Timeline 1945–1984

1945

May	Nazi Germany surrenders to the victorious British, American, French and Soviet armies.
July	The British Labour Party wins a landslide general election victory.
August	Atom bombs dropped on two Japanese cities bring the Second World War to an end.

1947

August

India wins independence from Britain.

1948

February	A Communist regime takes over Czechoslovakia.
June	The Soviet Union blockades West Berlin and an airlift is mounted to supply the city.
July	The British National Health Service is founded.

1949

October

The Chinese Communist Revolution is proclaimed.

1950

June	The Korean War breaks out, between the Communist-backed North and the Western-backed South of the divided country.

1954

May	In Vietnam, the Communist Viet Minh guerrillas defeat the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu.

1955

December

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Alabama.

1956

February	Nikita Kruschchev condemns Stalin at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party.
October	British and French troops invade Suez.
November	Soviet troops invade Hungary.

1958

February

The British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is founded.

1959

February

Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba.

1960

March	Sixty-nine black South Africans are killed in the Sharpeville Massacre.
November	John F. Kennedy is elected American President.

1961

August	The Berlin Wall is constructed, dividing east Berlin from west.
September	Mass arrests are made during an anti-nuclear sit-down in Trafalgar Square.

1962

February	Six CND activists are jailed for occupying the Air Force base at Wethersfield.
October	The Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe.

1963

August	Martin Luther King delivers his ‘I have a dream’ speech in Washington.
November	President Kennedy is assassinated.

1964

August	Three civil rights workers are murdered in Mississippi.
October	Nikita Krushchev falls from power and Leonid Brezhnev succeeds him as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

1965

March	Civil rights marchers are attacked by police on a bridge in Selma, Alabama.
November	The Pentagon is immobilised by anti-Vietnam War protestors.

1966

February	Soviet dissident writers Andrei Sinyavksy and Yuli Daniel are sentenced to labour camps for publishing their writings in the west.
October	The Black Panther Party is founded in Oakland, California.

1967

January	Dissidents demonstrate in Moscow’s Pushkin Square against the tightening of the Soviet criminal code.
April	Right-wing colonels take over the Greek government in a military coup.
July	Black protestors riot in Detroit and Newark.
October	Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara is killed in Bolivia.

1968

January	The Viet Cong invades Saigon in the Tet (New Year) Offensive.
March	Violence breaks out during a demonstration outside the American Embassy in London’s Grovesnor Square.
	Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the 1968 Presidential race.
April	Martin Luther King is assassinated and riots break out across America.
	Enoch Powell delivers his ‘rivers of blood’ speech against commonwealth immigration to Britain.
May	A student uprising in Paris provokes a general strike in France.
June	Senator Robert Kennedy is assassinated.
August	Soviet troops invade Czechoslovakia. Soviet dissidents protest in Red Square: they are arrested and exiled or imprisoned.
	Riots break out at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago.
November	President Richard Nixon is elected.

1969

August	500,000 attend the rock festival at Woodstock in upstate New York.
	British troops are sent into Northern Ireland.
September	Inspired by student protests, Italy’s ‘hot autumn’ of strikes begins.

1970

March	Three anti-war revolutionaries are blown up by their own bomb in New York City.
April	American troops invade Cambodia.
May	During protest demonstrations, six students are killed at Kent State and Jackson State universities.
June	A mass campaign leads to the cancellation of a British tour by an all-white South African cricket team.
	In a surprise victory by the British Conservatives, Edward Heath is elected Prime Minister, and pledges to limit the power of the trade unions.
September	Marxist Salvador Allende is elected President of Chile.
November	The Miss World contest at the Albert Hall is disrupted by women protestors and a BBC outside broadcast van is attacked.
December	Strikes in Poland lead to the resignation of the Communist Party leader.

1971

January	The Angry Brigade urban guerrilla group bombs the home of the British Employment Minister in protest against the Government’s Industrial Relations Act.
June	The Upper Clyde shipbuilders’ work-in begins in Scotland.
	The underground magazine Oz is put on trial for obscenity.
August	Internment without trial is introduced in Northern Ireland.

