Baggage of Empire: Reporting Politics and Industry in the Shadow of Imperial Decline

New
Paperback
2016
$15.80

Born just as the British Empire was taking its last breaths, Martin Adeney was part of the 'twilight generation' caught between the imperial and postimperial ages, forced to navigate the insecurities - political, economic and cultural - faced by the British as we struggled to understand and adapt to our diminished place in the world order.A compelling blend of memoir and narrative history, Baggage of Empire leads us through the crumbling ruins of great industries and imperial trade cities; from the retreat of the northern newspaper empires to an almost exclusively southern, metropolitan viewpoint; through the tumultuous dominance and decline of the trade unions; to the rise of Thatcherism and big business.From the unique vantage point his career as a journalist has given him, particularly as industrial editor of BBC TV, Adeney notes that many of the issues that preoccupied us in the late '60s and early '70s - including immigration, housing, education, industry and communications - remain the daily currency of our political discourse. Despite all of our material prosperity and cultural self-confidence, we are all burdened, in one way or another, by the baggage of empire.

Synopsis

Born just as the British Empire was taking its last breaths, Martin Adeney was part of the 'twilight generation' caught between the imperial and postimperial ages, forced to navigate the insecurities - political, economic and cultural - faced by the British as we struggled to understand and adapt to our diminished place in the world order.A compelling blend of memoir and narrative history, Baggage of Empire leads us through the crumbling ruins of great industries and imperial trade cities; from the retreat of the northern newspaper empires to an almost exclusively southern, metropolitan viewpoint; through the tumultuous dominance and decline of the trade unions; to the rise of Thatcherism and big business.From the unique vantage point his career as a journalist has given him, particularly as industrial editor of BBC TV, Adeney notes that many of the issues that preoccupied us in the late '60s and early '70s - including immigration, housing, education, industry and communications - remain the daily currency of our political discourse. Despite all of our material prosperity and cultural self-confidence, we are all burdened, in one way or another, by the baggage of empire.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 09 Jun 2016
ISBN 10: 1785900838
ISBN 13: 9781785900839

Media Reviews

Martin Adeney has been a fine industrial journalist more or less over my whole working life. Here he writes vividly of his contact with contemporary leaders in politics, business and trade unions who, in various ways, battled against Britain's decline as a great manufacturing nation. It is an entertaining elegy for a world that has largely disappeared along with the British Empire itself. - Lord (John) Monks, former General Secretary of the TUC and the ETUC; Martin Adeney's memoir is a very well-observed account of the decline of three 'empires' that have defined his life. He writes with clarity and wit about the great events of the second half of the twentieth century, during which he met many notable figures, especially politicians and trade union barons, and his portraits of these people, based on his personal experience of them, are always acute and funny. - Professor Lawrence Goldman, Director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Author Bio

Martin Adeney has had a privileged insight into British industry and politics for over forty years on both sides of the media. Reporting for The Guardian in the '60s and '70s, his specialisms included community affairs and industrial relations, and assignments in former imperial possessions in Asia.From 1977 to 1978 he was industrial correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph before joining BBC TV, where he became its first industrial editor. He planned and presented daily news coverage and made films for programmes like Newsnight and The Money Programme over a decade in which industrial relations was at the top of the political agenda.In 1989, he moved to Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), then the UK's largest manufacturing company with a worldwide spread of activities. He became vice-president of public affairs before establishing his own consultancy in 2000.His experience is reflected in three books: The Miners' Strike, 1984-85: Loss without Limit (with John Lloyd), The Motor Makers: The Turbulent History of Britain's Car Industry and Nuffield: A Biography, a life of the industrial magnate and charitable benefactor Lord Nuffield.He contributes to The Guardian's obituary columns and the Dictionary of National Biography.