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Inside Story(1974–2000)
December 23, 197419 Seasons · 191 Episodes
Ended
Documentary
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Overview
A BBC documentary film strand, with the focus on investigative journalism.
Network BBC One
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A BBC documentary film strand, with the focus on investigative journalism.
1974
What are the true facts of the first Christmas? With expert help from two biblical scholars, Dr Geza Vermes and Professor Christopher Evans , critical analysis is brought to bear on the well-loved ingredients of the familiar story: the Magi, the Shepherds, the Star, the wicked King Herod, and the Virgin Birth.
Victor Cheiney is a farmworker, married with two children. He is under notice to quit his tied cottage. The bailiff is due in days, and Cheiney has nowhere to go. This true story of what happened is painful and shocking. The series of events that followed the eviction reached a point of tragedy that threatened to engulf the Cheineys, divide the family, and shatter the marriage.
The little bull calf Celia bore In winter 1974 was slaughtered so that human beings could drink her milk. But to keep that milk flowing it was crucial that she should calve again quickly. There was need for expert stockman-ship, the skill of the artificial inseminator and the services of Cliftonmill Olympus II.
The story of one man's attempt to reunite under one roof the woman he claims is his wife, and the child he claims is his daughter. The action of this documentary moves from Lyallpur in North Pakistan, to Islamabad, to Bradford and Leeds as Mohammed Akram tries to prove to British Immigration Officers that Rafiqa is his wife and entitled to live in Britain. Finally it is up to the adjudicator of an immigration appeals hearing in Leeds to exercise the wisdom of Solomon. Is Mohammed Akram a liar, and Rafiqa an impostor? Or are they, in fact, man and wife?
Who is the most beautiful man in the whole of Britain? This year's Mr United Kingdom Championship in Liverpool resolved the question. This Inside Story is about the three most likely muscle men and their trainers, the men who mastermind the sculpting of bodies into living works of art.
Streaming availability information not available
1975
Real police officers doing a real job. Catching villains and protecting the public
Marek Marek was one of many children who undergo a hole-in-the-heart operation. By now this operation is routine, and the vast majority of children make a full recovery. But Marek had a complication, called pulmonary atresia. Tragically the operation was not a success, and soon afterwards, he died. 'Marek' is a film about the courage of a family at a time of crisis, and it has already won the Asian Broadcasting Union prize for its portrayal of the basic humanity which is common to all people.
This is the story of a remarkable young English nurse who made her home in a Saigon slum. Before the city fell to the communists she was told officially to leave South Vietnam. But she stayed. Her reason for not going was that her home was also home for street girls, drug addicts and waifs and strays picked off the streets who, without her, would have no one to turn to. This is not a story about the Vietnam war but the story of a young woman drawn to a suffering country by the plight of its suffering people
An actuality account filmed behind closed doors of a company as it faces the ultimate business threat - liquidation. The second largest contract packers in the British Isles is struggling to keep afloat against a tide of creditors and rising prices. Fighting for survival are its board of five directors-men with their own money and reputations at stake. This documentary film records, as they happen, the manoeuvres and boardroom dramas that take place as the company desperately attempts to avoid the fate of the 4,000 other companies that have gone bust this year.
The story of Michael - known as 'Mini' - who at 11 years old has twice attempted to burn down his house, and was designated too dangerous to be allowed his freedom.
An exclusive behind-the-scenes film about Elliot Richardson, US Ambassador to Great Britain - an American who is suddenly the focus of intense speculation. In the last three weeks White House-watchers have been asking the question 'Is Richardson the next Vice-President? Or the new Doctor Kissinger?' Many were surprised when Elliot Richardson - one of the few major US politicians to emerge with credit from Watergate - accepted the post of United States Ambassador in London. Now after only nine months in the job he is leaving to become President Ford's Secretary of Commerce. But 1976 is US election year. Could the former Ambassador to the Court of St James's be destined for even higher - perhaps the highest - office?
1978
On one day in October last year 7,000 policemen were on the streets of Greater Manchester at a cost of over a quarter of a million pounds to defend the Englishman's right to free speech. But these Englishmen were members of the National Front, and their speeches - avowedly racist - would be in direct contradiction to the very idea of freedom. In 'the story of that day, and in interviews with the leaders and rank-and-file members of the National Front, a portrait emerges of England's fourth largest political party.
When the union attempts to make the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph a closed shop, one man stands in its way-the paper's editor. While the pickets man the gates, Ron Hunt gathers the news, writes the news, subs the news and assembles the news. In a working day this one man has covered the work of 60 striking journalists. But to the pickets who are striving to achieve 100 per cent union membership, Hunt is no more than a blackleg and a scab. As the strike continues and tensions mount, a civilised difference of opinion hardens into anger, bitterness, and rancour, and finally boils over into hatred and violence.
