Maybe it was a reaction to “Made in Japan”, because I recall people of the post-war generation telling me that “Made in Japan” used to be a joke, a byword for cheap tat. But by the 70s, the Japanese stuff was better than what we were making, so it was turned around into jokes about “Made in Britain”.
Isn’t just a manifestation of the general British penchant for self-deprecation?
It has about as much truth to it (and is almost as harmful) as the common American meme that anything done by the government will be done badly.
British defence-related projects also have a reputation for late deliveries, huge cost overruns, and being less capable than equipment which could have been bought off-the-shelf years before.
Examples include the Blue Streak rocket, the Brabazon aircraft, the TSR2 aircraft, the CVA-01 aircraft carrier project, the recently-cancelled Nimrod MR4A aircraft, the Bowman military radio project. Doubtless others could be cited.
There’s some truth in that. A radio correspondent travelling around the world recently reported, “No one hates us as much as we do”.
A magazine interview with somebody who had lived in Canada, which I read the other day, reported that irony, sarcasm, and self-deprecatory humour were quite unknown to them. “If you didn’t speak the literal truth, in an earnest voice, you were looked on as baffling or untruthful”. [I’m paraphrasing slightly]
Q- Why don’t the British make television sets?
A - They haven’t figured out how to make one that leaks oil.
I think that the idea originally came from the production of nationalised industries back in the 20thc.
The work force was so unionised that often it appeared that in, so called commercial companies, the tail wagged the dog.
The management didn’t so much manage as try to keep their companies running while accomodating the employees.
Attendance was poor, production was poor and quality was poor.
Luckily in todays marketplace those standards are long gone.
I always rember once, when I’d hit someone over the head with the blunt end of a pool cue in a bar fight and it snapped,thinking" typical bloody British workmanship."
There are (or rather were) particularly strong manufacturing unions in the UK throughout the 70s, just when full-scale automation was taking off.
Because automation meant job losses it was heavily resisted in the UK, which meant consistency suffering compared with e.g. Japan (who had automated lines).
There’s a meme about not buying a “friday afternoon” car - i.e. towards the end of the week quality control goes downhill as workers start thinking about the weekend. With robots, of course, this doesn’t happen.
Or, as evidenced by the last two posts, it is the aftereffect of unpatriotic right wing anti-trade-unionist propaganda from the 1970s, whose effects linger on to harm the British economy even today.
Just as the nonsense being put about by the Tea Partiers today will still be harming America decades hence, even if their political power has long since died.
Sign in a British Motors repair shop “The parts falling off this car are of the finest Bristish manufacture”.
The truth is that anything made by trade unionists in the 1970s was rubbish, though. Capitalism could never have produced the Austin Princess. Except possibly in America.
The flip side of the equation is that non-mass produced British products are the best in the world. Saville Row, Aston Martin (bodywork), pretty much everything in top-flight motorsport except engines…
I do not know about about the Austin Princess, but I did live through the 1970s in Britain, and no, it is not true that anything made my trade unionists was rubbish, any more than it is true in the U.S. today that all government run programs are always worse than privately run ones, although very many people firmly believe that it is so, and even people who know it is not so, and who favor, for instance, having a universal, government run health care system, will nevertheless often go along with the joke, or even tell it. I do not believe that it is a coincidence that this situation very much suits the interests of the wealthy and powerful, who have long been able to afford the services of what are now called “guerrilla marketers.”
Likewise, in '70s Britain the political right were determined to break the power of the unions, and thereby of the Labour party, and if spreading this unpatriotic, economically damaging meme was not part of their deliberate campaign, then they somehow got very lucky. They very largely succeeded. The Conservatives regained power, largely because of widespread anti-union feeling, and held it for 18 years (during which time they were able to attack the unions more directly), and the Labour Party was only able to regain power, for a while, after reconstituting itself far to the right of its earlier position.
Of course some union produced goods in '70s Britain were crap (and some U.S. government programs are badly run), just as some good produced in ununionized sweatshops (and even non-sweatshops) are crap (and some privately run service industries provide crappy service, like the U.S. health insurance industry), but the generalization is nonsense.
All generalizations are true.
For comparison, I asked Dad about the British and Italian sports cars he drove in the 70s to early 80s. The Italian cars rusted no worse than the British he said. Someone must have been doing something right in one of those firms then, I’m just not sure which
At one time in the UK, ‘made in Japan’ ‘made in Hong Kong’ and ‘made in China’ were all bywords for shoddy and frequently dangerous products.
I would not be surprised to find many folk still think that when it comes to low cost items, such as cheap fireworks and childrens toys.
Even Japanese cars were considered pretty shoddy at one time, there’s a very good reason why Datsun ditched that name and called themselves Nissan 0 becuase their products were complete rust buckets with electrics that were optional - but only optional in the sense that the components themselves decided when or whether they would actually work.
What happened was that our shoddy products competed with similar products from around the world, but the world moved on and improved - we did too, but we got around to it rather later and by that time the damage both to markets and reputation was done.
Don’t give up on U.S. manufacturing just yet: http://www.nam.org/Resource-Center/Facts-About-Manufacturing/Landing.aspx
See post 14.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the reason for the change from Datsun to Nissan. The change happened after the Japanese automakers managed to become successful in the United States. And Toyota and Honda didn’t see the need to change either.
Like **njtt **I lived through the 70’s in Britain: bought the cars and got the tee shirt (though it doesn’t fit any more 
) but I’ve no great love of the unions. They were short sighted, uncaring, and self destructive. Thatcher won in '79 not due to a right wing conspiracy but a real recognition that change was needed.
Having said that the idea that it was all the unions’ fault that British cars were rubbish is a nonsense. It took some really inept management, combined with a contemptuous attitude to manufacturing industry by the political elite, to reach the low point British industry got to in the sixties and seventies. It’s worth remembering that there was far greater union power in German industry than in the UK and they still managed to turn out reliable cars.
What, no mention of Ford Prefect (either one) yet?
You are correct. Nissan automobiles were all originally branded as Datsuns until the 1950s, because Nissan was a truck manufacturer (it assumed control of the Dats[o]n Company in 1930-something).
Gradually, the Nissan tag started to be applied to cars, and the process was nearly complete by 1960, when they began export operations.
However, they kept the name Datsun for export markets, because it was felt that the American market in particular knew Nissan as a defense contractor (like Mitsubishi).
The Datsun name was eventually phased out because Nissan wanted a consistent global identify, not because people thought Datsuns were crappy. People thought Nissans were crappy, too.
Meh, I’m old enough to remember than in the '90s and the following Edwardian period ‘Made in Germany’ was an alleged indicator of lower quality than our fine British products.
It appeared to be fostered quite deliberately. One must remember that the British powers that be then were ten times more nervous of the German Empire as a surpassing trade rival than as a military rival.
Which is why they had a war.