History Cafe
350 episodes - English - Latest episode: 12 days ago - ★★★★★ - 14 ratingsTrue history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History Café weekly on Wednesdays to give old stories a refreshing new brew. 90+ ever-green stand-alone episodes and building...
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Episodes
#68 Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! - Ep 1 of Bloody Mary Tudor?
August 30, 2023 16:40 - 40 minutes - 36.7 MBBloody Queen Mary? 313 people died for their beliefs 1555-58. We owe it to the victims to get the story right. In 2020 historian Alexander Samson said about the reign of Mary Tudor ‘it feels as if we are at the start.’ So dismiss everything you thought you knew and be prepared to be amazed. Ever since Mary died childless, at the age of just 42 in 1558, the history of her reign was written almost exclusively by English Protestant historians, mainly using Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ written by an ...
#16 The men behind the myth - Ep 7 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?
August 24, 2023 20:42 - 21 minutes - 19.3 MBWithin days of 28 October 1962 two journalists publish the official but untruthful White House account, as instructed and edited by the President. They also call-out a political enemy for daring to consider a humiliating missile swap with the Soviets. But we show how the Kennedys had already suggested this very missile swap to Khrushchev via private backchannels, on condition he kept it secret. Which he did. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#15 ‘The Fourteenth Day’ - Ep 6 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?
August 16, 2023 10:01 - 29 minutes - 27.5 MB28 October 1962: by holding his nerve Kennedy defuses the crisis in just 13 days. He says it’s over although he’s unable to verify whether Khrushchev ever withdraws his missiles or not. The last missiles do indeed leave Cuba on day 48 of the crisis but for very different reasons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#14 ‘Eyeball to eyeball’ - ep 5 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuban Missile Crisis?
August 09, 2023 11:26 - 31 minutes - 28.8 MB22 October 1962: President Kennedy goes on prime-time TV and announces a blockade around Cuba to prevent more Soviet missiles reaching the island. But US sailors call the so-called ‘quarantine’ nothing but ‘grand theatrics.’ Not a single Soviet ship is stopped by the US Navy. What was going on? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#13 ‘Russian roulette’ - ep 4 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuban Missile Crisis?
August 03, 2023 15:26 - 23 minutes - 21.8 MB15 October 1962: Soviet nuclear missile sites are discovered. It’s only three weeks before the mid-term elections. Kennedy decides that to negotiate publicly with Khrushchev would be a disaster at the polls; as would ignoring them which is what his allies advise him to do. So, as Noam Chomsky puts it, the President chooses ‘to play Russian Roulette with nuclear missiles.’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#12 ‘The only way to save Cuba’ - Ep 3 of Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?
July 26, 2023 15:43 - 22 minutes - 20.2 MBThe Cuban Missile Crisis begins not because Castro is a dangerous communist but because he is NOT. Khrushchev tells his ruling council: ‘The only way to save Cuba is to put missiles there’ - not only to prevent an American invasion, but also to keep Fidel Castro sweet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#11 Fidel Castro was not a communist - Ep 2 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?
July 19, 2023 13:18 - 28 minutes - 26.1 MBSynopsis: 1959: The first country the new revolutionary president of Cuba visits is the United States of America. And he’s a big hit. The students at Princeton carry him on their shoulders. Castro wants a trade deal with the American government. So why does Kennedy fight the presidential election of 1960 on getting tougher than the Republicans with Cuba? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#10 'these missiles do not significantly alter the balance of power' - Ep 1 Cuba Missile Crisis
July 13, 2023 14:34 - 31 minutes - 28.6 MBWe have the memo to President Kennedy dated Day 2 of the crisis with his own security chiefs clarifying that 'these missiles do not significantly alter the balance of power.' So why does October 1962 develop into the closest we’ve ever come to nuclear war? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#77 Stanley never got the joke - Ep 5 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?'
July 05, 2023 11:15 - 40 minutes - 36.7 MBThe events that followed Livingstone’s funeral are perhaps important for the light they shed on everything that Livingstone was not. Stanley, having declared that he would complete what Livingstone had begun, undertook three ‘momentous’ journeys. Whatever the cover stories he created, Stanley’s expeditions were intended to grab and occupy African lands, sometimes through fake treaties he claimed to have signed with African leaders. One result was the wholesale mapping of central Africa; the o...
#76 Twelve reckless Americans - Ep 4 Dr Livingstone, I presume?
