One of greatest scandals of post-war Britain: UK “won the oil lottery” in 1970s and unlike Norway, the winnings were spent fast and upward.
One of greatest scandals of post-war Britain: UK “won the oil lottery” in 1970s and unlike Norway, the winnings were spent fast and upward.
Britain won the oil lottery and spent the winnings on breaking its own society. Thatcher used oil wealth to fund tax cuts for the few, bankroll mass unemployment, and underwrite the City.
Norway built a sovereign wealth fund for its children; Britain bought a decade of neoliberal revolution.
Today, the fund is gone, the oil is running dry, and the public is left with nothing but austerity.
But who actually benefited:
1. Thatcher Government (1979–1990s)
•North Sea oil revenues peaked in 1980s at 10% of government receipts.
•Thatcher used them to:
•Fund tax cuts (especially for wealthy).
•Finance costs of mass unemployment caused by deindustrialisation.
•Cushion impact of breaking the unions during the miners’ strike.
•Oil wealth effectively bought time for the neoliberal revolution.
2. Private Oil Companies & Investors
•BP and Shell, plus American majors, made huge profits.
•Oil fields were licensed largely on generous terms, especially compared to Norway’s Statoil model.
•Shareholders: concentrated in the City of London and abroad captured much of the surplus.
3. The City of London
•Oil wealth helped strengthen the pound, finance deficits, and feed into the financial sector.
•Rather than building a sovereign wealth fund (like Norway), Britain effectively used oil to underwrite financialisation, feeding City profits.
4. Consumers (short-term)
•Oil and gas revenues did help fund some public services and temporarily held down taxes.
•But because no fund was created, ordinary people got no lasting benefit. By the 2000s, the “lottery money” was gone.
5. Politicians & Elites
•Oil revenues reduced the need for governments (both Tory and Labour) to confront long-term industrial decline or build a coherent economic strategy.
•Political elites benefitted from having “easy money” to paper over deep social fractures.
Who Didn’t Benefit
•Future generations: no sovereign wealth fund means no oil inheritance. Norway’s Oil Fund is now worth over $1.5 trillion; the UK has nothing.
•Industrial workers: oil financed deindustrialisation rather than protecting jobs.
•Communities in Scotland 
& the North East: production wealth flowed to London/City, not reinvested locally.
posted by Satish Sharma at
14:19
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home