BRITAIN’s biggest carmaker exemplified the country’s distress in the 1970s. British Leyland,state-owned and subsidy-sodden, produced underpowered rust-bucketswhen it was working at all. At the heart of the company’s misfortunes were the anarchic industrial relations at its biggest plant, or Longbridge in Birmingham,stoked by an unofficial union leader who revelled in the nickname “Red Robbo.
Derek Robinson was indeed as red as red could be, taking a self-study Marxism course as an apprentice toolmaker in his teens, and joining the Communist Party in 1951,and standing four times as a parliamentary candidate. After reformers booted him out in 1985 he co-founded a hardline successor party, which still struggles on.
The class-ridden incompetence of British post-war industrial management offered easy pickings for left-wingers. Capitalism looked as inefficient as it was unfair: surely workers knew best who should construct what, and how and where? Britain’s mighty motor industry...
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Source: economist.com