Anthony Warwick-Ching

It’s summer 1944. The Allies are still locked in life and death struggle with the Axis, and few yet talk of peace. But a select contingent from Britain is combining with our American and Russian allies in something very new. Their mission? To build order from the ashes in vanquished enemy countries. Their weapon? The Allied Control Commissions. Unlike the punitive protocols after the Great War, the spirit of these unique instruments of peace is to be co-operative and constructive. The story is told by Peter Ching, a young British Intelligence officer posted to a succession of military governments. His letters are vivid, humorous and frank as he migrates from sunny Algeria to war-wracked Italy, the snowy peaks of the Balkans and a newly-liberated Greece facing civil conflict. His longest posting is Sofia. A highlight of the book is the profound respect he develops for his Red Army comrades. Many have heroic war records but defy daunting reputations and baleful commissars by proving punctilious, competent and very friendly. Fatefully, within months of the Nazi surrender ideological tensions are threatening the fragile partnerships. And a rare moment when British and Russian soldiers could work constructively together in the great cause is passing into history.

Britain was the cradle of the industrial revolution. Its manufacturing prowess sustained a unique global standing in the nineteenth century, bore it to victory in the great wars of the twentieth, was a trusty servant of its domestic needs and imperial pretensions, and an enduring source of pride. Quite suddenly, this pre-eminence has vanished. Only yesterday an industrial giant, the UK is heading for the third division. How on earth did this happen? Where did so many of our great industries, and the companies that served them, go? What happened to all those household names and world leaders? How did industrial employment, once 40 per cent of the labour force, collapse? How were well-paid, robust and rewarding jobs in manufacturing supplanted by poorly-paid, insecure and low-grade work in services? Stolen Heritage offers answers. Answers that should provoke concern, dismay and anger. It goes beyond denouncing the shortcomings of neoliberalism to chart its workings in practice. It tracks the life and death of Britain’s industries, vigorously contesting the orthodox view that their demise was inevitable, and it looks at prevailing political ethos, and dogma, of the time. Finally it looks beyond the immediate perils of Brexit to ways in which something of value just might be salvaged from the wreckage.