Tories against Thatcher

Be careful what you wish for. This old saying applies to us lefties. For years, we’ve wanted to see the end of Thatcherism. And we’ve now got it. And it’s an ugly sight.

I say this because of Johnson’s campaign to end working from home and get us back into the office. This is anti-Thatcherite in two senses.

For one thing, Johnson is contradicting two of Thatcher’s favourite principles – that “you can’t buck the market” and that managers have a right to manage. Many big employers are happy for staff to continue working from home. So why should the government say otherwise? Ryan Bourne expresses the spirit of Thatcherism when he says it is “quite frankly none of the govt’s business” to tell us what we should be doing.

Also, Johnson is motivated by a fear that city centres are becoming ghost towns. Thatcher, however, was content for large areas of the country – mining towns – to meet this fate. She thought that miners could move to better jobs. A genuine Thatcherite would think the same should be true of sandwich makers.

These, however, are not the only differences between Johnsonism and Thatcherism. There are others, even if we disregard the massive increase in state intervention triggered by Covid-19.

First, Thatcher placed great emphasis upon the importance of stability, believing this to be necessary to help businesses plan and invest:

An economy will work best when it is built on a framework of clear and predictable rules on which individuals and companies can depend when making their own plans.  Government's primary economic task is to frame and enforce such rules.

Today’s Tories, by contrast preside over huge and continued instability. Since the start of 2016 policy uncertainty, as measured by Baker, Bloom and Davis, has averaged twice as much as it did from 1998 to 2015.

Secondly, Thatcher was an architect of the single market, which she saw as “a fantastic prospect for our industry and commerce!” which offered “complete freedom for our manufacturers, our road hauliers, our banks, our insurance firms, our professions to compete.” Johnson, of course, is destroying that achievement. And whereas Thatcher wanted to cut red tape, Johnson is imposing it at a cost of billions. Johnson once said “fuck business” – a sentiment as far from Thatcherism as you can get.

Thirdly, Thatcherism was in many ways a modernising project. She wanted to modernise industry by removing over-manning and restrictive practices – which she did in the nationalized industries before selling them, as David Edgerton points out in The Rise and Fall of the British Nation. She attacked Labour for wanting to “put back the clock” whilst celebrating “the wealth creators, the scientists, the engineers, the designers, the managers, the inventors—all those on whom we rely to create the industries and jobs of the future.”

Today’s Tories, by contrast, offer no such modernising project. Instead, their vision is an atavistic yearning for an imagined past. Whereas Thatcher offered young people hope – not least the hope of owning their own home - today’s Tories do not. Yes Thatcher wanted to achieve cultural change, but she saw economics as the means of achieving that.

Hence another stark difference between Thatcher and Johnson. Thatcherism was popular with young people. In the 1987 election, the Tories beat Labour by 39-33% among 25-34 year olds. In the 2019 election, they trailed massively. Thatcher created from young graduates a bunch of shoulder-padded, big-haired, champagne-swilling yuppies. From the same material, the Tories now have created a mass of discontent. 

In all these respects, the Tory party is now fundamentally anti-Thatcherite. In one sense, it has to be, as Thatcherism failed, and not just because it ran out of other people's assets to sell. 

And yet for all its intellectual revolutions the Tory party is still the Tory party. Just as Trigger’s broom had 17 new heads and 14 new handles but stayed the same, so the Tory party is still the Tory party. So where’s the consistency?

It lies, I suspect in the reason why Johnson wants to get us back to the office. It’s not because he cares about sandwich shop workers (many of whom are migrants) but because he’s worried about the landlords of office blocks. As Marx said in 1852:

The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent.

Comments

[Blissex]

«Thatcher was an architect of the single market, which she saw as “a fantastic prospect for our industry and commerce!” which offered “complete freedom for our manufacturers, our road hauliers, our banks, our insurance firms, our professions to compete.”»