June 29, 2023 14:42 - 31 minutes - 28.7 MBHenry Morton Stanley, the New York-born journalist who was actually born in Wales, ‘finds’ Livingstone, although everyone knows he’s not lost. Stanley’s employer Gordon Bennett Jr of the daily New York Herald has spotted a fantastic money-making enterprise, pedalling fictitious stories of the romantic failures of the British explorer, Dr Livingstone. It was time for the Americans to take over the exploration of Africa. The British had bogged themselves down with ‘too many theodolites, baromet...
#75 The Lion and the Tartan Jacket - Ep 3 Dr Livingstone, I presume?
June 22, 2023 08:14 - 38 minutes - 35.2 MBThe British audience for Livingstone’s book 'Missionary Travels' can’t get enough of his ‘manly’ and ‘forcible’ style. He brings a very personal mix of far-away adventure and science to his stories. His account of being mauled by a lion – shaken like ‘a terrier dog does a rat’ and how the tartan jacket saves his life – are still vivid reading. But had he not glossed over the danger of malaria and other diseases fatal to Victorian Britons (in much the same way as he casually dismissed as an ‘i...
#74 Smoke that Thunders Ep 2 Dr Livingstone, I presume?
June 14, 2023 15:19 - 37 minutes - 34.3 MBLivingstone was the first European to record his visit to Smoke that Thunders on the Zambezi river. 100 metres of plummeting water, across the entire kilometre of the Zambezi’s width. He promptly named it after his queen, Victoria Falls. His ambition was to find a navigable river from the east coast of Africa inland. Although it was clear that Smoke that Thunders would put a stop to any trade boats navigating any further inland he remained undaunted. He calculated that just being able to brin...
#73 Stronger than the ox he rode Ep 1 'Dr Livingstone, I presume'
June 10, 2023 21:23 - 37 minutes - 34.5 MBExploration changed in the middle of the nineteenth century, when Henry Morton Stanley met Dr David Livingstone. We discover that Livingstone isn’t remembered for anything he achieved. A missionary and medical doctor from a poor Scottish background – and an indestructible traveller - he learned to make accurate geographical calculations and used them to map a small part of Africa. Amazingly he did most of his successful exploration with an African team and backed by African funds. So why did ...
Memory and Myth – Oxford research project ‘Their Finest Hour’ - SOUND CORRECTED
May 10, 2023 23:24 - 25 minutes - 23 MBTheir Finest Hour is a University of Oxford project that aims to collect and digitally archive the everyday stories and objects of the Second World War that have been passed down from generation to generation in the UK and Commonwealth. Closing date July 2024.We interview project manager Dr Matthew Kidd and reflect on the evidential issues this online collection raises about memory and myth. website: theirfinesthour.english.ox.ac.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informati...
#81 Coronation and the chilling ghost of Lord Esher
May 03, 2023 07:22 - 55 minutes - 50.6 MBThe coronation of King Charles III on 6 May 2023 has prompted this humorous historical look at the British coronations. Since 1902, when Edward VII and his queen were crowned, the religious ceremony itself has drawn upon rites going back to the crowning of Anglo-Saxon kings. But reviving these old rites just belongs to an Edwardian fascination with a mythical Merrie England. And once you step outside all the solemnity of the Abbey, we are in a world that was entirely invented between the 1870...
#57 From mayor to meat market. Getting elected in the 18th Century
April 26, 2023 10:00 - 35 minutes - 32.2 MBIt is still wrongly but commonly thought that in the 18th Century the gentry bought their way into a parliamentary seat, mainly by purchasing land, or by gaining the approval of some unrepresentative local patron who had the borough in his pocket. You've heard of pocket boroughs, and rotten boroughs? Well, Jon's 1985 doctoral thesis, researched entirely from local documents rescued from mouldy parish chests and corporation vaults, contradicted so many of the leading historians of the day so ...
#53 '1066 And All That' - really serious nonsense
April 20, 2023 06:39 - 37 minutes - 34.5 MBPublished in 1930 by Methuen and never out of print since, this isn’t (as everyone has always supposed) just an innocent laugh at kids’ mistakes. It is a laugh, and we explore many of the jokes. But 1066 And All That is suffused with subversive subtexts. Our original research reveals its origins back in the academic infighting and socialism young authors Sellar and Yeatman experienced studying history in 1919 Oxford. Both had fought and been wounded in the war. Hosted on Acast. See acast.co...
