What happened to our engineering industry ?

[Mike Storey]

I remember an old boss, coming back from a Conservative Party conference in the early/mid 1980s, proclaiming that ours was now a service company. As I was surrounded by tins of ink and paint, manufactured in our own factory, I had to remind myself that, over seven years of studying the 'Dismal Science', I had always been told that service industries did not produce physical products, but rather things called 'intangibles'. I kicked a tin and it hurt; I was reassured that my teachers had been correct.

'The Service Economy' was a construction by groups led by PR and advertising people, themselves members of what Douglas Adams called the 'B Ark'

 

We had the same cultural shock-tactic on the railways. Running a train was pointless unless there were people paying to use it (whether for passengers or freight). The term "customer" instead of "passenger" was also derided as PR speak, even by many passengers. But the emphasis became understanding customer needs, rather than doing what we had always done, but better and cheaper.

 

Did it make a difference?

 

Hell yeah. The new BR sectors started to carry a lot more passengers, and even freight in some sectors. If it had not been for the economic downturn after Black Wednesday, it could have become one enormous success story, as it was beginning to do again when Mr Major decided the traffic cone hotline was not going to be enough to win him another election.

 

Did it demean the description of railway engineer/operator/ticket seller? Many of us thought so, as our wishes/opinions/priorities seemed to become less valued over time, in favour of efficiency and customer service. But those roles were not really demeaned until post-privatisation, when many of the key roles suddenly came to be viewed as peripheral, and could be "outsourced", as though the core industry needed no expertise other than that immediately necessary. Short-termism once more, as well described by others.

[Robin2]

A lot of people have pointed out that there are lots of engineering jobs in the UK and some demonstrating very high skills indeed.

 

However what I don't understand is why, for example there is no British train-making or car-making company operating in Britian with world-wide sales in the same way that, for example Siemens, Volkswagen, BMW etc are operating in Germany. Germany is not a low-cost economy. Britain started out as the world leader in train manufacture.

 

...R

[bike2steam]

- there is no British train-making or car-making company operating in Britian with world-wide sales -

 

If there is, it's probably foreign owned !!?? Me, cynical - naaa!

Edited April 5, 2018 by bike2steam

[Sir TophamHatt]

Germany and (parts of) France were completely destroyed in the war.

They had no choice but to nearly completely re-build their whole country, and thus manufacturing is still in a large boom there. But quality of life is better because they are less greedy. Houses are generally bigger for example. Yes their countries are much larger than ours but you can't get away from the fact our house builders squeeze more and more houses into spaces, and you can't tell me it's to give yet another couple a place to live.

 

Plus, the fact that in certain towns, one person owns whole streets of houses for students is disgusting. Yeah, it's great that the guy has another income but how many people are being denied a chance to be in a similar position because this guy owns over 100 houses?

If it were possible, I'd create a law that says no single person could own more than three dwellings (IE, a house, flat, static caravan). Yes, the single person could create a company that owns the property but yet more wording could be added to get round that. Any time someone finds a way round what the spirit of the law is trying to protect, add more wording to close the loop.

 

Our country is great at money and dealing with fiance.

 

Why our country doesn't build more universities and such to teach I don't know. We have so many foreign students it must be among the highest in the world. So why not make that our countries speciality? You can't argue with German manufacturing (for example) - that's their speciality.

Edited April 5, 2018 by Sir TophamHatt

[Fat Controller]

If there is, it's probably foreign owned !!?? Me, cynical - naaa!

That has been the case with the motor-manufacturing industry for a very long time.

Ford, were American from their inception.

Vauxhall were bought by General Motors in 1925

Rootes Group (Singer, Hillman, Humber etc) were taken over by Chrysler from 1964 onwards, the last vestiges going to the Americans in 1967.

[johnlambert]

That has been the case with the motor-manufacturing industry for a very long time.

Ford, were American from their inception.

Vauxhall were bought by General Motors in 1925

Rootes Group (Singer, Hillman, Humber etc) were taken over by Chrysler from 1964 onwards, the last vestiges going to the Americans in 1967.

Chrysler then sold out to Peugeot and General motors has sold Vauxhall (and Opel) to Peugeot.

[Robin2]

If there is, it's probably foreign owned !!?? Me, cynical - naaa!

Then it would not be what I was referring to "British train-making or car-making company". Perhaps I should have been more specific in saying British owned and controlled but I thought that would have been obvious from my reference to the German companies.

