Thursday, December 9, 2021

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World - announced for publication in 2022

 The peoples of the British Isles gave to the world the foundations on which modern manufacturing economies are built. This is quite an assertion, but history shows that, in the late eighteenth century, a remarkable combination of factors and circumstances combined to give birth to Britain as the first manufacturing nation. Further factors allowed it to remain top manufacturing dog well into the twentieth century, although other countries were busy playing catch up. Through two world wars and the surrounding years, British manufacturing remained strong, albeit whilst ceding the lead to the United States.

This book seeks to tell the remarkable story of British manufacturing, using the Great Exhibition of 1851 as a prism. Prince Albert and Sir Henry Cole had conceived an idea of bringing together exhibits from manufacturers across the world to show to its many millions of visitors the pre-eminence of the British. 1851 was not the start, but rather a pause for a bask in glory. 

The book traces back from the exhibits in Hyde Park’s crystal palace to identify the factors that gave rise to this pre-eminence. It then follows developments up until the Festival of Britain exactly one century later. Steam power and communication by electric telegraph, both British inventions, predated the Exhibition. After it, came the sewing machine and bicycle, motor car and aeroplane, but also electrical power, radio and the chemical and pharmaceutical industries where Britain played a leading part. 

Phil Hamlyn Williams’s great grandfather exhibited at the Great Exhibition; his grandfather was an inventor and his father spearheaded the mechanisation of the British Army in WW2 and then was a leader in the motor industry. Phil has most recently written Dunkirk to D-Day about The Men of the RAOC and Re-arming the British Army. This followed War on Wheels and Ordnance in which he explored the role of British Manufacturing in the two world wars. Building on these, and his studies of the Industrial Revolution and the Interwar period as part of his BA as a mature student in 2008, he now brings this and extensive further research to tell this story.

The book is to be published by Pen&Sword in 2022

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

British soldiers in two world wars as captains of industry

My first has to be Ronald Weeks, first Pilkington then WW2 and finally chairman of Vickers.

Sir Brian Robertson was first MD of Dunlop in South Africa then WW2 and military governor of the British zone before taking command in the Middle East. He then oversaw the introduction of diesel electric into British Railways, whilst chairman of the Transport Executive. 

Brian Robertson in 1934



Thursday, October 21, 2021

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World - blurb

The peoples of the British Isles gave to the world the foundations on which modern manufacturing economies are built. This is quite an assertion, but history shows that, in the late eighteenth century, a remarkable combination of factors and circumstances combined to give birth to Britain as the first manufacturing nation. Further factors allowed it to remain top manufacturing dog well into the twentieth century, although other countries were busy playing catch up. Through two world wars and the surrounding years, British manufacturing remained strong, albeit whilst ceding the lead to the United States.

This book seeks to tell the remarkable story of British manufacturing, using the Great Exhibition of 1851 as a prism. Prince Albert and Sir Henry Cole had conceived an idea of bringing together exhibits from manufacturers across the world to show to its many millions of visitors the pre-eminence of the British. 1851 was not the start, but rather a pause for a bask in glory. 

I trace back from the exhibits in Hyde Park’s crystal palace to identify the factors that gave rise to this pre-eminence. I then follow developments up until the Festival of Britain exactly one century later. Steam power and communication by electric telegraph, both British inventions, predated the Exhibition. After it, came the sewing machine and bicycle, motor car and aeroplane, but also electrical power, radio and the chemical and pharmaceutical industries where Britain played a leading part.   


How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World is to be published in later June 2022 and is available to pre-order from Pen & Sword


Wednesday, October 20, 2021

British Manufacturing and net zero

The power for the kick start for the Industrial Revolution was water. Arkwright’s mill in deepest Derbyshire was powered by water rushing down from the peaks. 

A little later, in Northumberland, a young William Armstrong walked through moors outside Newcastle and marvelled at the latent power in the streams. He would harness this hydraulic power in many of the machines he made, not least in the docks of New Grimsby. 