What she meant by that is same old, same old: the Single Market would lead to the breakup of the EU, because her government would ensure that english businesses would have the lowest labour and tax costs in the single market, slashing wages and benefits and taxes, so they would flood the markets of the other EU members with cheaper product than their businesses, burdened by higher taxes, better wages and benefits, could afford to make. This would mean widespread bankruptcies in other Single Market members, which would be blamed on the Single Market and the EC/EU, and countries like France, Italy etc. would exit from it.

That was also T Blair's plan, for which he opened the UK labour markets to east europeans years before most other members: thanks to east european immigration english businesses would have the lowest labour costs and taxes, and flood the Single Market with cheaper products, and voters in countries like France and Spain would blame the Single Market and vote to exit the EC/EU.

It did not quite work out that way :-).

PS B Johnson's attempts to reject a "level playing field" has the very same aim, this time with third world indentured workers in UK based "Free Enterprise Zones".

[Blissex]

«As Marx said in 1852: "The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution [...]"»

I have to say this is an excellent quote.
With a limitation: that the Conservative and (Liberal) Unionist party has a whig side that cared more about business profits and regarded ground rent as a cost to business (Corn Laws and all that). But in recent decades the whig side cares most about financial profits, and those are fairly aligned with the ground rents.

[E Hart]

Good post. One of the problems with Thatcher was that she brought a 19th century capitalist approach (the one of "wealth creators, the scientists, the engineers, the designers, the managers, the inventors") to a country and party whose primary interests had become late 20th century asset-stripping, parasitic consultancy and rent seeking. When large swathes of British industry went did she realise that whole supply chains and ancillary dependents would go with it? I very much doubt it. Had she seen this, she might have been more active in securing EU funding for redeveloping all those areas her policies affected. Instead, she left it to the market. The BBC/ITV regularly rejoiced in the creation of hundreds (usually 200, if I remember correctly) low productivity jobs with B&Q, Homebase and the out-of-town retail death stars Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda...

That last line about the ground rent is so telling. Rent almost never features in discussions about the High St, the emphasis, especially in our media, is always put on business rates (i.e. local taxation). Similarly, the fate of the High St, which is so often ascribed to the internet, is driven by economics (choice, price, disposable income) and aesthetics (High Streets are often squalid, dilapidated, identikit places with parking issues and higher prices). In some High Streets, the biggest "investor2 is buddleja davidii, which is ironic as it too originates in China.

There is also the larger matter to consider of low productivity, low-paid, insecure jobs and long-term stagnant wages. The High St holds up a mirror to the modern British service economy. When rentiers want to sell their assets - as increasingly they are (see you local High Street for notices as such) - it is because they have flogged, maimed, cloned and broiled the goose to death.

[Ralph Musgrave]

Boris wants to benefit London office block landlords? I suggest Chris has made the common mistake of seeing a conspiracy, when in fact the explanation is much more mundate. It's a cock up!! I.e. Boris just thinks and says stuff at random.

[Blissex]

«she brought a 19th century capitalist approach [...] to a country and party whose primary interests had become late 20th century asset-stripping, parasitic consultancy and rent seeking.»

My usual quote: https://exepose.com/2016/03/02/thatcher-and-god-an-interview-with-eliza-filby/
«I press Filby as to whether Thatcher ever regretted unleashing the forces she did. “Yes,” comes the instant reply. “Peregrine Worsthorne [Telegraph journalist] once said that, ‘Margaret Thatcher came into Downing Street determined to recreate the world of her father and ended up creating the world of her son.’ It’s a pretty damning assessment but it’s actually quite true.”»

«When large swathes of British industry went did she realise that whole supply chains and ancillary dependents would go with it? I very much doubt it.»