 

...R

[Fat Controller]

Then it would not be what I was referring to "British train-making or car-making company". Perhaps I should have been more specific in saying British owned and controlled but I thought that would have been obvious from my reference to the German companies.

 

...R

There hasn't been a British-owned mass-market car-maker since Rover's demise; as for train-makers, they went sometime before. That said, we do make a lot of components for other countries' train and car manufacturers.

[jjb1970]

Do German people see MTU engines, Traxx locomotives, Caterpillar engines designed & made by the former MaK etc as being un-german?

[Nimbus]

There hasn't been a British-owned mass-market car-maker since before Rover's demise.

 

Cheeky correction applied. Reading accounts 'from the inside' as it were, Rover was doomed when BMW bought it. The architect of that deal from the BMW side had a resentful rival whom he'd beaten to the top job, who as part of his revenge tried to sink Rover at every opportunity. The attitudes Rover had to contend with included "Luxury executive market? Nein, we do that!" and "Motorsport? Verboten, that's our patch!" Maybe they relented and allowed Rover to develop the 75, and dealers had cause for optimism due to the level of interest shown by potential purchasers. Then came the launch, and the BMW executive announcing that this was Rover's last throw of the dice as far as he was concerned. Many of those potential sales melted away in consequence. Honda understandaby became a lot less co-operative with their erstwhile partners; whereas the licence agreement for the R8 (the wedge styled 200/400 range) was fairly relaxed, so that while Honda stuck with 2 minor variations for their Concerto, Rover quickly expanded their portfolio to 6 distinct bodyshells. This project incidentally was developed by a joint British-Japanese team, whereas the earlier 800/Legend less so; a joint showing of the two teams' product led to the Honda boss relaying some disappointment to his team that the Rover was much the classier package. Subsequent licences were more restrictive, such that the later Rover 400 'bubble style' couldn't evolve. You can readily perceive the roots of the typical tabloid/Clarkson jibes which kicked in a little later about the marque, its products and its customers.

 

The Nim.

(Owner of 2 R8's)

[Mike Storey]

Germany and (parts of) France were completely destroyed in the war.

They had no choice but to nearly completely re-build their whole country, and thus manufacturing is still in a large boom there. But quality of life is better because they are less greedy. Houses are generally bigger for example. Yes their countries are much larger than ours but you can't get away from the fact our house builders squeeze more and more houses into spaces, and you can't tell me it's to give yet another couple a place to live.

 

Plus, the fact that in certain towns, one person owns whole streets of houses for students is disgusting. Yeah, it's great that the guy has another income but how many people are being denied a chance to be in a similar position because this guy owns over 100 houses?

If it were possible, I'd create a law that says no single person could own more than three dwellings (IE, a house, flat, static caravan). Yes, the single person could create a company that owns the property but yet more wording could be added to get round that. Any time someone finds a way round what the spirit of the law is trying to protect, add more wording to close the loop.

 

Our country is great at money and dealing with fiance.

 

Why our country doesn't build more universities and such to teach I don't know. We have so many foreign students it must be among the highest in the world. So why not make that our countries speciality? You can't argue with German manufacturing (for example) - that's their speciality.

 

Your first para might have been true about West Germany, but in France, it only really affected the North East (I recognise and am not ignoring you said "part of"). It is the re-built, heavy industry in North East France which has declined the most in the past thirty years, although massive EU Regional grants have re-introduced a lot of new industries there, along with domestic incentives to relocate there. But unemployment remains high and rural poverty is vastly greater than in Britain, despite much higher personal and corporate taxation.  In Germany, they have had to absorb the enormous costs of re-integrating East Germany, which had no competitive industry or business to speak of. Consequently, whilst their high value industry has overall remained strong (but with some very major losses to Eastern Europe and to Swiss companies), the standard of living has remained well below expectations due to very high taxation, and very much greater municipal control over development and competition.

 

I do not know where you get the idea that houses are bigger and better in France or Germany. That may be true in the countryside, where land is still quite cheap as there are few jobs, but not in the cities where most people live, and live in flats, not houses, far more so than in the UK. It is just as hard for a French or German family to afford their own home in their cities as it is in the UK. I volunteer in a food bank here, in a small town in a relatively sparsely populated area, but we have 40 families on our books, most of whom have one working member - it is not just a British problem.