This programme focuses on the day to day lives of the British troops guarding the Belize/Guatemala border and their celebrations on Christmas Day, 1977. It’s a very different life here than the squaddies are used to, but it’s not quite a ‘Caribbean holiday’. They struggle to come to terms with the daily routine, the boredom, missing their loved ones and meeting the basic needs of life such as ensuring there is enough fresh food to eat.
In the telephone directory the entry reads Samaritans, The (Befriend the suicidal), followed by a number. And a million people call the Samaritans every year. Befriending the lonely, desperate, and suicidal requires more than simple sympathy. There are techniques to learn, refined and perfected since The Rev. Chad Varah founded the organisation in his study at St Stephen's, Walbrook, 25 years ago. This documentary follows a group of volunteers who wish to become Samaritans. Over five weeks, in lectures and role-playing, they learn how to deal with the practical joker, and the obscene caller, but most of all the hundreds of thousands at the end of their tether - on the end of the line.
The Mafia itself is unfilmable - but the results of its malign activities are. Alcamo is a town of 45,000 people in Western Sicily. Since the war there have been 900 murders in Alcamo and its port Castellamare. But if the methods of the Sicilian Mafia are less gory today, they are no less pervasive. The tendrils of corruption encircle all pillars of society, the church, the law, politics and the land. Gaia Servadio , journalist and author, analyses the concept of protection, extortion, paternalism and silence that is called ' the Mafia ' - in the island that gave it its name and in the town that gave it its notoriety.
Thirty-two years ago, Diane was abandoned in the waiting room of Lymington station. She was six months old. Brian remembers nothing before the age of six, when he was adopted from a children's home. Both now share the common urge to find their natural parents. Before 1975 this would have been almost impossible. But in that year the Children's Act was passed. It gave adopted adults a chance of finding their natural parents by allowing them access to their original birth certificates. This is the story of Diane and Brian's search. Diane has been looking for a year and feels she could be near a breakthrough. Brian is just beginning. Neither knows how long it will take, or quite what they will find. But both will need patience, some skill as detectives, and a little bit of luck. before the trail arrives back at the beginning.
1977
A year ago the Oxford Eight won the University Boat Race in the fastest time ever recorded. Highlights from the months of selection and preparation for the lung-bursting 17 minutes are assembled in this story, set in and around the River Thames at Oxford, Henley and London. Next Saturday, Oxford and Cambridge race again for the 123rd time from Putney to Mortlake. There will be some new faces in the boats, but the ordeal the crews have undergone, and the emotions that spur them on, will be the same as for the Crew of 76, and for crews since the event began.
Eileen is at the beginning. Her husband, John, is on remand inside Pentonville awaiting trial at the Old Bailey for robbery, possession of a firearm, and resisting arrest. If he pleads guilty, he could get seven years. If he fights the case and is convicted, he could go down for 15. In the days up to and during the trial, when she herself is called to give evidence, Eileen talks of her hopes and fears for herself, for her survival, and her children's survival. There is little doubt that John will pay his debt to society. But as an addendum to his sentence, will go the unspoken sentence on his innocent wife and three children - years of severance from a breadwinner, a father and a husband.
Lorraine 's waiting has begun. Her husband, Steve, is serving two-and-a-half years in Leeds Prison for rape. Four months after he left the dock, Lorraine's baby arrived. All her courage is now summoned to face the physical and emotional demands on a body and mind already drained by the ordeal of childbirth. From the maternity hospital where she bore the son his father could not see, the bungalow for which she has worked and must work to retain, and through the bleak misery of prison visits with her baby son and two teenage daughters, Lorraine pieces together her thoughts and priorities, her feelings of self-reproach and determination to stand by a husband who is already corroded by jealousy, self-pity and remorse.
Kathy is at the end. In 24 hours her husband Steve will be released. He has served 18 months in Wandsworth Prison for robbery. She has served 18 months on the 12th floor of a high-rise council block coping with all the problems of a one-parent family for being the wife of a convict. Kathy has had to bear the stigma of 'guilt by association' that attaches to all prisoners' wives, and she has watched with mounting horror the erosion of her four children's emotional stability. The joy of her husband's release is underscored with the anxiety of living with a man again, and the knowledge that their future will depend on Steve getting a job and curbing his drinking. Unless that occurs, she will slide into the nightmare world of the battered wife.
