Catalogue description United Kingdom Commercial Corporation and Subsidiary Companies: Correspondence, Minutes and Papers

The papers are arranged under companies (see contents sheet) and within each company under the sub-series:

The Anglo-French Supply and Purchases Committee, an official Cabinet committee, established a sub-committee in October 1939 which dealt with economic warfare purchases. By a decision of the Ministerial Committee on Economic Policy on 9th November [EP(EW)(39)1], this sub-committee was reconstituted as an Inter-departmental Committee on Economic Warfare reporting to the Ministerial Sub-Committee on Economic Warfare.

On 12 December a report by the Interdepartmental Committee [EP(M)(EW)(39)11 was made about purchasing policy in South Eastern Europe aimed at denying Germany vital supplies. It recommended that an organisation should be set up to investigate opportunities of purchase and sale and to make rapid decisions on them.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in the House of Commons on 4 April, 1940, the formation of such an organisation. Initially it was called the English Commercial Corporation, but was registered on 11 April, 1940, as the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation Limited. In his statement the Chancellor said: "The company will carry out its work as a commercial and independent entity, subject to general considerations with His Majesty's Government on the broad lines of policy. It is intended not that the company should supplant existing channels of trade, but, on the contrary, that it should make use of them to the fullest possible extent. For the present the company will be primarily concerned with trade with Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Rumania, Turkey and Yugoslavia. It may, however, conduct business elsewhere if appropriate occasions arise."

The capital of the company was initially fixed at £500,000 in one-pound shares. As the company developed it was found necessary, in order to make preemptive purchasing successful, that it should not only buy from, but sell to, traders in South East Europe. To help in this policy a subsidiary company, the English and Scottish Commercial Corporation Limited, was set up on 24 April, 1940, with an initial capital of £100.

Thereafter there was a two-way traffic of goods and the UKCC became very active in Spain, Portugal and the Middle East. It was also the medium used for all British non-military supplies to Russia (by the Northern and Persian routes).

The UKCC was put into voluntary liquidation on 1 August, 1946. At the same time the ESCC was re-organised; its main purpose was to complete the deliveries of civil supplies under the Agreement of 16 August between the governments of the United Kingdom and the USSR and to collect outstanding debts both from general trading and from joint account purchases made between the United States Commercial Company and the UKCC.

On 31 March, 1953, the ESCC suspended operations and all sums then in the hands of the Corporation or the Treasury on behalf of the Corporation, were paid into the Exchequer. UKCC winding up operations were closed on 26 September, 1958, and the ESCC was finally dissolved on 9 September, 1960.