I remember when the Tories justified the
"southward drift of industry" by alleging "Scotland’s
distance from the world’s markets" as the reason. That has been
triumphantly refuted by the Japanese who have overcome an enormously
greater difficulty in that respect and thereby captured an increasingly
large share of Europe’s car market.
It is so easy to prove beforehand that Japan’ s
difficulties would make that feat impossible. There were three unforeseen
factors, Japanese initiative, Japanese imaginativeness and Japanese
self-reliance - characteristics which
we under English rule are not allowed to exercise or to develop.
(Feb. 28, 1970)
If you add together all Japan’s economic
disadvantages - distance from the word
markets, lack of raw materials, lack of ground space, infertile land, the
demoralisation of a defeated nation - you
must conclude that it is a distressed and underdeveloped area. That is the
mistake of the economist who overestimates economic factors and ignores
the fundamental one - the will of a
people to live.