Later, William Siemens would harness water power to drive the generator he installed to light the Surrey town of Godalming.

Later still, the smelting of aluminium was made economically possible by the use of Scottish hydro-electric power. 

The Festival of Britain celebrated the potential of water power in the exhibition at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. 

These are perhaps small examples from the history of British manufacturing which underline the age old fact that nothing is new. We had power before fossil fuels and will do so again once they have ceased to be used. 

It is though a question of scale. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Britain both exported more coal than any other country and imported more oil. What we now have a plenty are talented engineers ready to take on the challenge of net zero. 

The Duke of Devonshire’s artificial water fall at Chatsworth. It was the Devonshires who sold Barrow shipyard to Vickers. 


Saturday, September 25, 2021

Our manufacturing past and canals



Our canals provided an essential means of transport now they offer a fascinating view of some of our manufacturing past. 

The future of British manufacturing looks to other means of transport. British Volt is just one example. 
 

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World

The title of my forthcoming book on the history of British manufacturing has changed to How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. 

The word ‘shaped‘ describes the story so much better than the original ‘created’. It also endures much longer. For whilst Arkwright might have created the first factory, British manufacturers have been shaping worldwide manufacturing ever since. 

Today it seems a brave, or even reckless, assertion to suggest that Britain might have shaped the manufacturing world. Yet, looking back through history, there is a grubby British thumb-print on many of the world’s manufacturing industries. In this book I try to explore the assertion by unfolding what is quite a remarkable story. In order to do this I have drawn on the detailed research of a great many people without whose work this volume would not have been possible. At the outset, I acknowledge my debt to them.

I am not saying that Britain alone shaped the manufacturing world, but, as I will explain, it almost certainly started a process that would continue over many decades. The role played by Britain diminished as that played by other nations increased, but it didn’t disappear; indeed, it remained strongly influential. 



Friday, September 17, 2021

Derby and British Manufacturing

In Derwent Mill in Derby in the 1720s a mill was established to produce silk, adopting a method that had been used in Italy. It is suggested that Arkwright may well have taken his inspiration from this. It is perhaps yet another instance where methods were developed in an unseen collaboration between people of many nations and regions. Derwent Valley Mills are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and house an exhibition of making.

That may have been Derby's first mention in the history of British manufacturing, but much more was yet to come. Here is but one illustration.

Henry Royce had run an electrical and mechanical business since 1884, and in 1904 met Charles Rolls, an old Etonian car dealer. Royce had made a car powered by his two-cylinder engine, which greatly impressed Rolls. The two agreed that four models would be made under the Rolls-Royce brand and that Rolls would have the exclusive right to sell them. The car was revealed at the Paris Motor Show of 1904. The two men needed to find a factory in which to make them. Derby offered them cheap electricity, and so they selected the site at Sinfin Lane where a factory was built to Royce’s design. 

Field Marshall Montgomery's Rolls-Royce

The Great Exhibition 1851 and my family

One of my treasured possessions is the signed cover of a copy of the catalogue of the Great Exhibition presented to my great-grandfather, Richard Williams, by the members of the Surgical and Anatomical Committee Class X, ‘as a slight token of the services rendered by him as Secretary’. 

Richard managed the business of John Weiss & Son, manufacturers of surgical instruments at 62 The Strand, and, I like to think, offered his services for the exhibition. John Weiss & Son had produced a most marvellous instrument comprising 1,851 knives. This was clearly a bit of showing off. Yet, behind the scenes, advances were being made in surgery with the work of Lister and others, and the makers of instruments were taking up the challenge to keep pace. Weiss & Son are still in business. I imagine Richard’s son, Alfred my grandfather at age nineteen, visiting the exhibition and being inspired by all he saw. He would go on to register a number of patents during his varied career, including that for a life raft for which he won a number of awards. It was an age of invention. 