I really think that she did: the overriding goal was to destroy the trade unions, at *any cost*, as their "syndicalist" wing (see A Scargill) wanted to replace "The Establishment" as he paramount power ("who governs Britain?"), and she adopted a scorched earth approach, even letting go large sections of the tory electorate in the areas infected by trade unions. It was a classic english imperial process, the "reduction" of enemies. It was highly successful.

Pretty much the thatcherites decided that they could only salvage from decline a few sectors (mostly property and finance) and a few areas (mostly Home Counties and London), and let the rest sink. My current impression is that the current thatcherites reckon that eventually they have to let go the south-east too, and that the circle of prosperity will narrow to just the M25 area.

«Had she seen this, she might have been more active in securing EU funding for redeveloping all those areas her policies affected.»

Why? I think that she did not care much about redeveloping areas where trade unionism was being extirpated, as this would raise wages and recreate union power. I guess that her goal was to use the abundant, cheap bulk workforce so "liberated" from the trade unions to allow english industries to underprice their continental competitors and drive them to the wall, thus breaking up the EC/EU.

Let's not forget that the reaganites in the USA adopted pretty much the same strategies, also very successfully, and that they never even made a pretence of redeveloping the USA Rust Belt either.

[ltr]

August 28, 2020

Coronavirus

UK

Cases   ( 331,644)
Deaths   ( 41,486)

Deaths per million   ( 611)

France

Cases   ( 267,077)
Deaths   ( 30,596)

Deaths per million   ( 469)

Notice the ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases are 12.5% and 11.5% for the United Kingdom and France respectively.

[Jim]

I thought Thatcher was useful for two years after which she and her party went back to uselessness and finally lost the plot. There may have been some hope that 'the market' would flood into the former mining and steel making areas. But I feel there was never much force behind that idea and possibly a trace of vindictiveness.

In the end there was no need to bother, London and finance more than made up for the losses. Slowly over the years that advantage has reverted to the norm as other developed nations have gone through the same maturity cycle. Then Brexit, an utterly hopeless concept built on the idea that 2+2 can add up to 7. Maybe Brexit will advantage a few of the rich but will destroy the Tory Party and most of our economy as well.

The key problem is that 'the market' saw Asia as a much cheaper alternative site. Which left the UK with a problem - how to turn everybody into marketing consultants, semiconductor designers, surgeons and time machine builders. The services industry was not really much of an answer, that takes a bunch of Sharons and Trevors and sticks them in front of a computer screen or on a Deliveroo bike. To build up a much bigger upper middle tier requires that every child gets to go to the ballet, theatre, skiing and reads Latin and can dance. A bit of maths and half-baked STEM will not cut the creative mustard. I doubt such a transformation is even possible, human beings are fairly simple creatures built for eating, f*&ing and fighting, quite difficult to get much more out of them.

Which brings us back to the economy. Brexit looks like a displacement activity when you know you can't really achieve much. There has been very little revolutionary science in the last 30 years so the product line is a bit derivative. We do face the economist's Lump of Work. Not such a fallacy now.

[E Hart]

@Blissex All the industrialised countries in Western Europe were in the same boat during this period. Deindustrialisation was across the board. They all took a similar route out. This was not peculiar to Thatcher or Britain. Also, Thatcher had to win elections and whilst FPTP is unduly helpful in this regard - she still managed to do whilst implementing these destructive policies. (Who says the British aren't sado-masochistic?) I don't think anyone looking at our balance of trade over this period or the poorly paid jobs replacing the skilled ones (unionised or not) could have concluded that this was a "good idea". As for comparative advantages most of the EC/EU would have had a competitive advantage against sterling, so I am not sure the cheap labour idea adds up. Also, there no evidence that Thatcher's policies undermined our EU competitors. Indeed, the industrial cemetery is littered with British marques not those of major French, German or Italian companies.

Capital went to all points cheaper in the 1970's, in the US case that meant Mexico, Brazil, China, South East Asia...

[D]

@E Hart

I think the UK did it particularly badly. Blame the unions or the Tories for this, but places like Germany and Japan seem to have made the transition better, keeping/developing industry better.

