How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry • Hacker News Board

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#331

Post by sehansen » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 2:56 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #97

jacquesm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a country that is an Island you'd think that the question of whether or not it is 'national-strategic' would have been answered in the affirmative.

If shipbuilding is a strategic national industry, doesn't that also make all the inputs to a shipyard strategic industries? After all, if a war broke out and our normal trading partners weren't willing to sell us ships, presumably they wouldn't sell us steel or engines or ball bearings or paint or radar modules or computer chips or plastics.

The further down the value chain you go, the simpler it is going to be to find alternative suppliers. Or alternative inputs. And figuring out which alternative inputs make sense in your situation is probably much easier if you're the ones integrating the different components. And if you are committed to building X ships a year for strategic reasons, chances are a local company will end up a globally competitive supplier by grabbing the opportunity right in front of them.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#332

Post by parados » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:00 PM UTC

Former UK manufacturing engineer here (1980s onwards).

The manufacturing industry in the UK at that time suffered from three serious problems:

- Low productivity workforce. There was a huge pool of skilled, low wage, workers that had little incentive (or will) to up-skill. There were few apprenticeship schemes or other education programs to train them for the modern world.

- Poor quality management. "Working in trade" had a low social status compared to working in, say, the Civil Service. So the best and the brightest were not interested in manufacturing.

- Lack of access to capital. Banks were very reluctant to lend to that sector which made modernisation really difficult. With the ever present threat of nationalization it was hard to raise capital from shareholders. Why invest in technology when you could be nationalised on a whim?

I don't believe that these were significantly contributory, from experience:

- Margret Thatcher: whilst I'm no fan of her, at most she just administered the needle to a sector that was already on end-of-life support.

- The unions: I worked for a large engineering company (fully unionised) that had not had a strike for 30 years. We also introduced modern automation without resistence. The reason? Good management.

UK manufacturing is what long term decline looks like. Apart from a few small examples the UK has not been a world beater in manufacturing for fifty years or more.

On the other hand the UK is particularly good at Finance, Insurance etc.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#333

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:00 PM UTC

robbie-c wrote: post #293

iso1631 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sensible thing would be deep integration with a continent-spanning economy. Sure the UK is an island, but the channel isn't exactly wide (not to mention the tunnel). It's hardly Iceland - even Ireland is more detached. But the UK decided against that in 2016, and despite demographics having shifted the views, there is no general "rejoin" campaign.

I've wondered about this too. I live in the UK and have been idly daydreaming about my next startup, and it seems like Brexit, and therefore having a small market / uncooperative EU, is such a headwind for some of the things I'd like to do. Seems like many UK startups just pretend to be based in SF. I think rejoin is going to be politically unpopular for a while, as there's no way we could rejoin the EU on anything l…

Rejoin is polling far ahead of Brexit, which is beginning to be acknowledged as a mistake by everyone. Although not everyone agrees on the reasons.

The problem is the UK is an oligarchy owned and run by non-dom billionaires. It's essentially a floating labour camp. Virtually all the major industries are foreign-owned, and profits flow out of the country instead of being invested in infrastructure, R&D, and national development.

The public school/Oxbridge educational path is based on a 19th century view of the world, which has its roots in a feudal society that expanded into global piracy.

Rejoining the EU isn't just about undoing the direct, about exposing the population at all levels to a more modern culture with elements of social responsibility and rational state planning.

The EU isn't perfect. But Europe successfully rebuilt after WWII, while politically the UK is still stuck in the 1930s.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#334

Post by energy123 » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #241

hypeatei wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm of the opinion that things like shipbuilding don't really matter in times of war for countries with nuclear weapons. There would be dire consequences for anyone invading and/or blockading a nuclear armed country. A lot of people seem to yearn for the "good old days" where we built giant, tangible things that did cool stuff. That's fine, but the "national security" arguments ring hollow as you're basically saying…

Bah, I'm of the opinion that if the intelligence agencies were asleep at the wheel, that might well be an improvement. But I do think that you're right in that the time of the frigate and aircraft carrier is over, and we'll all more likely to die either from a nuclear missile or from a 50 gram autonomous drone. I agree: the national security argument is hollow. There are other reasons to build ships though, and some…

Attack drones aren't that useful if the two countries are far apart. Consider the 12 Day War between Israel-Iran. Iran's Shahed drones weren't useful, because the slow travel speeds and the long distance meant that Israel could shoot them down at a leisurely pace while they closed the gap. So even their purpose as a saturation attack was not met.