The catalogue does make fascinating reading and leaves the reader wanting a first-hand account of a visit and there is one first-hand account by a visitor with whom I am very familiar, Charlotte Brontë, my great-great uncle, William Smith Williams, having worked with her at her publishers. Charlotte’s relationship with the Exhibition was perhaps characteristic of the attitudes of many people removed from industry. On 17 April 1851, she wrote to her publisher George Smith’s mother to say, ‘I was nursing a comfortable and complacent conviction that I had quite made up my mind not to go to London this year: the Great Exhibition was nothing – only a series of bazaars under a magnified hothouse.’  She did though go, as she wrote to her father on 31 May 1851:

‘Yesterday we went to the Crystal Palace – the exterior has a strange and elegant but somewhat unsubstantial effect – The interior is like a mighty Vanity Fair  - the brightest colours blaze on all sides – and wares of all kinds – from diamonds to spinning jennies and Printing Presses are there to be seen – It was very fine – gorgeous – animated – bewildering…’

The Great Exhibition drew both great praise and harsh criticism. A wonderful series of lithographs were produced by Lowes Dickinson and this is available for us to see on the British Library website. Lowes Dickinson was William Smith Williams son in law.

William Smith Williams makes no comment on this major national event, or rather any comment he may have made has been lost. The involvement of Lowes Dickinson may suggest a visit by William’s daughter, Margaret, even though she and Lowes wouldn’t marry for a further six years. This involvement and William’s earlier connection with Henry Cole with a paper he wrote On Lithography, would certainly suggest to me that William himself would have visited. The lithographer for whom William had worked, Charles Hullmandel, was an exhibiter with a demonstration of the technique. 

Richard Williams

You can read more on How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and more on the Great Exhibition 



Sunday, September 12, 2021

What do we mean by manufacturing?

I tend to see manufacturing, as distinct from making, where there is an element of mass production and/or mechanisation. 

In historic terms, we see manufacturing appearing when textiles were produced in a manufactory such as a mill driven by water power, instead of the cottage.  Birmingham gunsmiths offer a different example with the manufacturing process split down into constituent parts with each carried out by a different person, often in a different workshop. We can see how the production line developed from this.

A related question is which pairs of hands are manufacturing and which are providing a related service. The Office of National Statistics, I think, stumbled across this issue when comparing manufacturing employment over the post war period where they saw services being outsourced and so the related employees no longer being included in the returns made by manufacturing companies. This links to an example I found on a manufacturing blog in which manufacturing companies are placed in the spotlight. I was surprised to find a component distributor included and was told that it was part of the supply chain.

There are then questions of ownership and geography. Rolls-Royce and JCB are British manufacturing companies which manufacture both in the UK and elsewhere. Nissan is a Japanese company which manufactures in many countries including Britain; the same is true of the growing number of electric vehicle related companies building manufacturing plant in Britain. Some toy manufacturers, for example, who used to manufacture in the UK now have their products made in China Are they all British manufacturers? 

What about Manufacturers and makers? This image from the Bovey Tracy Craft Fair shows a few of the two hundred stands where makers sell the pieces they have made. This is a vibrant part of the economy and can lead to manufacturing.

I have friends who design and make table wear. If a particular design attracts great interest they may ask 'manufacturing' businesses to make them. They are no longer hand made, but who is the manufacturer? An article in Monocle magazine tells of the revival in Stoke’s pottery manufacturers. Another friend told me of Somerset textile factories which are more and more undertaking contract work for makers. 

Are they all part of the bigger manufacturing picture ?

The British electronics company ARM came out of Acorn computers where it designed operating systems. These then have to be printed on silicon chips. Are both parts manufacturing? ARM decided to licence its designs for other companies to process  is it still a manufacturer? A comparison is with EMI which designed the brain scanner. They had a choice of whether to make it themselves or license the design for others to make. They chose the first route only to find themselves unable to meet demand..

You can read my take on How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World  

  



Friday, August 20, 2021

Whatever Happened to British Manufacturing

How often do we hear the lament that British manufacturing is in decline, that jobs have gone overseas? Great Britain was the workshop of the world. What has happened? In the companion volume, How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, the bold assertion in the book’s title was tested and not found wanting. In Whatever Happened to British Manufacturing, the story since the Festival of Britain of 1951 is explored: the good, the bad and the ugly.

