The BNP want to rebalance the economy away from the what the BNP believes to be the “artificially created” service sector in favour of the “real money” creating manufacturing sector in the vein of the East Asian tigers. They believe that this would provide more meaningful work, a more secure future for the economy, and new jobs for the long term unemployed. The BNP’s trade barrier policy, discussed here, is part of the same plan, imposing a £80bn tax rise on imports.
Here’s why it wouldn’t work :
- To start with, it would require 8 million people to change jobs. In the 1960s 39.4% of employment was in manufacturing, whereas in 2007 this has dropped to only 13%. If the BNP wished to return to this level, this would require around 25% of the working age population to move industries. The labour force of the UK is currently around 31 million so somewhere in the order of 8 million workers changing jobs to the manufacturing industry. The welfare bills and public misery for this transition would be enormous.
- We’re not trained for manufacturing. The workers of today have been overwhelming trained to work in services. Office workers simply have no skills in manufacturing work. Just as the transition from the manufacturing sector to services generated enormous social pain in British society, there’s no reason to believe it wouldn’t be just as hard as going in the opposite direction – except this time we would be fighting economic gravity. You can’t simply take a generation who have been trained to be web designers and care workers and ask them to return to the mine or the factory.
- It misunderstands economic history. Britain was once a great farming country, where the vast majority of the population worked the land. In the industrial revolution, Britain instigated the world’s first modern age of economic growth and in turn became the workshop of the world. These days, Britain’s contribution has changed again : now we are a world leader in business services and aeronautics, computer games and fashion, chemical engineering and (yes) finance. This is a natural process, not some great conspiracy for a capitalist elite.
- Services are the core of Britain’s economy – and the future of the world’s. Britain is an island with little land, a highly expensive workforce and relatively few natural resources. On the other hand, we have historic links with countries across the world, speak the world language and a highly educated, creative workforce. Services are clearly our comparative advantage – to focus us on manufacturing would be crazy. What is more the industries of the future – entertainment, the web, health care – are the industries where we have a strong track record. Countries that have focussed exclusively on manufacturing, such as Japan and Germany are beginning to struggle.
- The East Asian example is misleading. Davey suggested yesterday that Britain should use Japan as an example, and we see the same idea often in official BNP literature. But Britain is not an agricultural country trying to modernise and enjoying catch up growth. Many of the Japanese MITI’s chosen industries were a complete failure – ‘picking winners’ doesn’t work. And in any case, we see now the limits of the Japanese model – a twenty year slump, with the country unable to sustain consumer demand.
- Returning to the age of British Leyland would be a disaster. It is easy to dream of creating a British Sony or Toyota, but in reality we’d end up with another Spectrum or British Leyland. As more recently, the collapse of Metronet have shown us, Britain does not have a glorious record of public/private partnerships. We’d end up with a segregated economy – an unwieldy and inefficient manufacturing sector kept on life support by government money, paid for by a private sector strangled by excessive taxation. Britain has tried industrial planning before, and it didn’t work.
- British workers can’t compete with Asia – let alone robots. British workers on £20,000+ a year are never going to be long term competitive in a global economy where one sixth of the world population subsists on a dollar a day. But that’s only half the story. Manufacturing is in many ways a victim of its own success, with ever increased productivity and use of automation. And short of a neo-luddite revolution, there’s no going back on that.
- It points us in the wrong direction. It is a tragedy that some have been left behind by globalisation and we should do everything we can to provide them with training and new skills. But by propagating nostalgic solutions of returning the whole country to manufacturing the BNP is just avoiding the hard task of figuring out how exactly to do that.
Tags: policy
NB, what a defeatist attitude you display. Not everyone in the Caliphate of Britain can be a Merchant Banker, so any manufacturing industry should be embraced, as there are not a lot of prospects for northern England etc…
The Torys are too far removed from mainstream Britain to understand the frustrations of working class Britons. This recent in-depth assesment of the BNP’s policies ignores the fact that at best, the BNP will only win a couple of seats, not the keys to 10 Downing st. So it is pointless to microscopically scrutinise the BNP’s policies; much better to state what the Torys would do differently to Liebour.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Hi AussieAl – we’re not arguing that everyone has to be a merchant banker. And it’s exactly because we’re not defeatist that we believe that there are more opportunities for Northern England than just the jobs of the past.
There are plenty of other sites that examine the policies of the mainstream parties. What we’re trying to do here is show that while Nick Griffin and the BNP pose as the one party than can help the working class, in reality they haven’t thought any of their ideas through. The BNP pretend they’re on the side of frustrated working class Britons, but that’s simply not true.
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I read with interest that James Bethell and his mates, are considering a policy of employing ships to house prisoners. So whilst it is ok to attack the BNP over some errant policy direction, it is bloody laughable that the Torys seem intent on re-introducing a policy that went out of fashion in the 1790’s… prison hulks indeed.
Please dont say that the Torys are also considering transportation to Botany Bay.
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Actually it was done before not so long ago or they can go the Labour route of rehabilitation into the community which is such a success, not.
