Jaguar Land Rover employ highly-skilled local workforce

JOHN Payne’s essay on the failures of Capitalism is one that we should take seriously, because the next General Election could easily be won and lost on the perception of how Capitalism is serving society.

So let us first consider low wages. The truth is that the laws of supply and demand and basic economic truths are at play when a manufacturer sets his wage levels. The boot and shoe industry locally, and in the UK as a whole, declined due to the overwhelming economies of scale available to China, with its huge domestic market. The volumes involved allowed massive automation, further reducing prices and allowing huge export quantities.

The message being that any attempt to restart the British mass-volume shoe industry would fail, regardless of whether low or high wages were paid.

So here we have Capitalism serving China quite well, but not the UK. Such is the nature of globalisation, which is here to stay. So what do we do about this hard truth in the UK. Well - we have to keep and find industries that play to our strengths, and will provide high quality, high paid labour. This is happening right now in the car indus- try with JLR employing many engineers locally who are world class at developing and designing motor vehicles. I suspect that there are few disputes on wages at this company, because the workers know that to remain competitive they have to accept wage levels that allow that competitiveness. The days of routine 100% manufacture of British designed vehicles have gone, again due to lower wages at foreign plants coupled with other benefits, such as logistics.

And all of this IS to do with Capitalism, but not a lot to do with wicked Tories browbeating their forelock tug- ging workers. New Labour was in power for 13 years, but the workplace relationship between management and labour really hasn’t changed much since 1997.

We can no longer depend upon the easy markets available from Empire, but need to fight to earn our living in an increasingly competitive world, and the sort of socialism offered by Corbyn’s labour will not, I’m afraid, enable us to improve our current performance in vital export markets.

Unless John Payne can explain how exactly they will be able to do it.

Ron Osmond