Change and decay
The debate about Great Britain's economic decline has been going on for a long time. This year has seen some notably stimulating contributions. The Times has continued thoughtfully to analyse the causes of low productivity and, for its pains, has drawn the fire of the Budapest Bourbons, unable to believe that political or economic thought have developed in the last forty years. Meanwhile our theatre critic Mr Peter Jenkins, wearing his other hat as the Guardian's commentator, has been pondering our steady failure to match our trading rivals, set in a long-term historical perspective. There have been sharp differences in this dispute. Lord Kaldor directly challenges The Times's contention that British management performs better without British workers, foreign management worse with them; though Lord Kaldor avoids the direct question of trade union culpability for low productivity. There is, at the same time, a degree of consensus. At first there seems an odd discrepancy between Lord Kaldor's claim that the British rate of economic growth in the two decades after the second world war was 'much higher than In any previous comparable period of British history', and Mr Jenkins's statement that British economic performance Was 'significantly worse than most other countries. . . durmg the post-war era of growth and prosperity'. But on e. xamination the claims are reconcilable and, with respect, It is .Lord Kaldor who is making the specious point, since the e important question is Great Britain's performance relative to other countries, rather than to her own past: that is What decline means, and that is the issue. From an historical point of view, it is now widely agreed that British decline has its roots in the nineteenth century. The decline has been accelerated in our own century, partly by the experiences of two World wars whose ultimate effects were as grave for Great Britain as they were invigorating for the United States. Different explanations are advanced for this lengthy secular change. But as is often the case with historical debates, whether over the rise of the gentry or the origins of the second World war, the argument is to a large extent circular. Not only do the oppositing
debaters use the same evidence, they prove on examination to be saying the same thing, to be agreeing on truisms. So, maybe, it is here. Great Britain's decline as an industrial power began before any other's because her rise had begun first. This phenomenon, obviously enough, is echoed elsewhere. British industry, based as it was on steam power, the iron trade and textiles, was steadily overhauled by German industry from the end of the last century in the newer fields of chemicals and electricity. Today we see Germany in turn overtaken by Japan in the still newer field of electronics. It is always worth remembering that the British disease is not confined to one patient. We look on with exasperation as the Japanese destroy the British motor-bike industry, and economic liberals applaud this triumph for the free market principle (which it is not, or not as simply as that). We might pause to notice that Japan is in the process of destroying the German camera industry and before long will destroy the Swiss watch industry too. Can it be that those models of European efficiency have caught our sickness? Or is it rather that they are the victims of an historical change which is as interesting but as irreversible as the decline and fall of the Roman Empire?
To recognise an historical development is not necessarily to welcome it, nor to encourage it. It is one thing to see that England will never. again be a world power, politically, militarily or industrially. It is another to accept the everaccelerating decline into 'de-industrialisation' and poverty. For years this country has been living on borrowed time, not to say borrowed money. It would be absurdly optimistic to think that we can ever recover the technological advantages which we once held, except in some marginal fields. But the crippling habits of bureaucratisation and low productivity can be slowly discarded; the tendency towards the enlargement of the State sector and of the non-productive private sector can be reversed. Relative decline is probably with us. The critical question is to avert an absolute decline. And the choice that lies before us is between comparative national poverty, and total bankruptcy.
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