#59 The crimes of the rector George Wilson Bridges - Ep 5 Slavery
April 12, 2023 08:09 - 40 minutes - 37.1 MBBy 1832 it was clear to both the House of Lords and the Commons that the British planters in the Caribbean were dragging the British economy into a credit crash. It looks to us very like the crash of 2008. The Jamaican Rebellion of 1831 and the vicious retaliation by the white supremacist Colonial Church Union in 1832 was the final nail in the coffin of British enslavement. The CCU showed beyond doubt that the Jamaican planters, who had always dominated the West Indian planters lobby in Londo...
#58 The Ship that sank and took the slave trade down with it - Ep 4 Slavery
April 05, 2023 18:59 - 37 minutes - 33.9 MBWhen the HMS Lutine went down, 9 October 1799 off the Dutch coast, carrying a million pounds of gold and silver, it led to the collapse of the Hamburg sugar market and within a few years the banning of the slave trade. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#56 The Empire Strikes Back - Ep 3 Money not Morality ended British Enslavement
March 29, 2023 09:37 - 36 minutes - 33.3 MBWe look at a map of the British Caribbean to understand why losing the British north American colonies after 1783 mattered to British enslavement. We explore how the trade winds had helped create the four-cornered ‘triangle’ of the British slave trade involving North America, Africa, England and the British Caribbean – and how this doesn't work once this section of the 'Empire' - the North American States - strikes back and becomes 'out of bounds' for British trade. And we begin to see why th...
#55 The woman behind the abolition of slavery - Ep 2 Slavery
March 22, 2023 08:49 - 35 minutes - 32.4 MBBefore we get down to the hard facts of whether or not British enslavement ended because the slave economy no longer worked, we should take a closer look at the moral campaign for its abolition. It turns out to be intriguing, though it was a very different campaign from what we’ve all been told (and many students are apparently still being taught). Credit for the campaign’s success should go to an enormous number of people who aren’t much remembered now. Not just William Wilberforce. We're th...
#54 'Slavery was even worse than we thought' - Ep 1 Money not morality ended British Enslavement
March 14, 2023 22:34 - 35 minutes - 32.8 MBWe start this 5-part series by trying to give a factual outline of the experience of being transported in horrendous conditions from Africa to the British Caribbean against your will. And we open up the debate started in 1938 by the brilliant young Trinidadian historian Eric Williams as to whether it was money or morality that ended British enslavement? The trade in the enslaved was banned in 1807, the enslaved were 'emancipated' in 1833. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more info...
#32 The curious case of inventing Scottishness
March 02, 2023 08:57 - 35 minutes - 32.6 MBWere Scottish clan tartans nothing more than clever marketing? With an eye on the forthcoming coronation of King Charles III we re-release this wry look at the invention of tradition in Scotland – which had a whole lot to do with the hunting, shooting, fishing Royals at their Scottish castle, Balmoral. There they famously adopt a Scottish style of dress complete with royal tartans, kilts for all, pipers and Scottish dancing. Indeed the fashion for all things Scottish has been termed ‘Balmoral...
#39 Newton and the Occult - Ep 2 Was Newton the last of the Magicians?
February 22, 2023 09:23 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBHaving considered the arguments in favour of defining Sir Isaac Newton as an early 'scientist', we now consider the other side of the coin. Newton’s best-known breakthrough – the identification of gravity – belonged not to the latest tradition of European Cartesian rationalism, but to a very English strand of occult philosophy. In fact it was only because Newton worked in this tradition that he was able to think of gravity as an unseen and mysterious force. Europeans like Leibnitz wrote the i...
#38 Newton the alchemist - Ep 1 Was Newton the last of the Magicians?
February 15, 2023 09:35 - 36 minutes - 33.3 MBThe short answer to the question, ‘was Newton the last of the magicians?’ is, yes …. And also … no. Newton and alchemy turn out to be ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’ We toss a coin and take a heads-and-tails approach. In this podcast we argue that the alchemical experiments he undertook had nothing to do with magic. Newton’s alchemy now looks to historians like good science (although he would have called himself both a natural philosopher and a chymist). It was well conce...
