Demobilised back in England at war's end, Ash discovered that the act of "taking the King's shilling" in 1939 had robbed him of his US citizenship and that he was now a stateless person. He acquired British citizenship and went up to Balliol College, Oxford, on a veteran's scholarship, to read PPE. He then joined the BBC, working alongside a young Tony Benn, who became a lifelong friend. Sent to India as the Corporation's main representative on the subcontinent, Ash was influenced by Nehru's brand of socialism, and by the time he returned to Britain in the late 1950s his politics had solidified into a hard-boiled Marxism. He became involved in left-wing "street politics", including the post-war anti-fascist movement, but his late-blooming revolutionary tendencies eventually proved too much for the BBC, which fired him – though he managed to cling on to freelance employment in the radio drama department as a script reader.