18th September 2012
Rt. Hon. Vince Cable MP
Houses of Parliament
Westminster
Dear Sir,
I see that you desire to make a five year plan for the regeneration of Britain’s industry.
I started my own manufacturing company in 1973 and within 20 years was among the top 5% of sub-contract manufacturing enterprises. I lost it when a major offshored a contract and effectively bankrupted me.
That same major international company runs a manufacturing operation near here. They offer their shop floor workers only one-week rolling contracts. They have no intention of allowing any employee to gain the protection of onerous employment legislation. How do they do that? Simple; If you or I or anyone else complains seriously they will close the operation and offshore it. Simple.
Thirty years ago the state regulated companies in accordance with the Companies Act and things worked quite well. I was paying my employees more in actual wages than most in manufacturing earn today. In real terms employees in manufacturing have taken a massive hit in the last twenty years.
This has come about because the majors are no longer under the control of any government. If they do not like the terms in any country they simply move their operations to the most favourable location. Many of them are substantially larger in financial terms even than the USA. If you were to make a list of the richest organisations on earth, the nation states would, mainly, be well down the list.
The first problem in this is that the Nation State is the only organisation of earth that has ever come close to securing the Rights of Man. I submit that there is no subject on the face of the earth more important to Man. The classic example of nation states is clearly the United States of America with its unique constitution written by its founding fathers. We have not done too badly fighting our own battles since that time to bring parliament to heel but clearly have a long way to go. Meanwhile the US, with its superb start, has betrayed its origins and perverted its constitution to suit a small minority of controlling, and very rich, freaks.
The rot started (or rather continued – but that is another story) soon after the superb allied victory in Europe when the worst monster the world has ever seen was destroyed in his lair in Berlin. While we have all read dozens of explanations for his rise to power I still think we have to ask who funded Hitler. The rot set in at Bretton Woods. This was the time when the US started its overt takeover of the remains of the British Empire that it had for long coveted.
John Maynard Keynes did a lot of preparatory work and is generally credited with having set up the terms of the Bretton Woods conference and he did, indeed, play a significant part; but he warned against several potential problems and was ignored and overruled but the Americans who set up the agreements entirely in their own favour and especially in favour of their own industry. This was a clear and deliberate policy. The subsequent founding of the World Bank, the International Monetary fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade has turned much of the world into a culture subservient to the multi-nationals. This was also a clear and deliberate policy and has been enormously effective.
Britain benefitted only to the extent that it joined in these policies but the consequence has been that, ultimately, even the people of these island have been subjected to the will of the behemoths. Indeed, even the US has suffered its own ‘Rust Belt’ events where the mulit-nationals have simply outsourced in order to improve their bottom line.
The situation now is that the whole world now owes allegiance only to the multi-nationals which, in turn, care not one whit for citizens. Indeed, they cannot for their Articles and Terms of Incorporation forbid them from any such considerations. It is not their business – but they are much richer and stronger than any nation state. A consequence of this is that the vast majority of citizens on this planet no longer have any credible organisation to protect their rights. I submit to you that this is a re-run of the situation in France in 1800 when Madame Guillotine put things right, in Russia around 1918 when the royal family was murdered and a most foul regime put in power, and Germany in 1933 which brought Hitler to power. What do you think might happen this time? I suggest that “nothing” is neither likely nor an acceptable answer.
Back on home territory and looking directly at your endeavour with British industry we can see that the enormous power of the behemoths has caused the most horrendous conditions within employment in industry. I assure you, I have been there, done that, got the T shirt; and the shop floor employment conditions within big organisations are generally not much better than slavery. To attempt to counter this the unions have sought ever more legislation to protect employees. As we have seen above, the big boys do exactly what they want with the utmost contempt for our legislation. If we, or they, do not like it they leave.
The real problem then becomes that these massive slabs of legislation, while doing nothing to tame the behemoths, are rigorously applied against small and medium enterprises and cause their owners and managers huge distress and steal substantial wealth from them. The employees, the original victims of this process are not stupid. They know what is going on even though most of them could not rationalise the whole scenario or put it into print. But they know they are being rolled over and they are angry, bewildered, disgruntled, disaffected and ready for action.
When the welfare state rejects them they turn to the next easy target – the small enterprise. They know how to behave well enough to get their feet under the table and secure their “rights” within statutory law. Then they take the first opportunity, no matter how minor, to roll their employer. The guy who provides their living has now become their worst enemy. That is what statutory employment law has done to small enterprises.
The typical claim within employment law never goes to court. No small business man could afford it. The claim is settled with a typical bill of £25,000 for the complaining solicitor, £20,000 for the defending solicitor and £5000 for the claimant. This is an obscenity of the first order and only continues because the solicitors with influence within parliament and amongst politicians want it to be so. It is jobs for the boys with a vengeance. It is, in total, one of the biggest and nastiest scams ever perpetrated on our once-proud manufacturing heritage – and on the citizens of Britain.
This process is enabled and aided by the contentious ‘no win no fee’ laws, against which I spoke out thirty years ago. This places innocent citizens in the position of having to prove their innocence against any and every trivial accusation. The source of these accusations is the swathes of impossible to understand, interpret or apply, health and safety legislation and employment law. This is a fundamental negation of Habeus Corpus and should never have been introduced into a so-called democracy. Get rid.
No small employer, beset by the normal problems of business, is going to increase their exposure to this foul legislative system unless they, too, are crooks. If you want honest business men and women to generate small businesses then you must first set them free from this obscene burden. If you cannot, then do not bother. Subsidies only subsidise the lazy, idle, feckless, or incompetent. Bin there, dun that, got the T shirt.
Yours sincerely,
Colin Walker.
C.Eng. M.I.Mech.E.
Footnote. The activities of no-win-no-fee lawyers described above could not take place without the collusion and connivance of neo-criminal lawyers and the makers of the law within parliament and the civil service.