The Nationalization Of The British Motor Industry, 1975-1988

As one of the most important British manufacturing industries after the Second World War, motor industry have made enormous contributions to earn foreign exchange through exports and full employment for postwar British Government over twenty years. In 1970's, the Labor Government tried to revive the moribund BLMC in the form of nationalization when it was embarrassed by insolvency. This process of nationalization lasted from 1975 to 1988 in three phrases, that is the starting phrase (1975-1977), intermediate phrase (1977-1982) and ending phrase (1982-1988). There are various factors contributing to the failure of the nationalization of British motor industry. Each factor was inter-related with another one, for example, the privatization policies by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Government, the instrumentalization and negativity of the production policies by British Government and the contradiction between the publicity and corporatism of state-owned firms. Among the various reasons, the sale of the state-owned British Leyland by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Government which advocates comprehensive privatization directly led to the failure of British motor industrial nationalization; but as for the essential factor, nationalization did not manage to change the dispersive structure and low production efficiency of motor industry; On the contrary, it drove the motor industrial policies even further into instrumentalization, resulting in enormously negative influence. Within the macro context of the British motor industrial decline, nationalization could not avoid the downfall of British motor industry.