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What are we going to manufacture?
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Well for a start Scotland could make its own tourist souvenirs to sell to the tourists!
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Again this is accusing the BNP of something that others are more guilty of.
The present mainstream policies are not doing a very good job of protecting manufacturing jobs in this country, how long will Cadbury’s continue to make products in this country?
Globalisation has meant a lot of work just goes where the workers get paid the least.
Have you noticed with globalisation that for bosses, it is used as an excuse for higher salaries but for workers it’s lower wages?
For a start there are, according to government figures, 8 million economically inactive.
The government in the past has always talked about people learning new skills & “Getting on your bike”!
That line about “You can’t simply take a generation who have been trained to be web designers and care workers and ask them to return to the mine or the factory” is a real killer!
So why are our IT jobs going to Indians & Iraqi’s, as for the care workers they tend to be Polish or Filipino etc.
If new factories opened I think you would find plenty of workers for them & I think any coal mines being reopened would have no shortage of applicants either.
OK maybe I would prefer working in a nuclear power station than a coal mine but that not really the point.
As for the Japanese model, it may well be that the US follows that path & we are not out of the woods yet either, despite Labour desperately talking things up in the run up to a general election.
There are other holes I could pick in this, despite not being an economist but maybe I’ll do that later on.
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Actually this can be summed up in one word & that word is hypocrisy!
For a start the BNP won’t be the next government, so it’ll be your lot who will be the next government & I don’t see much detail in your plans as displayed in the media, so we can’t pick holes in it until you’re in power & enacting it.
The other point is you don’t know either, as you have yet to get into No 11 & the Treasury to examine the books & count up the IOU’s, that lot alone will keep you (The Consevatives) busy for a few months.
Maybe you can get one of those dollar counters the mafia uses in films to count the IOU’s, assuming they’re dollar sized.
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“The East Asian example is misleading. Davey suggested yesterday that Britain should use Japan as an example”
Rather than picking winners how about backing them?
Dyson was a successful British company but sadly manufactures abroad.
At the moment we are backing a failed banking model, is RBS to become the next BL?
Who was worst, Red Robbo or Fred the Shred?
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The terrible truth is that under these traitorous politicians (lib/lab/con – all the same) everything has a price and is up for sale – including the British people themselves as we are literally been sold to the EU as we speak!
I don’t know of any other regime that treats its citizens with such utter contempt and disdain, at least dictatorships fear their populace, this lot is just lining their pockets whilst rubbing our noses in it!
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First off we need to become energy self sufficient. That means we need to build more coal fired power stations. Expand the coal industry and re open redundant mines. More jobs, better communities, more co2, less imports and less reliance on foreign nations to supply our energy needs = all healthy stuff.
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Around 7,000 people are currently employed in the coal industry but in 1960’s the level was around 250,000. So the plan would be to create around 250,000 new jobs.
Next up we can then tackle the Fishing industry. The plan is to to expand the industry to the same levels as the 1960’s. Like the coal industry this is also easy to achieve. All we need to do is enforce our exclusion zone, therefore creating at least 250,000 new jobs, in fishing and in related jobs like food production.
There you go, I have just shown how easy it to create 500,000 new jobs in 2 viable industries and I have hardly even started my back to work plan.
Even if you got all the top MPs from the Lab/Con/lib extremist traitor parties together in a job creation think-tank they still would not be able to figure out the blatantly obvious.
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Many if not most of the closed mines are unusable. The Commies in charge of the union would not allow the safety men to perform routine maintenance whilst the mineworkers were striking on a political (therefore NOT trade union) matter.
“Arise ye starvelings” and all that crap.
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British mines cannot compete with our abundantly cheap coal. It is interesting to note that NB have changed tack slightly, in their ongoing attacks against an underdog BNP. After appropriating some BNP sentiment regarding immigration, NB ( sorry, Torys ) are now embarking on a path of deconstruction of the broad policies of the BNP. Whilst this is appropriate to any political foe, it seems that the torys ( sorry, NB ) are getting worried at the prospect of another party on the cross benches, or even relying on the BNP to support government legislation.
With my limited knowledge of British politics, i find it incredulous that the Torys think they will pick up the vote of disaffected Liebour voters in the north of England.
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Or the south of England for that matter!
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Maybe I am wrong but China has moved to 2nd place as the worlds biggest economy,Japan and Germany are out of the recession,is this because they have a big manufacturing industry.Meanwhile,the Liebor and Con servatives have destroyed ours over the past 30yrs and we have got nothing……….I must get a new crystal ball to see what our children have in store when i am dead(appx 20yrs)
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Well the mainstream politicians certainly aren’t on the side of “frustrated working class Britons” hence the rise the of the BNP!
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“we believe that there are more opportunities for Northern England than just the jobs of the past.”
Have you ever been up north?!
Seriously I’d like to see the north of England break away from the south, you wont find that in the BNP manifesto, it’s just my personal opinion, I have nothing in common with cosmopolitan, multicultural liberal minded southerners, we should break away from london and the EU just as the isle of man and the channel islands!
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