Every so often a book comes along that the entire political class needs to read. In the early Eighties Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher’s closest ministerial ally, was captivated by Martin Wiener’s English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (1981), which blamed the anti-industrial ethos of the English elite for the country’s economic malaise. Joseph found the book so stimulating and provocative that he gave a copy to every member of the Cabinet. Wiener’s message was reinforced a few years later in Correlli Barnett’s The Audit of War (1986), which, according to a diary entry in 1988 of a delighted Alan Clark, even the hard-pressed prime minister had found time to read.
Wiener and Barnett purveyed an influential narrative of self-inflicted economic decline, depicting a country whose leaders – entranced by rural nostalgia and ideals of gentility inculcated in the public schools – failed to promote scientific education or to invest in industrial research and development. In particular, complained Barnett, the New Jerusalem of Labour’s postwar welfare state diverted energies away from a necessary overhaul of Britain’s manufacturing capability.
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