There is much to celebrate in those brands of which this nation was rightly proud; the book takes a trip down memory lane. The stories of what happened to those brands we loved so much are uncovered . Importantly, the assumption of decline is challenged with examples of where Britain still holds its head high in the manufacturing world. It is not a story of gloom; there are some wonderful successes: JCB, Jaguar-Rover, Glaxo and John Harvey-Jones’s ICI from which Astra Zeneca was born, but also Alan Sugar’s Amstrad. There is hope for the future in manufacturing for the green revolution. Manufacturing will probably continue to employ fewer people, but more than offset by British innovation and skill.

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World is published by and is available from Pen & Sword . My proposal for Whatever Happened to British Manufacturing has been accepted. I am delighted and look forward to producing a book that is thoroughly positive about modern British manufacturing. 

The University of Lincoln has one of the newest departments of engineering in Britain. 


Thursday, August 19, 2021

Patterns of employment - both now and back to 1851

The jobs that people do change for a host of reasons. In particular, there has been a long term shift since the ends of the 1960s from manufacturing to services. Now, post Covid, a further shift is coming and a Guardian leader encouraged a glance back to Harold Wilson for a guide of how to manage this change.

Looking at headline unemployment in the sixties, it was a steady (and acceptable) 2%. Looking deeper, falling demand for coal meant that around 250,000 mining jobs disappeared in the decade, yet this did not result in an increase in the unemployment percentage. It seems that new jobs were created and people moved. Of course, it wasn't as simple as that, but, with proper attention to re-training and the provision of income in the transition period, changes in employment can be managed. 

Looking at employment in manufacturing over the long term, I was at first surprised by its ebbs and flows. On reflection it begins to make more sense. The graph in the ONS report starts in 1861, but I also have statistics from the earlier census of 1851. The largest manufacturing sector was textiles, which was the main but not the only thrust of the Industrial Revolution. It was though, at one million employees, smaller than agriculture with two million and the same size as domestic service. The role of coal in powering the revolution was crucial. In 1851, it employed two hundred thousand miners well below peak employment at the start of the Great War. 

ONS sector analysis goes back to 1928 when manufacturing employed a quarter of all employees. This was two years before the total employment rate reached an all time low of just 61% of those between 16 and 64. The previous peak figure was 76% in 1872 and the subsequent peak of the same percentage came in 1943. Looking more closely at manufacturing, the interwar years saw the percentage share of manufacturing at around 25%. Post war, with the export drive, this increased to 29% through the fifties and sixties before falling back to 22% by the end of the seventies. The eighties witnessed as further fall to 15% with the nineties coming in at just 10%. 

The ONS also gives figures for the value of output, and here manufacturing does rather better as the benefits of mechanisation are felt. Manufacturing output at the end of the sixties made up 30% of national output, essentially on a par with the share of employment. By the end of the seventies it had fallen to 23% and to 17% at the end of the eighties, just nudging ahead of employment. The nineties saw a fall to 15%, comfortably ahead employment. 

David Edgerton, in his book The Rise and Fall of the British Nation, makes the point that Britain's manufacturing success in the fifties and sixties was laudable; it was just that other countries were doing better. Today, even though productivity has increased, Britain still lags behind nations who have embraced technology more wholeheartedly. In 2014, the website Drives and Controls suggested that in terms of output, manufacturing was then producing as much as it had in the 1970s. The ONS report on which this article was based may be found by following this link

The signs are good, with almost daily announcements of investment in leading edge technology, not least with British manufacturers of both electric and hydrogen powered buses. 

Alexander Dennis and NFI Group


 

Monday, August 16, 2021

Manufacturing Nostalgia

 “I am passionate about British manufacturing.” 