Bob McAngus regularly drives his own juggernaut lorry from Britain to Italy. This is a filmed record of one mission - a journey from Felixstowe to Trieste. His manifest shows that he is carrying 20 tons of British furniture, bound ultimately for Qatar on the Persian Gulf. It becomes clear that modern truckers are more than mere lorry-drivers. Finger-tip controls, ' sleeper' cabs, and the comparative sophistication of continental motorway facilities make McAngus an aristocrat among routiers. But to be a successful aristocrat he must also know a thing or two about the web of Common Market regulations at international frontiers, and about those international gestures of 'goodwill so essential when you arrive at the Italian Customs and everything is not quite right....
David Kendall is a dairy farmer. He has 42 cows producing 80 gallons of milk a day. Yet he finds himself in trouble with the police on a most extraordinary charge: stealing a pint of milk valued at 8p. Kendall says he is not guilty and elects trial by jury. How and why the charge ever arose is revealed in this documentary film about rivalry in a small Dorset town. Reputations are at stake and a livelihood as well. All depends on the verdict of the jury at Dorchester Crown Court.
Following the transmission last August of Inside Story - Miscarriage of Justice, the BBC received a large number of letters from men and women alleging that they had been wrongfully convicted. In that film BERNARD RAYNER , a private detective, proved the innocence of two young men convicted of arson, and he too received many requests for his aid and expertise in righting wrongs where justice had apparently failed. One such case forms the subject of tonight's film. It concerns an informer who went beyond ' helping the police with their enquiries ' to become an agent provocateur, and instrumental in the imprisonment of at least three men who claim they are innocent.
In April this year a long-distance call from Moscow was put through to a London barrister. In the 15 seconds before she was cut off by the KGB, a Russian woman begged the lawyer to undertake the defence of her husband. His name was Professor Yuri Orlov, held incommunicado in Lefortovo Prison on unspecified charges. John MacDonald, QC, accepted the unique brief, and this film documentary is the story of how he, a British lawyer, unfamiliar with Russian and the Russian legal system, set out nevertheless to defend a client he had never seen, and to whom the authorities would allow no access. Yuri Orlov is a Russian dissident and champion of human rights. The story of his defence is told at a time when the USSR and other signatories to the Helsinki Declaration are assembled in Belgrade, a time when the issue of human rights could be the key to East-West détente.
1976
Today The Archers is 25 years old - the world's longest-running radio serial. Ambridge people have spoken 57 million words, drunk 12,500 pints at The Bull, 20,833 cups of tea at Brookfield Farm.
At 8.0 am on New Year's Eve 1973, two ambulancemen called Jim Grummett and Colin Birch crossed the picket lines outside Sunderland Ambulance Depot and reported for work. From that day to January of this year the men were sent to Coventry' by their work-mates. Was it simply a case of obstinacy? Or bloody-mindedness? This Inside Story of a conflict of ideologies analyses the roots of the feud, and it portrays what happens in the hearts of ordinary men, when the unyielding force confronts the immovable spirit.
The true story of a valuable period piece, sold for a song by its owner, and for a lot of money by the time it reached its final resting place. The cupboard was spotted in the outhouse of a Welsh farm by an itinerant buyer, who recognised an antique under the cobwebs and layers of paint. It moved from dealer, to restorer, to dealer. After four months it has changed hands five times, travelled 3,500 miles, and risen in price well over six times the amount it made in a shed in Crug-y-Bar.
Film cameras follow City of London traders in foreign exchange, metals, stocks and shares; money lenders who deal in millions of pounds at a time; and Lloyds underwriters who bet than an accident will never happen and risk losing their shirt if it does. This is a world of frantic face to face dealing soon to be transformed by cheaper, computer-led dealing systems, satellite communications and fibre optic cables to create a fast-moving global market, worlds away from the street markets that they had once resembled.
At the very grass-roots of our legal system are the Magistrates' Courts, before which 90 per cent of all cases in this country are settled. The cases themselves are for the most part of little importance: but behind the bare statistics there are human dramas. Inside Story follows one such case right from the outset. It was heard by the magistrates of King's Lynn, where the accused pleaded guilty to a number of petty thefts. It was not therefore the crime that was in question, but, as so often, the punishment...
Over 60,000 men are released from prison each year. At eight o'clock each day the prison gates open to let loose a stream of men on the world with only a few pounds in their pockets, and little prospect of a job. Inside Story follows CHARLIE SMITH 'S first few weeks out of prison. It is a time when jobs are unusually scarce, and Smith has no family to shelter him. But he is a man of talent and determination. His ambition is to become established as a commercial designer. It is a David-and-Goliath situation, as an ex-con, who has spent a third of his life behind bars, attempts to crash the exclusive circle of the advertising industry.
