Industrial policy and the British automotive industry under Margaret Thatcher

When one looks at the landscape of the European automobile industry before and after the economic crisis of the 1970s, the major difference lies in Great Britain. Everywhere else, the ‘national champions’ also went through periods of crisis but managed to maintain or restore control over their national markets with the support of their governments and main stakeholders. In Britain, not only did the nationalised British Leyland (BL) lose half of its market share and did not manage to recover, despite substantial injections of capital from the State, but the British government also subsidised the establishment of a new domestic competitor, the Japanese carmaker Nissan, followed in the 1990s by Honda and Toyota. This article exploits new archive material to advance a new explanation that connects these two ‘exceptional’ outcomes of the 1970s crisis on the British motor industry. It shows that the key to understanding this otherwise contradictory industrial policy lies in the shifting of political support from the ailing BL to its main suppliers.