 

There are more universities in the UK per capita, than in any other European country already. There are more foreign students in UK universities, but the decision to include students in immigration figures, and thus reducing quotas, will hurt them further when we leave the EU. It is already hurting them, as applied to students from India, China and so on, so any suggestion by some that this "will not be a problem" is misleading to the extreme.

 

It does not particularly help to suggest the grass is greener elsewhere, when the assumptions are incorrect. What is clear is that many British people want their government to be more "competent" at guiding British industry and forcing private capital to be used more productively. But there are costs to that, which most people do not seem willing to pay.

 

It is a dilemma, and there is no consensus in Britain yet. The German electorate has come close to rejecting the very political party that largely created the economic powerhouse in which they live, because they do not like the costs that came with it - high immigration and high taxation. The French people are just as fed up with their situation, which is worse than Germany's economically, but they have still overtaken the UK on the basis of GDP growth, and they have tried right wing governments and left wing governments, and are now trying a supposedly middle of the road party, which aims to cut through many of the obstacles to growth that previous parties have been afraid to tackle. But many believe they are too right wing (hence the spate of strikes currently in progress here) but many others believe they are too left wing. British voters, now having claimed they want to see decision making brought back to Westminster (and Edinburgh, Cardiff and perhaps one day, Belfast), better start thinking about what those decisions should look like (if we take the majority premise that the EU prevented such decisions, which is still highly debatable, but let's not go there). Is Britain now supposed to try to become an industrial powerhouse again, which will require greater restriction on the use of private capital (which will otherwise just keep on flowing to wherever the easy money is - property, speculation and selling off anything that creates immediate value, no matter what the strategic interest) or is to become something else? I presume we have not gone through all the agony of Brexit, just for things to stay much the same? Or have I misunderstood?

[rockershovel]

A lot of people have pointed out that there are lots of engineering jobs in the UK and some demonstrating very high skills indeed.

 

However what I don't understand is why, for example there is no British train-making or car-making company operating in Britian with world-wide sales in the same way that, for example Siemens, Volkswagen, BMW etc are operating in Germany. Germany is not a low-cost economy. Britain started out as the world leader in train manufacture.

 

...R

... because the British political class does not regard it as part of its function, to represent the interests of the country. They regard their role as theirs by right (Conservatives) or by grace of their ideological obsessiveness (Labour). You need only have seen the reaction of the BBC Question Time panel to the question “which of you speaks for England?”, they reacted as though they’d been accosted in a public lavatory.

 

Anyway, all concerned are wholly devoid of the necessary skills. Engineers are, proverbially, people who can do well for one dollar, what most can do, after a fashion, for two dollars. If an engineer is wrong, it is rarely possible to conceal the error for long. No such constraints applied to the financial sector for quite a long time, and the great disaster of outsourcing is only now coming unscrewed at the seams.

[Robin2]

There hasn't been a British-owned mass-market car-maker since Rover's demise; as for train-makers, they went sometime before. That said, we do make a lot of components for other countries' train and car manufacturers.

That makes no attempt to explain why Britain is different from (say) Germany and it also reads as if the absence of major British owned manufacturers is perfectly OK.

 

Reply #87 does suggest an explanation - though I suspect the reality is a bit more complex.

 

...R

[Mike Storey]

That makes no attempt to explain why Britain is different from (say) Germany and it also reads as if the absence of major British owned manufacturers is perfectly OK.

 

Reply #87 does suggest an explanation - though I suspect the reality is a bit more complex.

 

...R

 

The primary reason is that the British majority have long believed the market is "perfect" and should decide (other than in wartime), as part of the freedom of the individual, a view not shared widely in the rest of Europe. The only UK political party to have truly tried a directed peacetime economy, was voted out just five or so years later, and much of their work was reversed over the following decades, on the basis that it "did not work", whereas the legislative context in which it had any chance of working had been destroyed long before, as soon as they could. Even the military/industrial complex, which had sustained the aerospace and defence industries amongst others for a further decade or so (and which the USA continues to this day) could not survive on the scale needed.

 

The market does not place value on mere production but on maximising value. If it is easier to do that another way, that's what it will do. It is noticeable that the foreign companies who continue to invest in industrial capacity in the UK, are almost all from countries whose own economies are rather more controlled or supported (France, Germany, Canada, Japan, India and soon, probably, China). The Yanks have pretty well dropped out, other than in software and some joint ventures, and UK-owned manufacturers tend to design in Britain but build abroad.