My suspicion is the difference has something to do with a preference for tension between institutions, over cooperation. As reflected by contrasting approaches to company ownership. UK/US - duty us primarily to shareholders. Germany/Japan - duty is too stakeholders, inc shareholders. The latter leading to more constructive relationships between bosses and unions.

[georgesdelatour]

Thatcher was a Dry Tory presiding over mixed Wet/Dry cabinets. After 10 years, the Wets ultimately got rid of her. Her successor, John Major, was a Wet who pretended to be a Dry until he became PM.

The rough-and-ready compromise which held the Wet/Dry coalition together was: a Dry economic policy in return for a Wet Europe policy. The deal fell apart because there was no stable equilibrium point to which either economic or Europe policy could be held. On economics, Dry overreach led to electorally unsellable policies like the Poll Tax. On Europe, the Commission started pushing for more integration, which the Wets loved and the Drys could not accept.

The Johnson government is now operating on a reverse of the Thatcher compromise: a Wet economic policy in return for a Dry Europe policy. We’ll see how it plays out.

There was a moment when a stable, acceptable equilibrium point on Europe could have been achieved. John Major fought an incredibly fierce battle to push the Maastricht Treaty through Parliament. It consumed his Premiership.

Imagine the world we’d be living in now if only he’d failed. If the UK had rejected Maastricht - probably after a Referendum - the rest of the EEC could not have expelled us. They would have had to build the more integrated structures they wanted on a parallel institutional basis. But they couldn’t exclude us from the purely mercantile attributes of EEC membership.

In hindsight most British Europhiles of 2020 would look on such an arrangement as paradise, even though they’d have hated it back in 1992. Such are the ironies of politics and history.

[ltr]

August 29, 2020

Coronavirus

UK

Cases   ( 332,752)
Deaths   ( 41,498)

Notice the ratio of deaths to coronavirus cases is 12.5% for the United Kingdom.

[Blissex]

«All the industrialised countries in Western Europe were in the same boat during this period.»

Only in the sense that all could choose to accept import and migrant flows from countries with much lower labor costs.

But the degree to which they chose to accept those flows was the result of explicit *political* decisions to favour property rentiers and certain segments of business rentiers. England in the past made political choices like the Navigation Acts, and forbidding the manufacture of even *nails* in the colonies (one of the reasons for New England independence), to boost the exports and profits of the nail magnates of the midlands, and it had the Corn Laws, and it had Imperial Preference, when these benefited politically important constituencies.

More globally China was kept out of the WTO for a long time, until 2001, and allowing its entry into the WTO was a *political* decision too to benefit certain domestic constituencies of the USA and UK.

The policies followed by many countries to import migrants and goods from low wage countries, especially after 1991, were *always* politically motivated.

«Deindustrialisation was across the board. They all took a similar route out.»

Not all (see Japan) and in much different degrees (see Germany, south Korea, China, Italy).

Also in places like UK and USA the reaction to "de-industralisation" has been very different across sectors: when it turned out that the City and Wall Street had lost their entire capital by hiding enormous unhedged risk-related losses in the years before 2008-2009, the reaction of the USA and UK governments was not "well we don't interfere in markets, let them all go bust like the steelworks or mines or car manufactuers or shipbuilders, we don't care whether London will become like Newcastle or New York like Detroit".

Instead they used colossal amounts in a few years (the UK close to a trillion pounds, the USA several trillion dollars) to protect the jobs and bonuses of the "best and brightest", probably they were a multiple of all subsidies ever paid to productive UK industries. "The Economist", a champion of thatcherism and "free trade" and letting (trade unionised) sectors go, wrote in an editorial:

http://www.economist.com/node/21542417
“Britain will one day wake up to discover that it has lost one of the world's most successful business clusters, and the best hope the next generation has of earning a decent living.”

