Original post by Jammy DuelUmmm, I assume you have heard of Jaguar, Mclaren, Rolls Royce, Land Rover, Bentley, Lotus, Aston Martin. If we just stick with automotice we also get AC Cars, Alexander Dennis, Ariel, Ascari, Briggs, Bristol, Caterham, Ginetta, LTI, Morgan, Noble, Optare, Plaxton, Sunbeam, TVR and Wrightbus, oh, and that's just British ones (that are still British) that had not already been given.
But then manufacturing isn't limited to cars and machinery, heard of Cadbury, Tate & Lyle, or SAB Miller? Okay, maybe haven't heard of SAB Miller, probably have heard of what they make, probably a half decent chance you've consumed their products, same goes for Diago, probably consumed their products if you haven't consumed SAB Miller's.
Big in the Tobacco industry too, with two of the big 5 being British, those being BAT and Imperial Tobacco, you've certainly heard of their brands.
Maybe we should go back to heavier industry, I can't believe you have never heard of JCB. Harland and Wolff (the people that built the Titanic) are still around, although they have diversified from ship building now. I also imagine you've heard of BAE systems, one of the biggest defence contractors in the world, they are involved in building Eurofighters and F35s, they built the Astute class submarines, are building the Queen Elizabeth Class carriers, and will almost certainly be building the successor subs, and these are the people who's predecessor companies built some of our greatest aircraft: the comet, Harrier, and of course the Spitfire.
Triumph is also still not only British, but entirely British owned, and Britain plays a major part in making Airbus aircraft, with wings being made in Wales and obviously any Rolls Royce power plants being made in the UK.
Why stop there, GSK, second biggest pharamceutical company in the world: British, and the seventh biggest is a British-Swedish company.
I guess you've never heard of a single one of those companies though. As for why the sector is so weak compared to Germany and Japan, part of it has actually been that the pound has been too strong for the last quarter century to have as highly competitive a sector as we once did, the other major thing is that when talking about Germany half the country is still decades behind, with the reunification of Germany West Germany got their hands on the still very industrial East Germany, in other words a major factor in Germany's large industrial sector is the Soviets being so ****.
As for Japan, that comes from a very large tech sector, BTW, ever heard of ARM, must have, the Japanese bought it for £24bn a few months back? British (well, bar the Japanese having bought it). I would also suggest that the Japanese embrace of automation helps too. They accept that to survive with their severely ageing population they need to automate more, this is most easily done in the industrial sector. This increases output, cuts costs, and increases competitiveness. On the other hand we've had decades of unions trying to protect redundant low paying jobs which prevented somewhat this greater automation and creation of higher paying skilled jobs.
Finally, in the post war years there was the loss of the empire, and the general attitude that the solution to all problems was nationalise and regulate, which lasted all the way through to Thatcher, and this really did not help, it severely reduced competitiveness and helped lead towards the downfall of British manufacturing. Meanwhile West Germany did the complete opposite and encouraged free enterprise.