[rockershovel]

The primary reason is that the British majority have long believed the market is "perfect" and should decide (other than in wartime), as part of the freedom of the individual, a view not shared widely in the rest of Europe. The only UK political party to have truly tried a directed peacetime economy, was voted out just five or so years later, and much of their work was reversed over the following decades, on the basis that it "did not work", whereas the legislative context in which it had any chance of working had been destroyed long before, as soon as they could. Even the military/industrial complex, which had sustained the aerospace and defence industries amongst others for a further decade or so (and which the USA continues to this day) could not survive on the scale needed.

 

The market does not place value on mere production but on maximising value. If it is easier to do that another way, that's what it will do. It is noticeable that the foreign companies who continue to invest in industrial capacity in the UK, are almost all from countries whose own economies are rather more controlled or supported (France, Germany, Canada, Japan, India and soon, probably, China). The Yanks have pretty well dropped out, other than in software and some joint ventures, and UK-owned manufacturers tend to design in Britain but build abroad.

 

The first part of that is a considerable over-simplification. Labour were NOT “voted out” in 1950, but fell from a majority of 146 to 5, despite increasing both total votes polled and overall share of the vote. It was felt that a majority of 5 was insufficient to govern (subsequent experience would suggest that Labour could probably have gone the distance, since the 9 Liberals were the only minority grouping of any consequence) but polled again after twenty months.

 

The 1951 election produced the remarkable turnout of almost 84% . The Liberals slipped further, to 6 seats. Votes cast were narrowly in Labour’s favour, but distribution proved to be their undoing.

 

Why DID Labour fall so precipitately in their wider support between 1945 and 1951? It remains a much-debated issue, but there is little dispute that its core programme of social reform (primarily the Welfate State, NHS and nationalisation) had been brilliantly completed, or at least so established that there could be no turning back. It had no clear ongoing direction, and many of its key figures were leaving the stage from age and exhaustion. The latter part of the Attlee government was affected by the 1947 fuel crisis, devaluation in 1949 and the huge unpopularity of continuing rationing.

 

Labour’s ideological position - particularly internationalism - were never popular. The Conservatives also, at that time, retained a considerable reputation for probity and financial competence (sic transit .....) and could offer both a much younger, fresher-looking party plus the immense prestige of Winston Churchill.

 

However it is true that Britain, uniquely in Europe, once voted in a reforming socialist administration, and voted it out again despite showing every sign of satisfaction with their main achievements.

[62613]

The first part of that is a considerable over-simplification. Labour were NOT “voted out” in 1950, but fell from a majority of 146 to 5, despite increasing both total votes polled and overall share of the vote. It was felt that a majority of 5 was insufficient to govern (subsequent experience would suggest that Labour could probably have gone the distance, since the 9 Liberals were the only minority grouping of any consequence) but polled again after twenty months.

 

The 1951 election produced the remarkable turnout of almost 84% . The Liberals slipped further, to 6 seats. Votes cast were narrowly in Labour’s favour, but distribution proved to be their undoing.

 

Why DID Labour fall so precipitately in their wider support between 1945 and 1951? It remains a much-debated issue, but there is little dispute that its core programme of social reform (primarily the Welfate State, NHS and nationalisation) had been brilliantly completed, or at least so established that there could be no turning back. It had no clear ongoing direction, and many of its key figures were leaving the stage from age and exhaustion. The latter part of the Attlee government was affected by the 1947 fuel crisis, devaluation in 1949 and the huge unpopularity of continuing rationing.

 

Labour’s ideological position - particularly internationalism - were never popular. The Conservatives also, at that time, retained a considerable reputation for probity and financial competence (sic transit .....) and could offer both a much younger, fresher-looking party plus the immense prestige of Winston Churchill.

 

However it is true that Britain, uniquely in Europe, once voted in a reforming socialist administration, and voted it out again despite showing every sign of satisfaction with their main achievements.

Broadly correct, although I think the 'postwar consensus' lasted until about 1975, when Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservatives, and James Callaghan of Labour. Until that point, it's fair to say that governments of both colurs thought that education and health should be a right enjoyed by all, and provided by them to the masses. They also believed that major infrastructure projects ought to be government - funded, and that those in financial difficulties, for whatever reason, should be supported and not demonised.

