Category Archives: Politics past

From a picnic to the Berlin Wall: my 1989 summer of revolution

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An award-winning foreign correspondent looks back on the human stories that helped bring down the Berlin Wall and East Germany’s regime

It should have been a normal family chat in late midsummer in Berlin. Kerstin Falkner, 22, and her new partner, Andreas, eight years her elder, were sitting in the back of Metzer Eck, the corner bar run by her mother, Bärbel, discussing where they might go for their holidays.

Only one thing was out of key: instead of joining in, Bärbel was sitting in the corner next to me, trying to keep back her tears. She simultaneously feared and hoped for the same thing: that they might not be coming home.

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‘Several lives lost’: note reveals early details of Peterloo massacre

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Magistrate’s message released to mark 200th anniversary may be first account of bloodshed

It was a defining moment in British political history, paving the way in the long struggle for democratic representation of the disenfranchised working classes.

Now, 200 years on from the Peterloo massacre in which peaceful protesters were cut down by sabre-wielding cavalry, a hastily scribbled note has been unearthed to reveal what could be the first account of the bloodshed.

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Labour avoids party split over Common Market – archive, 17 May 1971

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17 May 1971: Mr Wilson and Mr Callaghan succeeded in persuading both pro- and anti-Market groups not to insist on firm decisions on either tactics or principle

Labour Party leaders last night came to the sensible conclusion that it was not worth splitting the Labour movement wide open over the Common Market when Mr Heath and the Conservative Party were already faced with the even more immediate and difficult problem of rallying a respectable Parliamentary majority for entry on the basis of Tory votes without the aid of Labour MPs.

That was, to all intents and purposes, the outcome of a full afternoon session of Labour’s national executive committee and the Shadow Cabinet of the Parliamentary Labour Party, at which Mr Wilson and Mr Callaghan succeeded in persuading both pro- and anti-Market groups not to insist on firm decisions on either tactics or principle. For the time being, the heat is out of the European issue inside the party.

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