The 1980s were the heyday of Thatcherite ‘market forces’ policies for British industry. Yet, for much of the period, the Conservative government's Department of Industry orchestrated FMS and similar advanced computerised technology investments in at least thirty-nine large and medium-sized firms. Even the Iron Lady's free-market armour-plating was seemingly vulnerable to the lure of flexible technology. This state-led cybernation of factories developed from the avowedly interventionist industrial policies of the preceding Labour Party government. The common theme was British firms' weakness in international manufacturing competition. Strong and rapid technological innovations could reduce the lead of other countries in conventional and new technological capabilities.

Compared to other countries surveyed in this book it is ironic that it is in free-market Britain that central state direction has been most responsible for introduction of FMS and related technologies. As Friedman shows, and my own interviews confirmed, the most that MITI did was to facilitate adoption of computerised production amongst already innovative Japanese firms. In the USA the Department of Defense and the US Air Force were prodigious influences on advanced schemes for computer integrated systems, but FMS adoption was largely the result of the suppliers' exploitation of the Fordist, ‘workerless factory’, prejudices of manufacturing managers. In Italy, as well, the state has played a minor role – limited mainly to tax incentives – in the modest amount of FMS adoption that has occurred (Baglioni 1986).