 

It is reported that at the first shadow cabinet meeting after Mrs Thatcher won the leadership, they were gathered in a room in parliament discussing how to allocate government funds when they returned to power, when Mrs Thatcher walked in, slapped a copy of 'The Road to Serfdom' (?) by Friederich Hayek and said to them, "Gentlemen, from now on, this is our bible"

 

Likewise, when Callaghan took up his post as Prime Minister, one of his first pronouncements was "You can't spend your way out of a recession", thus heralding the end of Keynsian economics, and indeed Denis Healey, in all his budgets between 1976 and 1978 cut public spending.

[jjb1970]

Whether or not you can spend your way out of a recession depends to some extent on the state of finances going into it and the levels of non-capital public spending. If you enter a recession have been running a budget deficit for several years, high debt and high levels of non-capital public expenditure (noting that in an era of economic growth you wouldn't really expect the sort of deficit spending and debt that we took into a recession in 2008) then it is indeed difficult to spend your way out of a recession. Public expenditure on capital projects can indeed stimulate growth but unfortunately in our society those budgets tend to be the easiest to cut in political terms because of the political fall out associated with alternatives and if you went in with high deficit spending and debt then you can't endlessly run up ever bigger debts.

On "The Road to Serfdom", that is a book which is well worth reading. I don't agree with all of it but I agree with a lot of it and the underlying moral philosophy of the book strikes me as fundamentally sound.

[Mike Storey]

I had not meant to trigger a discourse on the minutae of various politicians, and the arguments between Keysian and Monetarist theology. I have recently finished reading a jolly good biography of Clement Attlee and could bore everyone sh1tless with the various competing issues which combined to turn the populace against the Labour miracle.

 

We are supposed to be discussing what happened to our heavy industry. Government funded infrastructure is but a small part of the puzzle. We have had more state funded, railway infrastructure spending in the last twenty years than, well, ever, under both Labour and then Tory/Lib, then Tory governments. But there are very few, British-owned companies that have benefited, and one of those has just gone to the wall.

 

What is key to that spending is that it was, entirely unintentionally by its authors, obligatory. This was due to the complex, legislated and directed legal structure that their Frankenstein of a privatisation created. That a free-market-worshipping Tory government could thus oblige the taxpayer to fund a massive increase in subsidy of, in the majority, foreign owned companies, is extraordinary. They had argued for this position on the basis that taxpayer funding of an almost entirely British-owned industry at the time, was unacceptable. Does no-one else see the complete contradiction in that position?

 

Therefore, in pursuit of the dogma of free capital, they have ensured the UK taxpayer subsidises many millions of foreign taxpayers. You can see this being repeated with steel, green energy, automotive, and of course, banking. It is possible to also see it in software development and pharmaceuticals (and several others), whereby the UK taxpayer pays for the education of the specialists who develop the world beating industries, and then subsidises their start ups in many cases, with deferred taxation, reduced business rates and the odd grant, only to see a few individuals or shareholders benefit massively from flogging off the family silver as soon as some multi-national sees it as an opportunity or a threat.

 

That is what I meant by a directed economy, where such illogicalities would be severely tested and found wanting. This is what the Germans, Danes, Swedes, Dutch, Belgians and of course the French, have understood, but have accepted trade offs to achieve that (and all of them have problems as much as the UK, but for different reasons), which the British electorate do not appear to have found acceptable, at least not for long enough to make it work.

[rockershovel]

What happened to our heavy industry? Oh, that’s simple. It lost the ability to generate returns on capital, at a time when the controllers of that capital were beset by erosion of value due to inflation, and manufacturing technology was undergoing rapid, investment-intensive change.

 

Meanwhile, our political leaders were losing their historic ability to make money by making things. Labour fell under the spell of self-defined ideological posturing, whilst the Conservatives fell under the dazzling glamour of asset price speculation, liberalising banking regulation, generating short-lived booms for electoral reasons and pursuing sinecures in banking as a reward for their policies in office - Anthony Barber was probably the first such figure, at least in modern times.

 

Just when our industry stood most in need of active, determined support from Westminster, that venerable institution was turning away from industry, which it no longer understood.

[rockershovel]

Re #93 above, this was recently demonstrated by Unilever moving its head office to Rotterdam, in significant part because Dutch law provides more effective safeguards against asset-stripping and hostile takeovers.