These were the words I heard myself uttering in a shoe shop as I declined to buy a shoe made in India at half the price of one made in Northampton. They were both handmade by wonderful craftsmen; quite possibly the craftsman in Northampton was of Indian extraction. I found myself muttering something about the carbon footprint of the Indian made shoe. 

I walked away from the shop unable to make up my mind, which instead wandered to a graph I had been studying and which depicted the rise and fall of manufacturing employment in this country (fig 2a if you follow this link to the ONS paper). The peak of 30% was in the 1960s, reducing to something like 8% in 2016. (The graph includes in secondary employment both manufacturing and construction, the latter being fairly constant at 8-10%)

What was I seeking to resurrect? Some golden age of manufacturing? The fifties and the sixties are referred to by some as The Golden Age.

Surely not the cotton mills of Victorian times? What about the early steel works? More probably railway workshops or my great grandfather’s surgical instruments business. This thinking led smoothly to Rolls-Royce and hand-built Merlin engines for Spitfires, to handcrafted Humbers whose doors 'opened and closed like the case of a good watch'. But then what about ICI and the plants making Perspex for Spitfire cockpits? This led me via the later wartime production line manufacture of aero engines to the factories in postwar Coventry. 

I remember visiting the dark, noisy Avon Rubber factory in Melksham in the 1970s, and as a young auditir running the gauntlet of rows of women workers in Nottinghamshire textile factories. But then those fading photos of factories at clocking off time and the neighbouring streets flooded with cloth capped figures on bicycles? 

What am I longing for? 

First a reality check. Mechanisation has eliminated many repetitive tasks but also the associated employment. The employment that remains is ever more skilled and fulfilling. 

The moving of labour intensive manufacturing to countries with lower labour costs once seemed attractive. The drawbacks of lack of responsiveness but, more so, the environmental cost surely brings this practice into question. The production of untold tons of cheap cotton or man-made-fibre garments is simply adding to the environmental bill, as are the containers full of cheap plastic toys eating up sea miles en route from China. 

Is my nostalgia turning green?

I do jar when I read a list of air source heating manufacturers and fail to find any made in Britain (I have since unearthed Dimplex but also Kensa who focus on ground source). On the other hand I thrill when my son tells me about British manufacturers of electric and hydrogen powered buses (Dennis , Arrival and Wrightbus. When I visit the Rolls-Royce website, I delight in the story they tell of wonderful engineering that is happening now. I am warmed by anecdotes of companies like JCB who applied their machinery and skills to produce equipment to help the NHS fight COVID. I am warmed by JCB generally as I see yellow tractors and diggers on neighbouring farms, as well as in heavy construction.

On social media there are great champions of British manufacturing and the story they tell is positive and I am thinking of FactoryNOW and The Manufacturer.  

We will not return to manufacturing making up one third of the workforce, but it will continue to contribute significantly to the country's output. Not least with the input of universities such as Lincoln. The whole issue of employment in the 21st century was explored at a symposium with the University.

The timeline of Lincoln Engineering at the celebration of Lincoln Engineering in Lincoln Cathedral

My book, How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World was published by Pen & Sword in June 2022 and is available to buy from them, Amazon and others. 

Sunday, July 4, 2021

Battery Technology - some of its history

The battery was famously invented by Volta and had many uses, not least in valve radio. It was perhaps not wonderfully convenient, requiring regular charging at a shop which often would double up as the bicycle repair shop.

With the explosion in the number of motor vehicles used by the British army in WW2, batteries for lorries and tanks were in great demand. Oldham was one British company which rose to the challenge.

Oldham's traditional business was hats, and from this had come mining lamps, and, from these, batteries. The depression in coal mining had encouraged a shift towards supplying batteries to the more buoyant motor industry, so Oldham had been well prepared when war came.

The car battery to us in the 21st century is enclosed, reliable and clean. In the middle of the twentieth century, even though technology had made great strides forward, the battery, with its elements suspended in acid, was far from simple. The Centre for Army Mechanisation at Chilwell has a store specifically set aside to keep batteries charged.

