NOT MADE HERE

Dick Pountain/Tue 11 January 2005/12:28 pm/Idealog 126

I must admit that I never really *got* the Dyson vacuum cleaner. To me it looked like some horrible stomach-pump from Star Trek's infirmary, and those who know about such things tell me it doesn't work nearly as well as Henry (the tin one with a smiley face on it). Nevertheless the news that James Dyson is moving all his manufacturing to Malaysia cannot be good for this country, and for several reasons.

The reasons that Dyson gave were twofold, the City's greed for short-term profit and government over-regulation. The latter is the constant whinge of entrepreneurs since the 1970s - sometimes as much politically as economically motivated - but the former is slightly surprising and places Dyson squarely as a man of the thinking centre rather than the rabid right. And I'm sure both are justified to a degree. Both of these reasons would give us enough cause to worry about the future of the UK economy, but I have a couple of other worries that Dyson didn't even touch upon.

The first is cultural. I've spoken here before, many columns ago, about the anti-technology bias of this country's establishment, but since then things have got far, far worse. Maybe it's because I was brought up in an East Midlands manufacturing town, but making things has always held a moral significance for me. That's certainly why I ended up in computing rather than some different strand of journalism - film, music or politics - like most of my friends. I admire engineers, however unfashionable that might be, and I believe that making things, even when it's dirty, dangerous and poorly-paid, has a beneficial effect on the social psyche of a nation, especially given that the alternative is to ponce things off others like an idle Roman Emperor.

When announcing his move James Dyson explained that the lower labour costs in Malaysia would permit him to employ more scientists and researchers here at his Malmesbury headquarters (where he already spends an admirable 12% of turnover on R&D) and I'm sure that's true - for now. Will Hutton of the Observer, whose opinions I normally respect highly, accepts this argument and points out that such moves are an inevitable part of globalisation which we should welcome. For example Chinese wages are currently 5% of those paid here, so we can't compete even if we wanted to, and as a result almost half of UK manufacturers have been looking at moving some production there. We have to find other things to do, for example educating the scientists and engineers for the rest of the world, designing their products, and still further expanding our service economy (which boils down to taking in each others' washing, cutting each others' hair and counselling each others' nervous breakdowns).

Such globalisation transfers capital from the west to developing countries and eventually speeds up their development and raises their living standards, which is a cause that I've always supported. So why do I still feel niggling doubts that it might all go horribly, horribly wrong? For one thing history suggests that industry and science always march hand-in-hand, each promoting the other in a virtuous circle. Unless we believe that this mechanism has ceased to operate in the modern world, then we must accept that, as more and more of western manufacturing moves East, that eventually scientific progress will follow it - Asian science will blossom further, fertilised by its environment of manufacturing, while western science will wither into scholasticism, separated from its practical roots. The only question is whether this will take decades or centuries (supposing we still have centuries left of course). That would kick away one of the props of Hutton's future western economy, and to be honest that prop is already showing signs of wet rot: despite the best efforts of this government to spin things otherwise, our technical education system seems under continuous threat, not from any shortcoming on the teaching side but because media-mesmerised pupils are becoming fixated on celebrity careers. 

My other doubt is worse still, verging on the paranoid. The whole theory of globalisation depends upon a world that's for the most part at peace and pursuing amicable trade relations - and despite tsunamis, suicide bombings and militia massacres on the TV news every evening, this is more or less the case. But will it always be the case? What if, having transferred all our manufacturing abilities to East Asia, the international political situation were to deteriorate so dramatically that we found ourselves left unable to make what we need? This is perhaps not so far-fetched as it sounds. China is governed by a largely unreformed Communist Party that currently promotes laisser faire capitalism as a route to rapid economic development (in almost as cynical a fashion as Stalin exploited patriotic/socialist idealism to the same end). We have little real insight into China's rulers' long-term ambitions. To be sure, Chinese capitalism will generate a new middle-class alongside some super-rich oligarchs, and current opinion is that this must inevitably lead toward relaxation into western-style democracy. What if it doesn't? What if the oligarchs simply buy their way into the Communist hierarchy instead? Putin's Russia is currently struggling with that problem. And do I feel uncomfortable playing both the 'Decline of the West' and 'Yellow Peril' cards in the same hand. Yep, I sure do...