1972

January	A national miners’ strike leads to blackouts across Britain.
	On Bloody Sunday, fourteen Catholic civilians are killed by British paratroops in Derry.
	The Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement signals the beginning of détente between the United States and the Soviet Union.
February	The miners win their seven-week strike.
March	Direct rule from Westminster is imposed on Northern Ireland.
June	Employees of the Nixon White House break into the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party.
	Five dockers are jailed in Pentonville for defying the Industrial Relations Act; they are released after strikes and mass protests.
December	In the Angry Brigade trial, four people are convicted and jailed, four are aquitted.

1973

March	The IRA bombs the Old Bailey in London.
April	Nixon White House aides resign over the thickening Watergate scandal.
May	Two million workers strike on May Day.
September	President Allende is overthrown and killed during a military coup in Chile.
October	Israel wins the Yom Kippur War against the surrounding Arab states; an embargo leads to the quadrupling of the price of oil.
December	The miners impose a work-to-rule, and a three-day working week is introduced.

1974

February	Prime Minister Edward Heath calls a General Election on the slogan: ‘Who governs Britain?’; the Conservatives lose to Labour, and the miners win their strike.
	Dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn is expelled from the Soviet Union.
April	Fascism is overthrown in Portugal.
July	Military rule ends in Greece.
August	President Nixon resigns over the Watergate cover-up.

1975

February	Margaret Thatcher defeats Edward Heath to become Conservative Party Leader.
April	Communist forces take over South Vietnam and Cambodia.
June	Britain votes ‘yes’ in a referendum on its membership of the European Economic Community.
November	Spanish dictator General Franco dies.

1976

June	Following an uprising led by schoolchildren, at least a hundred and seventy-six protestors are killed by the South African police in Soweto.
August	Riots break out at London’s Notting Hill Carnival.
September	Chinese leader Chairman Mao Zedong dies, and his ‘Gang of Four’ supporters are arrested.
December	Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky is released from prison camp and deported to the West, in exchange for Chilean Communist leader Luis Corvalán.

1977

January	Czech dissidents publish the human-rights manifesto Charter 77.
June	Mass pickets support a strike for unionisation of the Grunwick Film Processing Plant in North London.
September	Anti-Apartheid activist Steve Biko dies in detention in South Africa.

1978

March	Aldo Moro, former Italian Prime Minister, is kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades.
April	100,000 anti-fascists attend an Anti-Nazi-League Carnival in East London.
July	Soviet dissidents Alexander Ginzburg and Natan Sharansky are sentenced to long terms in labour camps.
December	Vietnamese troops invade Cambodia and overthrow the Khmer Rouge regime.

1979

January	Public sector workers mount a wave of strikes against a government pay-cap, dubbed the Winter of Discontent.
February	The Shah of Iran is deposed.
April	Activist Blair Peach dies from injuries received during an anti-National Front demonstration in Southall, London.
May	Margaret Thatcher is elected Prime Minister.
November	The American Embassy in Teheran is seized by Iranian demonstrators and its staff taken hostage.
December	The USSR commits troops to support the Communist government of Afghanistan.

1980

August	Strikes in the Gdansk shipyard lead to the founding of the independent trade union Solidarity in Poland.
November	Ronald Reagan is elected President of the United States.

1981

February	The Social Democratic Party is founded in Britain.
May	In Belfast, IRA prisoners go on hunger strike in their campaign for political status.
	A left-wing group led by Ken Livingstone takes over the Greater London Council.
July	Riots in London, Liverpool and Manchester.
September	The Labour Party votes for unilateral nuclear disarmament.

1982

February	Women blockade Greenham Common Air Force base in protest against the decision to deploy American cruise missiles.
May	Following the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, a British naval task force is despached to win them back.
June	Israeli forces invade southern Lebanon.
October	The Polish government outlaws the Solidarity trade union.
November	Leonid Brezhnev dies and Yuri Andropov takes over as leader of the USSR.

1983

March	President Reagan denounces the Soviet bloc as an ‘evil empire’.
June	Margaret Thatcher is re-elected in a landslide.
July	The United States increases its support for the rebels against the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
December	Polish Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa receives the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia.
	Following the arrival of American cruise missiles, fifty thousand women protestors encircle the Greenham Common base.

1984

March

Britain’s miners go on strike against pit closures.