I suspect that, in the pre-Thatcher era, British Industry was crap partly because the bosses didn't value the skills of their workforces. If everything had become highly confrontational by the 70s it was mainly because of the ruthless elitism of the bosses. My Dad was a highly skilled sheet-metalworker, and worked his b....ocks off for 50 years, and was considered to be a 'nobody' by the pen-pushing money-grubbers. The end of his life was ignominious and squalid and made worse by the fact that all the authorities wanted him to do was to sell his house so that he could pay for his own nursing home place (so much for the fourth largest economy in the world - or whatever we're supposed to be!).
It's now common-place to be thrown on the scrap-heap in your 50s (as has recently happened to me) while bosses moan about 'skills shortages'.
If your philosophy is 'pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap-profit-now-and-sod-tomorrow' and everything, including people and their skills, is disposable it's not surprising that you get crap. I am convinced that the modern British economy is a hollow sham and it won't be long before the cracks begin to show ...