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In 1974 the government of Edward Heath was defeated in an election called to give Heath a mandate against the trade unions. His nemesis was the miners union organiser Arthur Scargill. In 1984 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher inflicted a crushing defeat on the union movement, a victory long in the planning by the Conservative Government. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy t
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During the chaos of the First World War a generation of British and American correspondents in Russia astutely predicted the failure of the Provisional Government and came to see the Bolsheviks as a viable alternative. Some, like Arthur Ransome and John Reed went further and became passionate advocates for the new regime led by Vladimir Lenin. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you
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Margaret Thatcher was a politician convinced that a return to ‘family values’ after two decades of seeming moral decline in the 60s and 70s was part of the key to restoring British fortunes. Throughout the 1980s, however, this manifested itself in a prolonged attack on gay rights, during a time when the existence of the HIV virus and AIDS was associated in the press with the LGBT community. During the 1980s however, Conservative policies led to a politicisation of the gay community and the quest
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During the First World War the racist terrorist organisation the Ku Klux Klan reformed and by 1924 boasted four million members. However five years later it was once more a political irrelevance. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Communit
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In the early 1970s John Lennon embarked on a brief and rather inglorious career as a political activist while based in America. His activism was an indication of the wider radicalisation of the decade and can help us to examine the prevalence of the counter culture in 1970s America. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show
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In 1966 after four years of existing at the margins of the Chinese Communist Party following the disasters of the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong returned. He claimed that revisionist and right deviationist elements within the party were derailing the revolution and only the millions of Red Guards and the Chinese workers and peasants could put China back on track to socialism. The result was the catastrophic cultural revolution. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through cri
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by early 1918 the Bolshevik’s revolution was in serious danger of being overthrown. Instead of elite troops the new government possessed poorly disciplined Red Guards. By 1921, the army was over three million strong and had defeated its enemies, but at immense political cost to its creator, Leon Trotsky. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and sh
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When the Nazis’ occupation of Greece ended and a gradual withdrawal turned into a desperate retreat from the Red Army, a civil war in Greece began. The British occupied Athens in a bid to restore King George II and prevent a communist takeover, but it proved to be one of Churchill’s most controversial initiatives of the war and the beginning of a conflict that would last until 1949. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We
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Lyndon Johnson had an antagonistic relationship with the Kennedy brothers but was indispensable to John F Kennedy as a political fixer. Following Kennedy’s death he became President of the USA and won a landslide victory a year later. This podcast explores the career, ambitions, struggles and crises of Lyndon Johnson. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please sub
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In March 1918 in Britain, Parliament voted to enfranchise property owning women for the first time. This podcast explores the wartime decisions that led to this moment of radical electoral reform. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Communi