Will Britain Make It: The rise, fall and future of British Industry

This fascinating book explores how some of Britain’s leading companies failed, through a variety or mechanisms, against the backdrop of a declining national economy. IICI was for decades Britain’s biggest manufacturer and exporter; GEC was Britain’s biggest employer; and over half of the cars in the UK were once made by Morris Motors. Courtaulds dominated global cloth production and produced the first manmade fibres; BSA was the world’s biggest producer of motorbikes; and de Havilland produced the first jet-engined fighter and passenger plane. But from the 1960s through to the 1990s, these and other illustrious British companies collapsed, taking with them nearly 200 years of industrial pre-eminence, as if Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Toyota, VW and Samsung all buckled overnight. Why? The answers might surprise you. It’s not because of the Chinese industrial revolution. Nor did Britain fall from the number one spot; it lost that over 120 years ago. This book explains what happened, and reflects on Britain’s wider industrial legacy.