#09 A quietly brilliant palace coup - Ep 3 of 2 May 1937: King, wife, Führer, lobster
February 08, 2023 09:11 - 33 minutes - 30.4 MBWe complete our exploration of the dark shadows in the background of Cecil Beaton’s sunny photograph. The laws of the time made it perfectly possible to prevent Edward VIII from marrying Wallis Simpson. Then there wouldn’t have been any point in abdicating. But nobody even tried. Did the yet-to-be-crowned king himself manufacture the crisis? Or had Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, by never revealing the private letters he had from Wallis Simpson, carried off a quietly brilliant palace coup? ...
#08 I wish, myself, to talk to Hitler - Ep 2 - 2 May 1937: King, wife, Führer, lobster
February 01, 2023 09:45 - 26 minutes - 23.8 MBAs the newly appointed king, but not yet crowned, Edward VIII secretly told the Nazis he admired, that he was going ‘to concentrate the business of government in himself…. Who is king here? Baldwin or I?’ Did Prime Minister Baldwin get rid of the King because he was too pro-Nazi, as Hitler’s ambassador to Britain, von Ribbentrop, maintained? Or was there another reason? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#07 That Dress - Ep 1 '2 May 1937: the King, his wife, their Führer, the lobster'
January 25, 2023 09:35 - 24 minutes - 22.3 MBIf you enjoyed #BBCRadio4 drama #NazisTheRoadToPower by #JonathanMyerson you will love this series of 3 podcasts: '2 May 1937: the King, his wife, their Führer, the lobster. Cecil Beaton photographs for American Vogue the twice-divorced American heiress soon to marry the ex-King Edward VIII. Wallis Simpson wears a Schiaparelli ‘waltz dress’ with a Salvador Dali red lobster down her skirt. The setting is a French chateau belonging to the American businessman who a few months later will masterm...
#80 Nazis: The Road to Power - conversation with author Jonathan Myerson
January 18, 2023 08:18 - 39 minutes - 35.9 MB#80 Nazis: The Road to Power. Conversation with Jonathan Myerson, playwright and author of BBC Radio 4’s new drama series Nazis: The Road to PowerThe story of how in just 13 years, Hitler led a fringe sect with less than a hundred members and outlandish ideas to be the dominant force in German politics.Jonathan talks to us at History Café about the challenges of bringing this extraordinary and shocking story to life through the eyes of the people closest to him. He tells us how every scene in...
#48 'Gunsmoke and Mirrors' - Ep 2 Was the Wild West wild?
January 11, 2023 10:59 - 36 minutes - 33.7 MBWhat was the driving force behind the settlement of the American west? Was it the so-called ‘anarchocapitalism’ so admired by the Hoover Institution and some of the followers of President Trump? The violence they fetishize turns out to have been only in those places populated by young men – we’re talking not just cowpokes or gold and silver prospectors, but also vigilantes in the towns back east. The majority frontiers-people were peaceful American homesteaders. But they’ve even been written ...
#47 The Law-less frontier - Ep 1 Was the Wild West wild?
January 04, 2023 10:08 - 42 minutes - 39.2 MBA series of land grabs and cruel clearances by the Federal government from 1781 triggered a crazy, barely-contained movement west, spearheaded by gold prospectors, cattle ranchers, homesteaders and the railroads. By 1892 it was generally agreed that the American character was forged in the violence of the shifting frontier. We look at the popular fiction and entertainment that helped create this belief: Deadwood Dick, Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, Mark Twain’s Six-fingered Pete and many others...
#78 Santa Claus and the Knickerbockers
December 23, 2022 14:27 - 29 minutes - 27.1 MBA whole lot of nonsense has been written about the invention of the modern Christmas. It was thought up by Washington Irving or Charles Dickens or Prince Albert. We just can’t resist attaching a famous name to things, especially if the name belongs to a writer or a royal. We deserve better than this. So here's our offering from the History Café Christmas Party! Have a good one.
#31 ‘Remember, remember, the Fifth of November’ - Ep 8 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
December 21, 2022 13:01 - 22 minutes - 20.4 MBChristmas podcast coming next week. We have yet to record it!! In the meantime, here's the last in this series which began on 5 November: At the time, London gossip accused Cecil of fabricating the entire plot to blow up everyone who mattered and leave the country ungovernable. When Cecil died seven years later, he was remembered as lying and self-serving. ‘The King’s misuser, the Parliament’s abuser, Hath left his plotting… is now a rotting.’ On the first anniversary, 5 November 1606, peopl...
