Almost by accident, James Edmiston became involved in owning and running the Sterling Armament Company for 12 years. The company's products sold in around 100 countries, and the "battleship" engineering of the Mark 4 sub-machine gun won that product the reputation of being probably the world's most reliable automatic weapon. Sterling was engaged almost entirely in export, and there is probably no other (British) defence company that can boast a similar record of success. The product, designed and developed for ruthless efficiency in the support of the armies of friendly governments and their forces of law and order, was primarily a killing machine, and secondarily, a deterrent. Its manufacture (carried out entirely in-house) was under private control, but its sales and their ultimate moral responsibility were the domain of the British Government. But even the foreign policy experts advising a government cannot accurately predict the future. But as time progressed, the very success and efficiency of a small private concern generated hostility and near impossible trading conditions, not from foreign competition, but from elements of that nebulous concern the British Government itself. In spite of strong encouragement and support from various quarters, the exposure of some civil service inefficiency led to governmental deceit and perfidy. It is a disturbing relation of conduct by authority that most Britons would not deem possible in a Western democracy.