Britain escaped these problems because of Margaret Thatcher. Before she came along, Britain was the sick man of Europe.
Not actually true. The British Welfare State has always been very different to, say, France's; it was set up by very different people for very different reasons. And with the notable exception of H.M Customs & Excises*, the bureaucracy in the U.K has always tended to have something of a human face and been reasonably approachable.
Before Ted Heath** the economy was usually pretty good with the odd hiccup every now and again (over things that don't seem even slightly important now) but the Heath government combined a complete lack of economic competence with an even greater lack of competence as far as dealing with the international economic crisis (es) and energy crisis went... and he made both worse by picking a fight with the miners in an attempt to get re-elected; causing the infamous Three Day Week, which made the economic crisis worse... etc. etc.
Most of the underlying problems in the economy were actually dealt with by the Callaghan government which actually adopted free markety policies in many areas, began a moderate privatisation/deregulation programme (and was one of the first governments to take inner city decline seriously; something that still hasn't really happend in France). Thatcher came to power because of a wave of public sector strikes (the Winter of Discontent) more than anything else. Whether Thatcher's policies were effective or not is debatable and as the answers of both sides are kinda predictable I won't start that off
I
will add that the return of mass unemployment to Britain after a gap of almost half a century happend during the Thatcher years and <cut>
Ahh... went off at a tangent there
*Who obviously spend too much time dealing with the French
**There's actually a society of Ted Heath burners. They get together and burn effigies of Heath. No joke. But they do it for a different reason to the ones I'm talking about.
