It Happened Here - Lancaster House

In the concluding programme of his series showing how key political events have been shaped by where they took place, Peter Hennessy, the leading historian of post-war Britain, visits Lancaster House in central London. This imposing town house overlooking Green Park has been the venue for successful talks on a range of post-imperial problems, most notably the agreement leading to black majority rule in Rhodesia and the subsequent creation of the independent state of Zimbabwe. But it has also been important in the modern history of Northern Ireland and in the continuing conflict in Afghanistan. The programme traces the history of the Lancaster House Agreement on Rhodesia in 1979 involving in particular Lord Carrington, then British foreign secretary; Ian Smith, then Rhodesian prime minister; and the joint leaders of the Patriotic Front fighting against white minority rule - Robert Mugabe, leader of ZANU and later elected Zimbabwean president - and Joshua Nkomo, founder of ZAPU. Peter Hennessy shows how Lancaster House itself played a decisive part in the final agreement, paving the way for elections in 1980, and how its association with these successful negotiations ensured that it played a part in international diplomacy in subsequent decades. Producer: Simon Coates.