1927 - China

As he stood outside the door of Number 10 on the day he became Prime Minister, Gordon Brown declared his commitment to change: "Change in our NHS, change in our schools, change with affordable housing, change to build trust in government, change to extend and protect the British way of life." He declared he had "listened and...learnt from the British people" and pledged to lead "a new government with new priorities" and "to reach out beyond narrow party interest."

In March 1927 the workers of Shanghai rose in a victorious Insurrection which gave them control of the city at a time when the whole of China was in ferment. In April that uprising was brutally crushed by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek, whom the Communist Party of China had been hailing as the hero of the Chinese ‘national revolution’.