ABSTRACT
Over the past half-century, the United Kingdom has witnessed radical change in a number of areas, not least in the ways in which the production of goods and services has been organised. All industrial societies have faced the same changes over the last five decades resulting from the globalisation of production. Following the Second World War, production was organised on a nation-centric basis. National governments responded differently to the pressures for change. How they responded depended on a number of factors, such as the values of the political elite and the existing institutional provision for education, welfare and workplace training. In the United Kingdom, the powers of global capital to limit the powers of the state with regard to the movement of capital were extended by the political actions of the Conservative government through the privatisation of the public service industries and by the deregulation of the financial services.
