Tony Benn Diary Friday 10th November 1989
Out of the blue, and quite amazingly, the Berlin Wall is being removed. The Brandenberg Gate was opened yesterday, and today bulldozers and cranes went in and began hammering holes in the wall and thousands of East Germans are coming over into the West. But in reality it is causing enormous anxiety in NATO because the whole defence argument has changed, while the Labour Party continues to call for three Trident submarines as a first priority. So it is an extremely important event, and very moving.
The removal of the Berlin Wall, a key symbol of the Cold War, did as Benn noted 35 years ago have a significant political impact. Such is the 24 hour news cycle and absence of any historical perspective of current media that the anniversary appears to have gone unnoticed
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