In the run up to D Day, Vehicle Reserve Depots were set up including one at Donnington Park motor racing circuit not far from Chilwell. Vehicles were received, checked and parked. Batteries were removed and stored together in large sheds where they were all kept on charge using diesel generators and topped up with fluid by their ATS carers. In order to minimise movement, a truck fitted with an air pump was taken round the parked vehicles to keep the tyres at the correct pressure. Radiators were drained. 

The plan for vehicle supply for D Day included categories of spare parts. Batteries were seen as likely to be in need of frequent replacement and so were among the immediate category of spare. A key issue in the early part of 1944 was that batteries were in short supply and great numbers were needed from the USA as spares. Controller of Ordnance Services, Bill Williams, travelled to the USA in April 1944 to encourage the production of spares of all kinds, but including batteries. depot addressed a problem of missing parts that boiled down to a misunderstanding with the parts list. A final visit to the Electric Storage Battery Company found a solution to the shortage of spare batteries. 

Another important manufacturer of batteries was Chloride whose UK factory was in Manchester. 

Friday, June 25, 2021

A manuscript getting close to submission

 It is a strange time when a manuscript is nearly ready. Relief that the huge amount of work is nearly done, but sadness that an engrossing journey of discovery is nearly over. 

It all began with an itch. My research into my books on how the army have been supplied in two world wars had raised in my mind many questions. Many British companies had served their country well beyond the call of duty. Who were they? Where did they come from? What happened to them?

I began by approaching the first two questions, but my quest widened into the story of British manufacturing. It then sharpened into what then seemed an almost crazy assertion How Britain Created the Manufacturing World. 

My research sought to test the assertion and the results are in the manuscript which will make its way to my publisher at Pen & Sword. 

In this blog I plan to post some interesting findings. 


This generator is in a lighthouse on Scilly 

The book, How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World was published in June 2022, and here is a link to Pen&Sword in the hope that you will want to buy a copy!


Employment in the 21st century

It is a subject that politicians won't talk about, except for one party promising new jobs and another to trumpeting record employment. Reports talk about robots taking over, but what is the truth; what is the evidence? What of the creative industries? More to the point, what is to be done?


One hundred people from across all stages of education, local government and industry came to Lincoln Drill Hall to hear presentations by people (see below) immersed in the debate. I offer here my reflections on a very thought provoking day.

I begin with my prejudice, which is a fear that AI (artificial intelligence) will cost jobs. This was dismissed as the Luddite Fallacy, harking back to the fear of early 19th century millworkers to the coming of machinery.  I also began with a strong feeling that 'middle order' jobs have already been lost and replaced with poorly paid unskilled work with variable hours. I am reminded of the brilliant TV drama Years and Years. I am also still worried.

The first speaker offered much needed evidence by showing just which jobs are vulnerable to AI, and they are largely those middle order clerical jobs. (This struck a chord with me in relation to my own writing where I uncovered photographs of massive offices for clerical work in support of army supply in WW2.) 
There could be a lot of clerical jobs at risk, perhaps 30% of all current jobs could to be lost. On the positive side new jobs will be created, many as Robot minders, which surely begs another TV drama. Those undertaking the new jobs will need to be trained and certainly those set to lose jobs might see it as a challenge beyond them.  This is Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution this time with the focus on interconnectivity. A key issue to emerge from this process of job loss and job creation is the time lag between the two.

For me a fascinating insight came at the coffee break where I spoke to my old neighbour who works in a senior role in the care sector. We had both seen that care work was among the least likely to be replaced by AI. It is work that needs human empathy, however it is seriously undervalued. Later a questioner suggested that people without high aspirations could become 'hair dressers or care workers'. Without being dismissive of hair dressers, care work surely needs to be recognised as a profession and paid accordingly. It would be good if this debate could shed light on this.

What other jobs are 'safe'? Not artists, it would seem. AI can make perfect copies of great masters. I digress into some other of my own work pointing to JohnRuskin, (whose voice needs to be heard more generally in this debate - he was fearful of the impact of industrialisation on the wellbeing of workers), but who in this context, could, at the age of 21, copy the style of all the significant painters of his day but who only discovered 'true art' when he began to paint from nature. This gives a focus on what AI cannot do: General Intelligence, Value Judgements to name but two.

