The laundry and drycleaning exhibition, Clean UK, is held this month at Wembley. Many of the machines and much of the equipment on display will be foreign made.
This is a direct consequence of the political and economic ideas that dominated Britain in the eighties when the service industries and financial institutions were seen as the the route to national salvation. Many quick fortunes were made but today we are left mourning the demise of British manufacturing.
Other countries saw manufacturing as the route to long term prosperity, believing that if you don’t make it, you can’t sell it, and for sure, without a manufacturing base, exhibition support in the UK is hard to come by.
Compare the UK Clean show with its German, US or Italian equivalents. Their exhibitions are ten times bigger and attract thousands of buyers from all over the world. True, their home markets are bigger but that was once considered an opportunity not a threat by the British.
The United Kingdom still retains a wealth of engineering talent, all it needs is the belief that making things is more important than gambling with exchange rates, opening call centres or making the countryside nice for tourists.
