But what does public funding of steelmaking, coalmining, car manufacturing achieve? An increasingly expensive, inefficient, uncompetitive liability generating an ever increasing debt that those industries could never, ever hope to repay.
Your socialist pie in the sky dream was a nightmare reality until politicians got sensible and wielded the scalpel.

Only a fool would dispute public funding for health and education and other social necessities.
Only a fool would tip public funding into subsidizing a bottomless pit of archaic industries. The only part the unions played in the story was to exacerbate an already hopeless situation.British management won no prizes over the same period of time.