#78 Remembrance Day - Aren't We Forgetting Something?
November 11, 2022 06:22 - 20 minutes - 19 MBWe don't apologise for repeating this broadcast made for Remembrance Day 2020. The story is so important it's worth telling again and again.At least 50% of deaths from war in the last three centuries were civilians. In 2001 the International Red Cross calculated that in modern warfare ten civilians die for every member of the military killed in battle. In the two World Wars the vast majority of soldiers were "civilians in uniform" - conscripts or volunteers. But do we officially remember them...
#78 Remembrance Day 2022 - Aren't We Forgetting Something?
November 11, 2022 06:22 - 20 minutes - 19 MBWe don't apologise for repeating this broadcast made for Remembrance Day 2020. The story is so important it's worth telling again and again. At least 50% of deaths from war in the last three centuries were civilians. In 2001 the International Red Cross calculated that in modern warfare ten civilians die for every member of the military killed in battle. In the two World Wars the vast majority of soldiers were "civilians in uniform" - conscripts or volunteers. But do we officially remember them?
#59 The crimes of the rector George Wilson Bridges - Ep 05 Slavery
September 21, 2022 09:10 - 40 minutes - 37.1 MBBy 1832 it was clear to both the House of Lords and the Commons that the British planters in the Caribbean were dragging the British economy into a credit crash. It looks to us very like the crash of 2008. The Jamaican Rebellion of 1831 and the vicious retaliation by the rector George Wilson Bridges and his white supremacist Colonial Church Union in 1832 was the final nail in the coffin of British enslavement. The CCU showed beyond doubt that the Jamaican planters, who had always dominated th...
#55 The woman behind the abolition movement - Ep 2 Money not Morality ended British Enslavement
August 31, 2022 09:33 - 35 minutes - 32.4 MBBefore we get down to the hard facts of whether or not British enslavement ended because the slave economy no longer worked, we should take a closer look at the moral campaign for its abolition. It turns out to be intriguing, though it was a very different campaign from what we’ve all been told (and many students are apparently still being taught). Credit for the campaign’s success should go to Margaret Middleton and an enormous number of people who aren’t much remembered now. Not just Willia...
#52 Anne Boleyn – Henry's MacGuffin
August 18, 2022 08:45 - 44 minutes - 41 MBMost of what we think we know about Anne Boleyn turns out to be later invention, with no historical basis. We argue that she was a MacGuffin: she was necessary to the way things turned out for Henry, but unimportant in herself. We’re not even sure he was in love with her. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#51 Marrying Anne Boleyn, the best of a bad job - Ep 6 Henry VIII
August 10, 2022 10:55 - 30 minutes - 27.7 MBThe Ambassadors painting by Hans Holbein reveals the French horror at Henry’s decision in January 1533 to defy the pope and get remarried to a pregnant Anne Boleyn. But since Henry couldn't get an annulment he had no choice. No big-time European princess would marry him. With the Spanish seriously weakened by war, Turkish invasion and protestant revolt in Germany, and Henry’s French allies now needing him more than he does them, Henry’s long game to get the Pope on side against the Spanish is...
#50 No more ménage à trois - Ep 5 Henry VIII: the King, his wife, his lover, the French
July 31, 2022 18:43 - 28 minutes - 26.3 MBIn a dynamite French document from August 1530, still overlooked by historians, the King of France offers to send troops to England to defend Henry VIII against the Spanish. No French government before or since has ever promised to send troops to defend England. Does this explain Henry’s sudden move in August 1530 to go on the offensive against Rome and the clergy in England and end the comfortable ménage à trois with his wife and his mistress, Anne? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy f...
