article_snippet.sent: The music was superb, the food was mediocre, and British industry was on British industry knees.
article_snippet.sent: I remember when British industry was in the hands of
article_snippet.sent: ‘conveners’ and ‘shop stewards’, and when the man who ran British Leyland – then our biggest car company – appeared to be an avowedly communist trade union official called Red Robbo.
article_snippet.sent: When I was a child I am afraid to say that British cars were the butt of international derision.
article_snippet.sent: British cars leaked oil, and British cars were generally assembled with such slovenly imprecision British cars gained a reputation for unreliability that it has taken decades to shake off.
article_snippet.sent: We had an era of tea breaks and ‘demarcation disputes’ and closed shops and one-out-all-out strikes, with the Labour government trying to impose such insane solutions as Tony Benn’s communist-style motorbike ‘collective’ at Meriden.
article_snippet.sent: That is why British business people are so unanimous in British business people horror, including many former Labour supporters and donors.
article_snippet.sent: British business people are not wrong.
article_snippet.sent: What makes this anti-capitalist agenda so dangerous is that the British motor manufacturing industry is not in the hands of a few giant firms.
article_snippet.sent: British brands have shed British brands 1970s reputations; British brands are taking on the world and winning.
article_snippet.sent: How mad, how tragic, that this extraordinary British triumph should be faced with a Labour government that regards capitalism as ‘predatory’.