About 300 pages of text in 17 chapters, plus introduction, plus epilogue, plus a very modest amount of stuff at the end – not much compared with many books of this sort. And no maps, graphics or statistical tables, although there is a good number of numbers in the text. And we are pointed to a large Excel workbook with lots of good numbers at reference 4.
An easy read, if sometimes seeming a little glib – this last perhaps inevitable given the amount of ground covered. And sometimes a bit humour irritates rather than amuses.
A summary might be that we took an early lead in industrialisation in the 18th century, which stood us in good stead in the 19th century while the rest of the world caught us up. But relative decline was inevitable, the genie was not going to stay in our bottle – although it has taken us quite a long time to adjust to our new position in the world, increasingly dominated by others. And despite fairly steady growth in our standard of living, we have not come to a very satisfactory position in so far as managing at home is concerned. This book really does suggest that we have muddling through for a long time – in some part at least, because we were learning as we went along.
My own take is that our standard of living has increased a great deal in the last seventy five years and we seem to be managing now. But I worry first about the distribution of wealth, which has been getting worse since the 1970’s. There are too many poor people, too many people with precarious incomes and too many people with far too much money. Second about our living beyond our means, paid for by foreigners with money to spare, money to lend, like oil-rich Arabs. Helped along by the illusion fostered by our media and by those in charge that it can all be had for nothing, without pain. Debts will just vanish in a puff of inflation. Third and last about the illusion that never ending growth, never ending growth in consumption, is a good thing. I believe that in years to come there is going to be trouble on all three fronts.
A few snippets
The first half of the nineteenth century was a pretty grim time for the urban working classes, by then over half the population. Which was reflected in periodic bouts of unrest. All famously and carefully documented by Engels at reference 2. A book I don’t think I have ever looked at, despite my lefty leanings.
People with titles and inherited land in the country held on to a lot of power for a long time, despite land’s shrinking place in an industrial economy.
For a long time, say for more than a century, textiles and ships were our big exports. Both of which shrank to more or less nothing by the end of the 1970’s. I remember a textile engineer explaining to me in a train in the early 1980’s that he was selling textile machinery to the Far East – and that once his customers had learned how to drive it, our textile industry would be finished.
There was long-standing tension between the landed interest which wanted high prices for the products of their land and the industrial interest which wanted the cheap food for their labour force that could be imported from overseas, from places like the US.
Weldon points up the shifting fashions of economic management. The pros and cons of fixed or stable exchange rates. After the slump between the wars, full employment was the target. After the inflation of the 1970’s, low inflation was the target. The battle between those who believed governments could spend their way out of trouble and those who believed in balancing the books.
We have wasted a lot of treasure on trying to hold to unrealistic exchange rates for the pound. For example, when we came off the gold standard in 1931 and again when we were ejected from the ERM in 1992. That said, there are many people, particularly those in international trade, for whom having more or less fixed exchange rates is a great convenience. There is a down side to floating.
The impression given by the book noticed at reference 6 notwithstanding, we are told in Chapter 11 that Britain was cranking up her war effort from the mid 1930’s. The necessary factories were being put in place. Ramping up aircraft production was particularly impressive, putting us in a strong position at the start of the fighting war.
The Weldon view seems to be that old people have emerged as a large, growing and important group of voters. A lot of them own their own property, a lot of them have decent pensions. They are largely insulated from the vagaries of the economic life of the country at large. But they do care a about their health, the amount of tax they pay on their income, the amount of interest they get on their savings and they are more likely not to like foreigners. They like house price inflation, which makes them feel rich. And old people tend to be more conservative, both in habits and votes, than young people. So something of a divide opening between young and old.
PS: the book is set in Baskerville, one of my elder brother’s favourite fonts. Fonts being just one of the many curious things he took an interest in.
Conclusions
A good read. It will be worth reading it again after an interval.
References
Reference 1: Two hundred years of muddling through; The surprising story of Britain’s economy from boom to bust and back again – Duncan Weldon – 2021.
Reference 2: The Condition of the Working Class in England – Friedrich Engels – 1845.
Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/rising-and-falling-powers.html. Kennedy goes over some of the same material.
Reference 4: A millennium of macroeconomic data: Version 3.1 - Bank of England – 2016. In folder ABC as BOE-millennium-20220122.
Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Weldon_(journalist).
Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/hitlers-american-gamble.html.
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