Fair trading
Sir: Murray Sayle's article (27 March) was long by the Spectator's standards, but every word was totally absorbing. He points out clearly and shrewdly that the Japanese are doing no more than the Victorian baker A. B. Hemmings did — work harder and bet- ter than any other baker, and get all the business. He writes that he has yet to meet a Japanese who thinks this unfair, or who in- tends to give up this process. Meanwhile, an EEC official seems to have spotted where this is leading. 'Japan is only the first of a line of super-efficient Asian producers who
are waiting to wipe us out.'
Murray Sayle writes that Japan sees its attitude as perfectly acceptable; and indeed our Victorian forebears of the Industrial Revolution must have had similar notions. If they worked harder and better than anyone else, were they not entitled to all the business and profit that was going? In those days there was no practical or intellectual counter to this — very nice too for our busy and prosperous great-grandparents. But there is today, and we might just as well re- mind ourselves about it. Murray Sayle cannot bring himself to mention it, and no doubt it is a bogY_word for the Japanese and indeed for me with ITIY Sony and my Honda — protection. Oh dear. Deplorable? Unacceptable? Contrail to all modern political thinking? No doubt. But Murray Sayle gives an uncomfortable glimpse of the relationship between super- efficiency and super-unemployment. When the Japanese start to publish an attractive weekly magazine in English — and they could — perhaps you too will catch on.
George Booth
The Dower House, Elstree, Hertfordshire
Previous page
