Indeed. After 3 decades of the destruction of the unions the UK has the next-lowest productivity in the G7, behind Germany, France and Italy. No great advertisement for employer-oriented politics.
There is an interesting idea that I came across while researching the subject and that is the industrialisation of Britain was an accident that wasn't meant to happen. The argument goes something along the lines of the landed gentry were quite happy with their pastoral ideal of squires and serfs and a thin layer of what we would now call the middle class in between. But then the whole sort of industry thing happened in a rather random fashion, the infrastructure staggered along behind the demand for transport (in Germany the railways were planned and the factories followed) and suddenly the rolling hills and vales were besmirched by mills and slums and the lowly shepherd boy had set off to work in them. The age of romanticism, of the rich going off on the grand tour in the hope of discovering more noble ideals than actually making money rather than the ancient system of acquiring it through position, has been said to be a reaction against this. Maybe or maybe not, but the notion that the old nobility of England still resents the removal of their automatic right to rule over the peasants is not as radical as it may seem.
The post war industrial disruptions may perhaps be traced back to this resentment, the country had come together as never before to save its skin yet once it was over rather than the working class being reward in some way for their sacrifice the old ways were very quickly reinstated with the Marshal Aid being spent on new ventures of imperialism rather than rebuilding the country. Perhaps that was never articulated at the time but the strong support the far left enjoyed during those years must have had some underlying cause.
As I have noted, there is far more to the post war industrial unrest than just a few uppity commies who were, it later transpired, being manipulated by MI5.
