ABSTRACT
Much of Britain’s twentieth-century prosperity was derived from making ships, aircraft and motorcars. Nevertheless, by 1999 shipbuilding had almost disappeared, aircraft factories were concerned largely with making components, if large or important ones, and the principal car plants were owned by foreign companies. It is easy to use evidence from these three industries within a declinist historiography, to see them as symptoms of a deep-seated decline or an anti-technological culture fostered within the public schools and the ancient universities, of the irresponsible misuse of power by trade unions, of failures of management, or of excessive interference by governments. Evidence can readily be found of all four phenomena. Morris cars being assembled at Cowley c. 1930. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315025070/f93c3fbd-5133-41cc-bbde-8828259a62b7/content/fig5_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> (Crown copyright. NMR)
