When Margaret Thatcher Came to Power
The History Hour
BBC
4.4 • 913 Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2018
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Working for Britain's first female PM, the rare story of prisoners on the high seas in WW2, plus the Children's Crusade for civil right in 60s Alabama, the origin of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the story behind the Japanese TV hit, Takeshi's Castle. Photo: British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, with husband Denis on May 4th 1979. (Credit: John Minihan/Evening Standard/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | 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. |
| 0:07.5 | This week the perils faced by merchant seaman in the Second World War. |
| 0:12.0 | We couldn't get away from the shell fire. |
| 0:15.0 | Head several times, |
| 0:16.0 | by the south fire to the cargo. |
| 0:18.0 | We promptly burst into flames. |
| 0:22.0 | Decks were being shattered. |
| 0:24.0 | Plus we've got the birth of the Royal Shakespeare Company, |
| 0:27.0 | a radical Japanese TV game show from the 1980s, |
| 0:31.0 | and how children fought for civil rights in 1960s Alabama. |
| 0:35.0 | And before I be a slave, there was no fear. |
| 0:39.0 | What I was really afraid of was that being born black. I was afraid what would happen if I didn't do something. |
| 0:47.0 | That's all coming up, but first we are here in Britain at the end of the 1970s for the beginning of a political |
| 0:55.5 | and social revolution with the election of the first female leader in Western Europe. |
| 1:01.2 | When Margaret Thatcher took office in May 1979, she wasn't the first woman to have been elected |
| 1:07.0 | head of a government. There had been Mrs. Benneranika in what is now Sri Lanka, |
| 1:11.2 | in Deregandy in India and and Goldemea in Israel among others. |
| 1:15.6 | But she was the first woman to have emerged from the very heavily male dominated world of |
| 1:19.8 | party politics in Westminster at the very top. |
| 1:23.0 | And at the time, a woman as head of government in Britain, |
| 1:25.7 | was seen in some quarters as a divisive development. |
| 1:28.8 | Rebecca Kessby reports. Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new administration and I have accepted. on May the 4th, |
... |
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