It isn't just AI and Robots, digital technology generally, not least digital printing, is making a big impact in improving the service offered to customers by Lincoln's biggest manufacturing employer, Siemens. This company has also seen huge benefit from empowering groups of employees and truly seeking their ideas: digital crowd sourcing. Nevertheless another key issue is the inevitable internal opposition to change.

All generations are different and of course none are understood by their parents. Generation Z, those aged between 8 and 23, are very different: they have no emery before 9/11; they have only lived in financially challenging times; they have only ever lived with digital technology; they are better informed, have strong opinions and feel empowered; they value tolerance and equality and reject being labelled. How will they fit in the changing work place? At Siemens they would be welcomed, but is it true of all employers? The voices we heard, can be heard in the form of a drama piece, Youthquake at Lincoln Drill Hall on October and on tour.

In looking at the economic changes that have taken place in the lifetime of Generation Z, significant are the decoupling of wages and productivity, the polarisation of the labour market with few highly paid, many low paid and a reducing number of medium paid jobs. 

So, what is to be done, particularly in the context of Lincolnshire where geographical areas and differing groups of people have been untouched by general economic growth? Are there specific actions that can improve their lot? Incidentally there seems to be a correlation between these forgotten areas and those where people voted 'Leave' in 2016. A possible answer emerged in the thinking behind Inclusive Economics.

I look forward to follow up work from this day, for in truth this was but a start. We didn't begin to talk about job satisfaction, Universal Basic Income or the financial viability of careers in the arts.

Those speaking, introduced by University of Lincoln Vice-Chancellor, Mary Stuart, were Marc Hanheide, Professor of Intelligent Robotics & Interactive Systems University of Lincoln; Yuval Fertig, Economist at PwC; Neil Corner, Managing Director Siemens Lincoln; Toby Ealden, Artistic Director Zest Theatre; Dr Neil Lee, Associate Professor of Economic Geography, LSE. The event concluded with a panel of students questioned by Professor Libby John, Pro-Vice Chancellor, University of Lincoln and a reflection session with Liz Shutt, Director of Policy, University of Lincoln/Greater Lincolnshire LEP

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

A decline in manufacturing?

 The table below was taken from data provided by the Office for National Statistics and shows the number of jobs split between Manufacturing (including Construction) [Orange line] and Services [Blue line] between 1978 and 2019 taking each quarterly return.

Service sector jobs increased by 11 million and manufacturing reduced by 4.5 million.

Looking at services, the biggest increases were Health and social care 2.3 million, IT and Management Services 1.3 million and Accommodation, food and beverage 1.2 million and education 1 million.

In his book, Social History of Britain - British Society 1914-45, John Stevenson offers some broadly comparative statistics.

In 1914, textiles, coal, iron and steel, and shipbuilding employed almost a quarter of the total workforce. The comparative percentages for 1978 and 2019 are 14% and 2% respectively. The 'new' industries of motor vehicles, plastics and electrics rebuilt manufacturing jobs between the wars and, in the fifties and sixties, making up 11% of total jobs in 1978. They make up 3% in 2019.

If we go back further, David Cannadine in his book, Victorious Century, offers again broadly comparable figures. Agriculture came first with just under 2 million, followed by 1million in domestic service. Next came cotton textile workers at half a million; whilst this number was equally split between men and women, men predominated in agriculture and women in domestic service. Next in number came building craftsmen, labourers and then a third of a million milliners, dressmakers and seamstresses, and 300,000 wool workers. There were 200,000 coalminers. Instead of listing the remainder, Cannadine observes that there were more blacksmiths than iron workers and more working with horses on roads than with steam on railways. The total employed workforce in 1851 was 8.5 million (out of a total population of 27 million) compared to 31 million in 2019.

