Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson,

the past brought to life by those who were there.

This week, Saddam Hussein's 1980s genocide against the Kurds of Northern Iraq.

I was frightened actually to see the scale of the crime and how organized the crimes and how

pre-planned.

Also the British serial killers Fred and Rose West, plus 50 years of

fighting for fat people in America and Joseph Heller on his seminal work,

Catch 22.

I don't feel I'm being immodest in saying the book is still relevant.

You want me to tell you why it works.

It's a very good book. That's coming up later in the podcast. First this week

though is a key moment in the struggle for LGBT rights in the 20th century and

for this we're going back 50 years to a small area of New York where gay men and

lesbian women would gather in the belief that they would be largely left alone, but where tensions

with the local police eventually erupted in riots outside the

Stonewall Inn. Those events inspired the creation of the modern gay rights movement.

Simon Watts has spoken to John O'Brien about growing up as a gay man

in 1950s and 60s Harlem and about taking part in the stonewall protests.

On the night of June 28th, 1969, after years of mounting tension, the gay community in New York turn on the police.

People wanted to show their anger and resentment at the police for all their years of brutality and intolerance.

Here was a chance for me to finally express my feelings about what had been done to me as a young

gay kid growing up in an anti-gay society, and I wasn't alone.

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