LOSS OF LEADERSHIP^463any more than of workers.) In the long run it was a false economy.
When, after World War II, foreign cars invaded the British market,
employers blamed labor for want of diligence and attention, and
labor blamed the bosses for want of competence and attention. Both
were right.^52
On a scale of labor efficiency, the British system was at the low
end, the American and German considerably better, the Japanese just
about the best. Piecework wages and bonuses in a world of rapid
innovation and sharp competition invited conflict. Every change in
work and pace was pretext for disagreement; every settiement a
source of disappointment; every gain a sacred and vested right; every
loss something to be made up; and no one forgot anything. The
strike statistics are not dismaying, but they omit the run-of-the-mill,
wildcat interruptions, the explosions of anger, the fury between
supervisors and labor stewards.
All of this sent the British auto industry into terminal decline. Car
registrations went from 2.5 million in 1951 to over 9.5 in 1966 to
over 15 million in 1980, but the big winners were the foreign
makers, once they got their postwar act together: 5 percent of the
British market in 1965, 14 in 1970, 49 in 1978, 58 percent in
1982.^53 The multinationals with branches in Britain—General
Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—did litde to exploit the export
possibilities of their British subsidiaries; they had easier platforms to
work with.^54 On the contrary, thanks to the Common Market, they
were able to import parts into Britain. From 1973 to 1983—ten
years—local content in GM cars made in Britain fell from 98 to 22
percent; in Fords, from 88 to 22. Expressed in car equivalents, this
represented an import of 150,000 vehicles. When added to full auto
imports, these together constituted two thirds of the British market
in 1984.
The native British firms, without affiliates abroad, outsourced less.
(The indifference of Morris [later Lord Nuffield] to the opportunity
to acquire Volkswagen in 1945, thus a major bridgehead on the
Continent, tells volumes.)^55 Instead, the British resorted to mergers
at home. These were intended to promote a rational division of
labor, but in vain. Plants were closed and workers laid off, especially
after British banks stopped spending in a lost cause. How to design
new models without fresh cash, and how to sell cars without new
models? The state stepped in with subsidies, £2,400 million from
1975 to 1984—this, in the heyday of Tory laissez-faire, laissez-crever
(leave 'em on their own and let 'em croak).^56 To no avail.