Did the power of labor unions in Britain thwart its development as a technological power?

I am going through Patrick Allitt's Great Course on the Industrial Revolution. In lecture 26, he says that one of the reasons that the British fell behind in the Industrial Revolution, after having been its originator, is that labor unions were so powerful they were able to put a break on industrial companies changing and adapting. This made it difficult for British industries to innovate, and the British lost the top spot in terms of industrial production to the US and to Germany?

Just curious: what data is there to support or undercut that position? Is this a point that is settled in the economic literature, or is it still widely debated?