing things and therefore gained an insight into the complexities and requirements of designing and manufacturing products and as most small boys was fascinated with engines and moving vehicles and so quickly got accustomed to getting my hands dirty and the realization that dirty industrial landscapes beyond the exterior were actually very interesting and important places where all our modern equipment, tools and toys were made. Apart from that I actually liked making and mending things along with the smell of oil and grease!

Living in the country, most my friends were farmers and therefore country life was ‘second nature’ as helping out on farms at weekends and school holidays was enjoyable, interesting and probably unavoidable and the best part was that I could also drive tractors and operate farm machinery with my mates whilst also interacting and learning about animals, food and environment.

Although farm technology was all around and constantly increasing in complexity and size, it was however probably in my teens when I first properly realised that agriculture was also an ‘industrial’ process and landscape – which in the 1970’s and 80’s started to attract the interest of various environmental organisations as well as news reports that were reporting the over production of food which was being characterized by ‘milk lakes’ and ‘grain mountains’ and very associated with agricultural subsidies that were introduced during the second world war and focused on maximizing ‘home grown’ food production during the war period but not properly reassessed until the 1990’s.

During the 1970’s, Britain had been plagued by industrial strikes and it seemed that the traditional metal manufacturing industries were loosing market share both internationally and at home as new products were being introduced from Japan and other countries. There was a cycle of blame where the business owners blamed the workers and unions for low efficiency and stoppages and the workers blamed the old machines and intolerant bosses for the problems which allowed lower cost foreign imports to increasingly dominate the market. I remember having discussions with my farmer friends who at the time were convinced that the problem (supported by the popular press) was with the workers and unions and often pointed to the high production rates of agricultural produce to distinguish themselves from the ‘lazy’ factory workers?

I remember trying to explain to  them that whilst agriculture was successful at producing a lot of product, this was also due to factors which were outside of farmers themselves such as the introduction of cheap nitrogen fertilizers, chemical crop sprays, larger machinery, land drainage initiatives, livestock drugs developments etc – and combined with the agricultural subsidy system which essentially guaranteed prices for everything farmers produced, the concept of ‘efficiency’ compared to industrial Britain was somewhat misguided?

However, these discussions did get me thinking more about what was ‘really’ going on with u.k manufacturing and why Japanese products were so much cheaper. Was it true that Japanese workers were faster and only worked for a bowl of rice a day as popular narratives would suggest?

The answer was and remains quite simple – which is that the u.k currency increased in value and whilst this was recognized as an issue as long ago as the 1960’s – efforts to devalue the currency were widely demonised by most financial and city institutions as being ‘anti-market’ and so consecutive governments and the Bank of England since have failed to address the issue – preferring u.k exports and manufacturing to continue to decline with a continued reliance on foreign imports. The ‘litmus’ test of the u.k economy was historically the ‘balance of payments’ which was a simple and accurate indication of ‘income’ against ‘outgoings’ although during the transition of the economy in the 1980’s away from manufacturing , this figure increasingly moved towards a deficit and so the government and Bank of England decided that they would no longer refer to this as a general indication of economic wellbeing and the New Labour government of 1997 also decided to hand over autonomy of currency to the Bank of England so that any currency valuation issues would come under their remit?

With the transition away from agricultural production subsidies – u.k farmers are increasingly at the behest of the international markets which negatively impacted industrial manufacturers during the 1970’s and whilst it is said (and may have some truth) that the foreign competitors do not comply with the same standards as u.k farmers – my belief remains the same as back in the 1980’s that the fundamental problem with u.k manufacturing businesses (now common with many other countries) is that the currency exchange rates are simply too high comparable to those of the competition!

The tragedy is that no-one even seems to discuss this any more and so if the start of finding a solution is in correctly analysing the problem – I am afraid that the u.k has got a long way to go!

The Trump administration could assist by re-assessing the Dollar/Yuang exchange rate instead of initiating an import tariff war – however, it is not obvious that even a new Trump administration or the Federal Reserve has addressed the route cause and so whilst there is great optimism that Mr Trump and Elon Musk may reset a world trade agenda, unless it include the exchange rate issue may only actually work for the u.s?

 

Phil Selwyn (Director) Water powered Technologies    02/12/24