Describing as "succcessful" a sector that had made hidden losses for years much bigger than their capital seems a bit of a stretch, and "The Economist" position on the other UK business clusters had always been "better dead than red", and their concern for a few dozen thousand privately/Oxbridge educated “next generation” was all too clear. The next generations of the Midlands, Wales, North East, North West, were not accorded the privilege of having a "best hope [...] of earning a decent living".

While many countries adopted the "Washington consensus" (one the many synonyms of thatcherism, like "liberal democracy", "neoliberalism", "third way", etc.), they did so in much smaller degrees than the UK or the USA.

[Blissex]

«As for comparative advantages most of the EC/EU would have had a competitive advantage against sterling,»

One of the things that were used to undermine "trade union infected" sectors in the UK was a policy of a high exchange rate thanks to oil exports, 1982-2007. This need not have happened: there could have been a policy of compensating for that like Japan and China have done to keep their exchange rates favourable, for example by buying foreign assets for a "sovereign fund". But the governments of the past 40 years decided instead to use the oil exports to support easy credit and the imports of cheap goods from low wage exporters to offer better living standards to contemporary "Middle England" rentiers.

«so I am not sure the cheap labour idea adds up.»

The "cheap labour idea" was official policy since 1980: endless streams of articles, speeches on "unaffordable wages and pensions", "competitiveness". Most recently:

«While other countries were phasing in entry from eastern Europe into their labour forces, Tony Blair was urged by Bank of England governor Mervyn King “to open the labour market without transition on the grounds that it would help lower wage growth and inflation”.»

To some extent the policies of strong pound and higher exports were contradictory, but the contradiction could be resolved by lowering wages more than the rise of the pounds (internal deflation to counter external revaluation).

[Blissex]

«win elections [...] she still managed to do whilst implementing these destructive policies.»

But they were not merely destructive, around 20-30% of voters have had *booming* living standards for 40 years, reaching levels of affluence and wealth they had never dreamed of, and another 10-20% have maintained theirs, and a plurality is enough to win, because as you say “FPTP is unduly helpful in this regard”.

[E Hart]

@D I wouldn't disagree. One thing is inescapable, she had the means to act in areas of industrial decline - courtesy of North Oil revenues and EU grants - but chose not to. She spent a fortune on dole. What a far-sighted strategy that turned out to be. The social and economic consequences of this are still with us. Anyone looking at the trade deficit since 1979 is in for a horror story. This especially worrying as we are now supposed to be about to find markets we haven't managed to reach in the last 40 years.

[Blissex]

«Also, there no evidence that Thatcher's policies undermined our EU competitors.»

Because the thatcherites failed repeatedly, not because such goal did not exist, as I pointed out things did not work out that way, actually it was the UK that exited the Single Market, in part ironically because of the issue of those cheaper eastern european immigrants that were supposed to fuel UK exports to the rest of the EU.

The thatcherites indeed were and are so keen to on that goal that as I described they kept trying (with Blair's eastern european immigration) and keep trying (Johnson's "free ports" and rejection of "level playing field" clauses in the potential EU FTA).

They failed in part because however ignorant and primitive, some continentals have learned to read, and some even learned english, and some even read the stream of studies and articles and discussions in the UK conservative think-tanks, press, and political debates, so they figured out what was coming, and they did adopt too some degree of thatcherism ("labor market reform") to prevent their industries being slaughtered.
They failed in part because it turned out that wages in asian countries were already so much lower than UK ones that even from outside the EU they could underprice UK exports inside the Single Market. Perhaps if China (and south Korea and Taiwan) had been kept out of the WTO the UK strategy might have worked, but the USA elites decided otherwise.

Now that the UK is outside the Single Market those savage continentals are just double extra careful about the "level playing field" aspect and the "rules of origin" one. They really don't want the UK to be a source of cheap asian stuff assembled in "free ports" by 3rd worlders paid £3-4/hour to flood the Single Market using a carelessly worded UK FTA.

