I am old enough (unfortunately) to remember what life was like before the EU. I worked for an American owned company from 1969-1992 with a large manufacturing operation in the UK. We exported and had a French sales office and small operations in South Africa and Australia. In 1973 we acquired a large German company producing similar machines, but often rather better than ours. At its height in 1990 or so, the company employed about 5-600 people in Europe.
Most of our products had a weighing element and if used for trade had to comply with different national standards. It was just too complicated and costly to submit machines for testing by French, German and other authorities. So, before the German acquisition we sold very little into Western Europe or Scandinavia and what limited sales we did make were mainly in France with products that had to be adapted for the French market.
Electricity regulations were also a problem with different wire colours for example. Selling a machine to France sometimes involved stripping out cables from a stock unit and rewiring it in French colours. Exports were really limited to countries that hadn't yet got round to writing any national standards.
We bought the German plant around the time we joined the EEC but there was very little harmonisation of standards at the start and so not much additional cross border trading. We kept to our own markets. Essentially, exporting was quite difficult but very slowly the EU did harmonise things so products could be sold freely throughout Europe. Unfortunately, as this happened, British suppliers were shown to be not as good as our continental counterparts and gradually they went out of business or were bought by foreign companies. Politicians frequently talk of level playing fields but when we got one, we couldn't compete.
After 1992 I worked for and with French, Finnish, Spanish and Italian companies and visited factories across Europe and made many friends. But as far as manufacturing was concerned, we lived in two different worlds. European companies are often family owned with a determination, seriousness and pride in their products rarely found in the UK. They invested for the long term and had a very loyal work force.
This was my experience but I do not believe it was limited to the packaging industry. Many companies across a lot of sectors in Britain succumbed but eventually we found European owners were good employers and kept workers in jobs, BMW is a perfect example. However, my fear is that out of the EU we will not be able to rely on foreign owners to invest and export from these shores and with a flood of cheap imports we will find ourselves losing jobs again.
In 1975 on the eve of the first referendum, The Daily Mail leader (HERE) said the anti-marketeers had a "glum lack of faith in Britain's ability to hold her own inside the market". Now people complain we lost jobs to Europe - showing that actually - it was true, we couldn't hold our own! What we saw in 2016, with claims of a global Britain was precisely the same kind hubris as in 1975 and if we aren't careful history will simply repeat itself. More jobs will be lost.
Electricity regulations were also a problem with different wire colours for example. Selling a machine to France sometimes involved stripping out cables from a stock unit and rewiring it in French colours. Exports were really limited to countries that hadn't yet got round to writing any national standards.
We bought the German plant around the time we joined the EEC but there was very little harmonisation of standards at the start and so not much additional cross border trading. We kept to our own markets. Essentially, exporting was quite difficult but very slowly the EU did harmonise things so products could be sold freely throughout Europe. Unfortunately, as this happened, British suppliers were shown to be not as good as our continental counterparts and gradually they went out of business or were bought by foreign companies. Politicians frequently talk of level playing fields but when we got one, we couldn't compete.
After 1992 I worked for and with French, Finnish, Spanish and Italian companies and visited factories across Europe and made many friends. But as far as manufacturing was concerned, we lived in two different worlds. European companies are often family owned with a determination, seriousness and pride in their products rarely found in the UK. They invested for the long term and had a very loyal work force.
This was my experience but I do not believe it was limited to the packaging industry. Many companies across a lot of sectors in Britain succumbed but eventually we found European owners were good employers and kept workers in jobs, BMW is a perfect example. However, my fear is that out of the EU we will not be able to rely on foreign owners to invest and export from these shores and with a flood of cheap imports we will find ourselves losing jobs again.
In 1975 on the eve of the first referendum, The Daily Mail leader (HERE) said the anti-marketeers had a "glum lack of faith in Britain's ability to hold her own inside the market". Now people complain we lost jobs to Europe - showing that actually - it was true, we couldn't hold our own! What we saw in 2016, with claims of a global Britain was precisely the same kind hubris as in 1975 and if we aren't careful history will simply repeat itself. More jobs will be lost.