I look forward to getting access to hard copy of the Censuses to assess more clearly how employment patterns have changed.

The crash of the 1930s was in the context of an economy more reliant on manufacturing. Would a crash from Covid19 have the same impact given the massive swing towards services?

At the beginning of the covid pandemic the UK economy depended on our passion for spending, buying things and experiences. Could this change, and, if it does, what would be the impact?


How Britain Created the Manufacturing World

I'm thrilled that Pen & Sword have confirmed their intention to publish my current work in progress, How Britain Created the Manufacturing World.

The peoples of the British Isles gave to the world the foundations on which modern manufacturing economies are built. This is quite an assertion, but history shows that, in the late eighteenth century, a remarkable combination of factors and circumstances combined to give birth to Britain as the first manufacturing nation. Further factors allowed it to remain top manufacturing dog well into the twentieth century, although other countries were busy playing catch up. Through two world wars and the surrounding years, British manufacturing remained strong, albeit whilst ceding the lead to the United States.

This book seeks to tell the remarkable story of British manufacturing, using the Great Exhibition of 1851 as a prism. Prince Albert and Sir Henry Cole had conceived an idea of bringing together exhibits from manufacturers across the world to show to its many millions of visitors the pre-eminence of the British. 1851 was not the start, but rather a pause for a bask in glory. 

I trace back from the exhibits in Hyde Park’s crystal palace to identify the factors that gave rise to this pre-eminence. I then follow developments up until the Festival of Britain exactly one century later. Steam power and communication by electric telegraph, both British inventions, predated the Exhibition. After it, came the sewing machine and bicycle, motor car and aeroplane, but also electrical power, radio and the chemical and pharmaceutical industries where Britain played a leading part. I conclude with the Festival of Britain in 1951 as an exhausted nation looked forward with hope  


The Festival of Britain

 ‘THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A NATION is presented for the first time in this Festival of Britain and millions of the British people will be the authors of it, displaying through every means by which Man expresses his nature how we have honoured our stewardship and used our talents. Conceived among the untidied ruins of war and fashioned through days of harsh economy, this Festival is a challenge to the sloughs of the present and a shaft of confidence cast forth against the future.’

So began the introduction to the Festival brochure.

The first record of the idea of a Festival of Britain is to be found in 1943, at the point of the Second World War when victory, although challenging, at last seemed possible. The Festival was to mark the centenary of the Great Exhibition, and many had in mind a similar exhibition of the nation’s products. This made sense, for a good number of such exhibitions had followed that of 1851 and business liked them. 

The Festival, as its plans emerged under the directorship of journalist, Sir Gerald Barry, and chairmanship of Churchill’s right hand man, Lord Ismay, looked rather different. I quote from the first of three talks Sir Gerald gave to the Royal Society of Arts in 1952:

‘We were going to tell a story not industry by industry, still less firm by firm, but the consecutive story of the British people in the land they live in and by… each type of manufacture and each individual exhibit would occur in the setting appropriate to that part of the story in which it naturally fell e.g. steel knives and sinks in the home part of the story, steel machines in the industry part of the story, steel chassis in transport, and so on…each industrial exhibit will be chosen by the exhibition organisers themselves in consultation with manufacturers and trade associations.’ 

A stock list was compiled of some 20,000 items from 5,000 manufacturers, only half of which could be exhibited in the space available. Design was key, and was overseen by the still relatively new Council of Industrial Design (now the Design Council). “The exhibits ranged from locomotives to lipsticks and in value many thousands of pounds to a few pennies.”

I have traced the exhibits that I have so far found to the origins of the relevant manufacturer, in some cases back to the catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851. 

My great grandfather exhibited in 1851 and I begin my forthcoming book, How Britain Created the Manufacturing World, with a survey of the 1851 exhibition catalogue. 


The festival was celebrated in towns and villages across the land




How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World is now available to pre-order

Phil Hamlyn Williams has completed his sixth book beginning an exploration of British manufacturing. His great-grandfather exhibited at the ...