The English Disease?

Abstract

No one could dispute that Britain has undergone a relative decline vis-à-vis other countries: from occupancy of the premier position in the nineteenth and opening decades of the twentieth centuries, the nation has tumbled out of the top ten richest nations as measured by income per head. To be sure, this is a relative decline and the standard of living of those of us in contemporary Britain is far in excess of that of our parents, let alone that of our grandparents, but no one can be complacent about a situation where the country appears set on an irremediably downward course. The deep recession which we have experienced since the mid-1970s, the reliance on North Sea oil, and the seemingly intractable problem of the economy’s falling competitiveness compared with that of Japan, West Germany and America make for widespread pessimism.

‘My contention is that as our society became more structured and ordered in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution — particularly in the latter part of the century — attitudes were developed which were antipathetic to the entrepreneur. Indeed in our very approach, in the skills we desired and in our whole economic life, we moved towards the gentrified corporate cossetted State — and the entrepreneur was left out in the cold.’ (Lord Young, 1985c, p. 5)