«Indeed, the industrial cemetery is littered with British marques not those of major French, German or Italian companies.»

In part that was because the english elites reckoned that it was more condign of their status to switch to the more prestigious and lucrative matters of finance and property, and to leave the hassle of using and discipling those uppity, overpaid UK workers to american and japanese companies, which greatly helped by a large reserved army of unemployed UK labour, and ridiculously favourable "rules of origin", would flood the continental Single Market with cheap stuff.
So either the UK economy would dominate the EU just as it dominated the Empire, or they would drive out of the EU some trade-union dominated countries.

[Blissex]

«Anyone looking at the trade deficit since 1979 is in for a horror story.»

Not “anyone”, only "losers" and "scroungers".

Decent "Middle England" people have been quite satisfied with low priced imports, made by those splendid asians who work much harder and for much lower wages than "lazy, unaffordable" UK workers. D Willets (and several others) remarked:

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/david-willetts-margaret-thatcher
«And behind it was an appeal to the consumer - usually female — over the interests of the producer — usually male and unionised. This potent postwar mix contains many of the ingredients of “Thatcherism.”»

Could it be clearer than that?

«This especially worrying as we are now supposed to be about to find markets we haven't managed to reach in the last 40 years.»

I think that is just talk to bamboozle the proles, as usual. My guess is that the conservative elites think that as long as the M25 area becomes like Dubai a buoyant economy fueled by finance, property and cheap immigrants, the rest of the country, including even most of the south-east, can go the way of Glasgow or Wolverhampton, and it will teach them a lesson on working less lazily for less exorbitant wages.

[Blissex]

«The Johnson government is now operating on a reverse of the Thatcher compromise: a Wet economic policy in return for a Dry Europe policy.»

The Wet/Dry partition is an interesting view, but I read it differently: "Wet" used to mean "one nation tory anti-thatcherite", that is conservative social-democracy, not that different from christian-democrat politics on the Continent or old-style Democrat Party politics in the USA, and "Dry" meant "thatcherite", that is undoing even the limited degree of conservative social-democracy supported by Churchill, MacMillan, Heath. Often non-thatcherites supported EU membership, and thatcherites are against it, but I don't think the overlap means much.

In any case the Conservatives have expunged most of their "Wets" many years ago, and among Conservative MPs they have been less than a dozen for a long time.

Most dualisms are a bit simplistic, but the one I think is most appropriate is the traditional one between tory and whig conservatives: both are currently thatcherites, but in different degrees and ways, and they differ as to which lobbies and interests they represent, largely nationalist, property/business based "old money", and globalist, finance/business based "new money".

My guess is that Johnson's core character trait is pandering (mostly to himself of course) and impressions of him being "Wet" in the old sense are based on taking seriously the usual conservative talk to bamboozle the gullible.

My impression is that he rather switched from whiggism, from being a more than willing lobbyist for globalist City based finance, to "retail" toryism, purely because he spotted an electoral opportunity with that, and thus an opportunity to promote himself.

[Blissex]

«My suspicion is the difference has something to do with a preference for tension between institutions, over cooperation.»

I think this happens, but it is rather less relevant to this discussion than another difference, countries where the elites think of their servants as "our own" and those where they think of their servants as metics or cattle.

This is often based on having different ethnic/tribal backgrounds. Many people seem to not notice how ethnically based UK politics are, they may notice the class system, but not how ethnically based that is, like the caste system in India is also ethnically based. I have come to think that ethnicity/tribality (which are usually managed by women) are generally underestimated as to social and political matters.

«As reflected by contrasting approaches to company ownership. UK/US - duty us primarily to shareholders. Germany/Japan - duty is too stakeholders, inc shareholders.»

That's not quite true: the legal duties of management are pretty much the same everywhere, and are just to the company, whether management reckon that the interests of the company reflect mostly those of (short term) shareholders or wider constituencies depends on political climate.

