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Start the Week: The 'death of socialism'?

02/04/2012

The 'death of socialism'?

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, The 'death of socialism'?

Andrew Marr with Alwyn Turner, Janet Daley, Tristram Hunt and Martin Rowson.

Andrew Marr looks at the political and cultural landscape of the last two decades with Alwyn Turner, Janet Daley, Tristram Hunt MP and the political cartoonist Martin Rowson.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks back at the political and cultural landscape of the last 20 years with the author Alwyn Turner. In 1992 Margaret Thatcher proclaimed 'the death of socialism' after the Conservative election victory, and Turner argues this moment led to a generation turning away from politics, putting their energy into culture. But Janet Daley believes that it wasn't John Major's victory but the fall of communism that demoralised and destabilised the left, and the lessons of 1989 are still to be learnt. In its defence, the Labour MP Tristram Hunt points to the long history of socialism and believes its death has been much exaggerated. And the political cartoonist Martin Rowson lampoons both left and right. In his latest book he updates Swift's Gulliver's Travels to the late 1990s, targeting the government of Tony Blair, media moguls and Europe.

Producer: Katy Hickman.

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