The Battles That Won Our Freedoms 

BBC Radio 4 LW

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BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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The Battles That Won Our Freedoms

Documentaries

Factual: Politics

A new series exploring the long history of struggles for liberty in Britain.

The stories of the most dramatic, high-stakes battles in our history that helped to win liberties we take for granted.

The Battles That Won Our Freedoms: 9 Gay Rights

9 Gay Rights

BBC Radio 4 - The Battles That Won Our Freedoms, 9 Gay Rights

The decriminalisation of homosexuality, and the struggle for equal rights that followed.

Professor Frank Mort tells the story of how the legal taboo against male homosexuality was gradually broken down.  Lisa Power recalls the push for full gay equality that followed.

In this episode, Phil Tinline asks Professor Frank Mort about the journalist Peter Wildeblood's prosecution for homosexual offences in 1954, Wildeblood's risky decision to be open about his homosexuality - and how this intersected with the work of the committee appointed by Churchill's last government to explore the possibility of changing the law.  

Stonewall founder Lisa Power recalls how it was only after male homosexual acts were partly decriminalised in 1967 that the movement for gay liberation took off.  And how, after the failure to stop Section 28, the late 1980s saw the birth of a new approach - which began a mainstream political struggle to win the freedoms of today.

First broadcast in 2019.

Producer: Phil Tinline

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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The Battles That Won Our Freedoms

9 Gay Rights

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