In the 50s and 60s many top executives and Republican politicians did state that the interests of the company included those of workers and local communities, supported trade unions, and meant it. This may have been a change also because of sharing difficult times as soldiers during WW2 with the servant classes.
https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/07/labor.jpg

It was Milton Friedman and Michael Jensen who argued otherwise, and urged much wider rules on takeovers to make sure that executives focused mainly on the company share price.

[GCarty80]

D: "My suspicion is the difference has something to do with a preference for tension between institutions, over cooperation. As reflected by contrasting approaches to company ownership. UK/US - duty us primarily to shareholders. Germany/Japan - duty is too stakeholders, inc shareholders. The latter leading to more constructive relationships between bosses and unions."

Perhaps the problem is that Anglo corporate management holds working people in contempt (in a way less true of continental European or East Asian management) because Anglo business culture was born in the slave plantations of the Caribbean and the American South, as Caitlin Rosenthal described in "Accounting for Slavery":

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972094

[Blissex]

«Anglo corporate management holds working people in contempt»

Indeed the english (especially norman) masters are not especially famous for considering their servants "our own".

«because Anglo business culture was born in the slave plantations»

In the other meaning of "plantation" (colonization), it could be argued that it formed in the "plantation" of Ireland (except for the older anglo-irish), or in managing the estates taken from saxons, or in the harrowing of the north.

[Blissex]

«Anglo corporate management holds working people in contempt»

Also because of a long tradition of holding working people in thrall:

https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2016/08/02/i-own-you-work-as-subordination/

“Until the last quarter of the 19th century, harsh laws effectively tied workers to their employers, or masters as they were more often known. Until 1867 a worker who ‘deserted’ his employer, what we would describe as walking off the job or just leaving without due notice, was guilty of a criminal offence and could be flogged or imprisoned. Penalties for masters who breached contracts had to be enforced through the civil courts where the restrictions and burdens of proof were so great that few were ever challenged. In Britain’s 18th and 19th century economy, which we tend to think of as the cradle of free-market capitalism, workers could still be tied to master and to place. [...] The legacy of master and servant law and its forebear, feudal serfdom, runs deep. Even in 2016, I suspect that the phrase “I own you” is uttered more often than we would like to think. And, for every bombastic bully that utters it, there are several more that think it.”

[Paulc156]

With reference to the comparative approaches of post war British and western European economies to their traditional industries and unionised labour I understood this to be largely a function of Britains peculiar affectation to its class system.

A system which lent itself very well to one of confrontation between labour and management, which pretty much guaranteed that sooner or later a Thatcher or some other would seek to confront and eliminate those industries if thats what it took, in favour of the less unionised trades and businesses. Oil and nuclear were good. Coal and steel bad.
And the FIRE sector best of all.

[Blissex]

«a Thatcher or some other would seek to confront and eliminate those industries if thats what it took»

BTW there is an important political point there that "leftoids" surely disagree with:

* 90% of the strike hours in the 1960-1970 ere done in the mining, steel, car, shipbuilding industries.

* This was not due to competition among their unions, but also because the "syndicalists" in those trade unions believed that with "one last heave" of the legenday "general strike", or a strike of critical bit of infrastructure like coal mining, would result in the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or rather of those syndicalists as their vanguards (Scargill as the Suprreme Commissar of The British Proletariat, that is).

* This was based on an adventurist and un-marxian reading of history, wishful thinking that capitalism had exhausted its historical cycle, and is about to collapse like the "ancient regime" in the 18th-19th century,

PS: The "ancient regime" lasted 1,000-1,200 years, probably capitalism won't last as long, but so far it has proven quite resilient, because it is based on the industrial mode of production which is unlikely to be replaced anytime soon (but I may be well wrong, it could be replaced by pre-industrial mode of production with a return to the "ancient regimme" if we are unlucky)