But in the Ukraine-Russia war, Iran's Shahed drones, which are being manufactured by Russia with small adjustments, are proving useful, because they're close, so saturation attacks can actually work.

For the US's power projection into the Pacific, due to modern SIGINT capabilities, aircraft carriers with stealth bombers are even stronger than 20 years ago due to being able to put those JDAMs onto an actually valuable target. It's basically the power of Zeus, to kill whatever you want whenever you want, unlike in the Vietnam era where you have to carpet bomb everything.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#335

Post by lb1lf » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:06 PM UTC

flir wrote: post #299

ggm wrote: post #2

The best time to try and fix this is 20 or 30 years ago, but absent a time machine, the next best time is now. Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. If you don't regard this as a core competency which should be kept in the national register, then sure, buy the ships from other places. But, don't come whining when the national-strategic in…

You've got to go up the chain - protect steelmaking, too. And ultimately, where does the iron ore come from? Not saying you're wrong (idk either way), saying that to do it right is a big pivot.

That is a fair point, but do keep in mind that the lower in the stack you come, the more options for sourcing you (generally) have.

Say, those fancy chips going into the ship's targeting radar may all be designed in a country or two, fabbed in Taiwan using Dutch equipment, whereas the steel you construct the hull with can come from anywhere - at my employer we mostly bought steel from Eastern Ukraine until a couple of years ago; after a brief hiccup we now get it from Turkey and Brazil, mostly - but China, South Korea, Germany or India, for instance, can supply it, too.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#336

Post by lb1lf » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:09 PM UTC

jack_tripper wrote: post #120

XorNot wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about starting a direct conflict, it's that blockading it can be done at a distance rather easily. If ships can't get to the UK, or the foreign shipyards reduced to rubble - or outbid - then it's more effective and cost efficient then any direct kinetic action.

Submarine fleets will torpedo your blockade. No need to fire nukes.

A blockade need not be enforced in situ.

Say, with satellite coverage to find out where any blockade runners are and a lot of cruise missiles you could enforce a blockade from a thousand miles away.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#337

Post by AppleBananaPie » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:13 PM UTC

parados wrote: post #332

Former UK manufacturing engineer here (1980s onwards). The manufacturing industry in the UK at that time suffered from three serious problems: - Low productivity workforce. There was a huge pool of skilled, low wage, workers that had little incentive (or will) to up-skill. There were few apprenticeship schemes or other education programs to train them for the modern world. - Poor quality management. "Working in trade…

Thanks for sharing :)

I have very little context but it's interesting that, presumably, the lower profit industry was replaced with the higher profit one.

And on top of that the higher profit one is probably of less value to society.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#338

Post by Ylpertnodi » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #270

This article radically downplays the role that unions had in killing the UK shipbuilding industry. While it's true that shipbuilders were reluctant to introduce new technologies and techniques due to capital requirements, the much bigger reason they did not was the impediment put up by unions. Yes, capital expenditure is painful in a cyclical industry, but in previous eras of shipbuilding, companies did invest in mod…

Enjoy your two days off this week. Glad you safely made it this far.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#339

Post by gausswho » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:22 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #231

vintermann wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was a highly distributed, extremely flat, high skilled industry, with little to no management. It made it easy for the industry to rapidly grow and shrink, and made it extremely effective at producing bespoke products. ... That sounds a lot like the Norwegian shipbuilding industry which I work for right now. Maybe not with little management exactly, but nothing crazy either - significantly less than a British mu…

From the article re: Norwegian customers: "…every reported speech by a British shipbuilder in the Norwegian press usually comprised a list of excuses for poor performance, ranging from official and unofficial stoppages, shortages of labour, failings on the part of subcontractors, modernisation schemes not producing the anticipated results, to recently completed contracts having entailed substantial losses. The impres…

Could you elaborate further on that working theory? Are there unique tendencies in British workforce that devolve into class warfare? Also, I don't want to misinterpret that phrase. Do you mean this about fiscal policies that tax the wealthy to a higher proporation or something more?

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#340

Post by dwayne_dibley » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:22 PM UTC

parados wrote: post #332

Former UK manufacturing engineer here (1980s onwards). The manufacturing industry in the UK at that time suffered from three serious problems: - Low productivity workforce. There was a huge pool of skilled, low wage, workers that had little incentive (or will) to up-skill. There were few apprenticeship schemes or other education programs to train them for the modern world. - Poor quality management. "Working in trade…

'"Working in trade" had a low social status' I think the push in the 90's to drive everyone to university also had a big negative impact on the status of 'working in the trades'.