#49 'Like an episode of the Borgias' - Ep 4 Henry VIII: the King, his wife, his lover, the French
July 20, 2022 09:04 - 33 minutes - 30.8 MB31 May 1529: Faced with France and Spain doing a deal and leaving England in the lurch, Henry races against time to begin his divorce trial in London, and then pulls the plug just before a verdict is reached. Meanwhile the pope and his cardinals are double-crossing each other. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#46 Missions impossible - Ep 3 Henry VIII: the King, his wife, his lover, the French
July 13, 2022 17:47 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MB1527: The pope is a prisoner of the marauding Spanish in Rome and yet Henry sends his man Knight on a madcap mission to ask Pope Clement VII for permission to marry a young woman he is already sleeping with. It’s the first of a whole series of crazy errands, asking the pope for the impossible. Does Henry have a hidden agenda? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#45 The jilting of Princess Mary - Ep 2 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French
July 06, 2022 07:18 - 32 minutes - 29.5 MBDid Henry break with Rome in order to seize power over the wealthy, ubiquitous church in England? We find that the dates don’t add up. Instead we look at why in June 1525 Henry promoted his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy over the head of his heir Mary. And why Charles V broke off his engagement with 9 year old Mary to marry a Portuguese princess instead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#44 Anne Boleyn did not hold out on Henry - Ep 1 Henry VIII, his wife, his lover, the French
June 29, 2022 08:13 - 31 minutes - 28.6 MBIn 2010 a document from 1527 was found in which Henry admits to the pope that he is sleeping with the woman he wishes to marry instead of, or as well as, his Spanish wife Katherine. Very little of the traditional story can be believed. It’s Katherine who matters in the story of Henry’s Reformation, not Anne. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
#40 Henry VIII: his pope, Katherine, Anne and FLORENCE
June 25, 2022 12:26 - 36 minutes - 33.6 MBHaving looked at the role of the pope in Philip and Mary's burnings, we take a look at the pope Henry had to deal with.After years of negotiation and confrontation, Pope Clement VII was heard swearing unpapally over Henry VIII’s divorce. And no wonder. The history of Henry’s pope is a murky tale of code-breaking and ruthless sieges that involves Michelangelo and Machiavelli and a great deal of double-dealing. Pope Clement was trapped between a rock and a hard place: the only way to save his M...
#60 After 1918 - the Secrets are Out - Ep 8 Secret History of Suffragettes
April 13, 2022 07:26 - 44 minutes - 41 MBRE-RELEASED FOR WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH. The reason we all believe Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst achieved women’s votes in Britain is because that’s the narrative created in the 20s and 30s by former suffragettes. The reality of what Emmeline and Christabel got up to post 1918 is shocking. Suffice it to say it involves racial purity and telling working women they can buy silk underwear, shapely shoes and fur hats, not by improving their working conditions but by giving into the feminine des...
#43 The Suffragettes did not win the vote - Ep 7 The Secret History of the Suffragettes
April 06, 2022 07:15 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBSuddenly, after 1913 votes for women looks inevitable. Not through the chaotic, dying campaign of the suffragettes. But through the political brilliance of Millicent Fawcett and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Their 1913 alliance with the Labour Party changes the whole political balance. Their massive peaceful Pilgrimage of 1913 - from 6 corners of the UK - is great PR. Now Liberal Prime Minister HH Asquith’s blockheaded intransigence over women’s votes is costing his party ...
#42 Their violence backfired - Ep 6 The Secret History of the Suffragettes
March 30, 2022 07:42 - 37 minutes - 34.2 MBRE-RELEASING FOR WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH. November 1912 sees the first defeat for women’s votes since 1891. The government has been struggling with law and order after two years of mass strikes. That year even school children go on strike. The violence of the suffragettes is barely noticed and can definitely not be rewarded. For the first time in a generation, Parliament turns against women’s votes. What little sympathy there was for women’s suffrage among the wider public ebbs away. But Christ...
#41 The violence the Suffragettes wouldn't admit to - Ep 5 The Secret History of the Suffragettes
March 23, 2022 10:06 - 37 minutes - 33.9 MBRE-RELEASING FOR WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH. From 1912 the WSPU – the Pankhurst Suffragettes – are out of control and dangerous. But that is not how they're remembered. Anyone who disagrees with the violence either leaves or is thrown out. Whatever they later claim about their ‘wonderful leadership’, it is their young, poor members who are inventing new and increasingly dangerous ways of intimidating the government. The WSPU leadership claims it never threatened life, only property, but this is m...
#37 Hunger strikes and force feeding - Ep 4 The Secret History of the Suffragettes
March 16, 2022 08:46 - 38 minutes - 35.1 MBRE-RELEASING FOR WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH. The militant strategy of the WSPU – the Pankhurst Suffragettes - is delivering them headlines. It gets them nowhere with the government but it makes enormous sums of advertising revenue from fancy retailers, and funds Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst’s society lifestyle. Rich London ladies in silks and satins pour in the money, while working-class activists take all the risks. WSPU officer Theresa Billington drafts a constitution to give everyone a say...