 

The whole business of tax-payers subsidising foreign owners under the banner of free enterprise, really isn’t anything amazing. Once a political party undergoes a Pauline conversion and marches forth wrapped in the blazing glow of its own self-defined infallibility, as happened to the Conservatives in the 1970s, all reason is abandoned. You might as well ask why “ownership doesn’t matter” as the Conservatives proclaimed in the blazing heat of the Thatcherite apotheosis - this makes no sense whatsoever, but it is a logical corollary of a philosophy of selling anything you can lay hands on.

Edited April 6, 2018 by rockershovel

[rockershovel]

Regarding “directed economies”, the British never had one. The whole vast structure of Empire stood and fell by trading in commodities, accompanied by economic direction on an international scale - but the home population never saw that.

 

Don’t forget, also, that the British were educated over a long period, roughly from 1660 to 1945, to see Continental authoritarianism as inimical to their way of life. They spread across the world, but not to Europe, mostly encountering other European nations as rivals and enemies. The migrants fleeing Enclosure, mechanisation and the Corn Laws found no relief in France or Germany.

[Barry O]

Is this about engineering in Britain or just about self opinionated political carp?

 

Baz

[Andy Y]

Is this about engineering in Britain or just about self opinionated political carp?

Baz

It should get better, I've removed one of the usual suspects access to the topic.

[jjb1970]

I know the point has been made by quite a few people already, but when people point to a decline of engineering in the UK they're actually pointing to a decline in traditional heavy manufacturing and a decline in certain sectors. Plenty of British engineering companies are thriving and sectors of UK engineering are genuinely world class. If looking at more traditional big metal stuff then BAE and RR still design and build a lot of stuff here. If looking at cars, Jaguar - Land Rover may be Indian owned now but they're British designed and built cars which have been on a terrific growth trajectory since Ford offloaded them (as have Volvo it seems, maybe say's more about Ford). JCB seem to do well enough. If looking towards the softer side of engineering then organisations like Lloyd's Register, BMT and Ricardo are amongst the most highly respected organisations in their fields globally. Looking at the more exotic side of engineering Johnson Matthey are a world leader (including in fuel cells). Believe it or not there are still a lot of engineers in the UK doing a lot of great things, we still make a lot (more than some people think), have some world leading design and consulting organisations and despite protestations of doom engineering is far from dead here.

[Pacific231G]

Whether or not you can spend your way out of a recession depends to some extent on the state of finances going into it and the levels of non-capital public spending. If you enter a recession have been running a budget deficit for several years, high debt and high levels of non-capital public expenditure (noting that in an era of economic growth you wouldn't really expect the sort of deficit spending and debt that we took into a recession in 2008) then it is indeed difficult to spend your way out of a recession. Public expenditure on capital projects can indeed stimulate growth but unfortunately in our society those budgets tend to be the easiest to cut in political terms because of the political fall out associated with alternatives and if you went in with high deficit spending and debt then you can't endlessly run up ever bigger debts.

On "The Road to Serfdom", that is a book which is well worth reading. I don't agree with all of it but I agree with a lot of it and the underlying moral philosophy of the book strikes me as fundamentally sound.

Part of the problem is that governments, being short term, tend to spend more when the economy is booming, thus overheating the economy, and to cut spending when it's at the bottom of the trade cycle.thus making recessions that much deeper.   The time to build roads  railways, hospitals etc.is when the private economy is in recession so prices are low and there are unemployed workers and infrastructure needing to be used. Conversely, when the private economy is booming there is little spare capacity and public spending, particularly on capital projetcts, will cost relatively more. 

I've seen this in companies too when investment in things like training are at their highest when the company is making most money but cut right back when times are harder.

There are some things though, including education, health and defence and everything that make the country a decent place to live, that need to be maintained through good and bad periods for the economy. a healthy non-trade public economy also tends to damp down the extremities of the economic cycle. 

 

Far more fundamental IMHO is the problem going back a very long way that British industry simply didn't need to be that good, well-managed  or highly skilled when it could rely on the empire for a captive market from which other industrialised countrie (and the nascent industries of the colonised countries such as the very skiiled Indian shipbuilding industry)  were largely excluded. The habits of that period lasted far longer than the captive market of the empire. To be an engineer is a high status profession in countries like Germany, in Britain people tend to think that the bloke who comes to fix the central heating is an engineer rather than a technician and simply don't understand the difference. I think that is starting to improve but there's a long way to go.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Pacific231G