The only real history of that I know is that guy Alan Sugar went around buying all the British hardware manufacturers and then ran them into the dirt. Now he's some idiot billionaire. My intuition is that the British home computing scene was killed because it was too easy for anyone to make their own software and distribute it. You just needed a tape deck, or you could literally send someone the raw text of the program for them to type in. So I guess there might have been problems with proprietary software/hardware getting a foothold in the UK until Apple squeezed its way in. I don't know about anything like international trade deals that could have killed it.
The only real history of that I know is that guy Alan Sugar went around buying all the British hardware manufacturers and then ran them into the dirt. Now he's some idiot billionaire. My intuition is that the British home computing scene was killed because it was too easy for anyone to make their own software and distribute it. You just needed a tape deck, or you could literally send someone the raw text of the program for them to type in. So I guess there might have been problems with proprietary software/hardware getting a foothold in the UK until Apple squeezed its way in. I don't know about anything like international trade deals that could have killed it.