In a summer when the immigration row has simmered in Parliament, and erupted in Southall, Inside Story concentrates on one very typical, human tale of an immigrant named MOHAMMED AKRAM. Mohammed Akram , a British citizen born in Pakistan, faces a tribunal which will decide simply whether the woman he says is his wife is his wife, and whether the baby he says is his daughter, is his daughter. On the outcome depends his whole happiness. The tribunal has been set up under one of the Immigration Acts designed to halt the flow of immigrants to these islands, and Mohammed Akram is one digit in the hotly-disputed immigration statistics, behind which lurk adjudications that would have taxed Solomon in all his wisdom, and behind which lie an unheard catalogue of anguish and despair.
In May 1973 two young men were convicted of arson. Each received a term of imprisonment. Two years later, on appeal, they were proclaimed innocent. This film shows how the whole system of justice miscarried by reconstructing the story as it passes through the hands of police, solicitors, barristers and the courts. That the wrong was righted was partly due to coincidence, but mainly to the fact that one of the accused's father was a rich man, who could afford to employ an intelligent and tenacious private detective. This disturbing story comes in a year in which we have already read of Patrick Meehan, Peter Hain and George Davis.
Two young men have received a Queen's Pardon, after spending years in prison for a crime they did not commit. Roger Cook discusses with a solicitor, a barrister and the accused the issues raised in last week's Inside Story. What are a citizen's rights in police custody? How do police conduct their interviews at police stations? Why do barristers sometimes advise a man who says he's innocent to plead guilty? What exactly is a Queen's Pardon, when one of the accused is still on the Criminal Register?
1980
The Spaghetti House, Balcombe Street, the Iranian Embassy... three London incidents in recent Years in which police hostage negotiating teams have been in action. But the principles and Practices in use in London were pioneered by the New York Police, after the killings at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. Since that time, Captain Frank Bolz has been in charge of 70 New York cops - specially trained to handle hostage situations.
1979
Every year, over 10,000 prisoners in jails all over the country anxiously await the result of their parole petitions. But no science governs the decision which can reduce the period of the sentence. For the first time four prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs have been allowed to talk of their crimes. their families, and their hopes and fears as they wait to hear whether they will be granted parole. They are: PETER: serving four years for arson: JOHN: six years for conspiracy to rob; AMIN: four years for his involvement in importing cannabis: DUNCAN: five years for a sexual assault on a 12-year-old boy.
1989
Do we have the right to involve animals in our own military destruction? Animal war heroes, such as Rob the parachuting dog, have achieved amazing feats. Animals still play an extraordinary role - the US Navy sent six dolphins to the Gulf War. But they are increasingly exploited on another front line; the military laboratory.
1991
Deep in the forests of south east Asia, the shy and endangered orang-utan is the victim of a cruel and criminal trade. Mothers are slaughtered and their babies sold at great profit in an extensive international black market. Inside Story takes hidden cameras into the shadowy world of the ape traffickers; it unravels a plot to smuggle six of the protected apes to the Soviet Union and exposes a racket which sells wild-caught baby orang-utans through a bogus zoo.
In June 1979, London played host to Gay Pride Week, which culminated in the Pride March through the capital. It was, at the time, the largest assembly of homosexuals Europe had ever seen. Frank language is used throughout as six gay people talk about their experiences of 'coming out' to family and friends. Some have faced pressure from their loved-ones not to appear in the programme, while others have a confrontational approach to their critics.
Stephen is one of 12,000 waiting to be adopted, but he is of a group of children deemed virtually un-adoptable. For when he was only nine days old, Stephen was struck down by meningitis. Nearly five years later he lives in an institution, unable to walk or to talk. The Dooleys of Haverhill in Suffolk are a conscientious and close-knit family. They earnestly wish to adopt the boy. To a lay eye the match seems inevitable and desirable. But there are complications, and as the weeks turn into months, what seemed a formality becomes a nightmare.
Almost exactly a year ago, Inside Story examined the case of Timothy, a hyperactive child, whom Solihull Social Services Department were determined to uproot from his residential home in the country to an urban day-care centre in Birmingham. It was a move resisted by Timmy's parents, who fought the Department - and thought that they had won. But this continuation of Timmy's story shows how mistaken the parents were to believe that all was well...
Could brothels ever become legal in Britain? As a Home Office Committee study the possibility of changes in the law on prostitution, the City Fathers of Southampton, faced with a nest of legally untouchable prostitutes in the notorious Derby Road, agonise publicly over the ethics of a council-run brothel. In this story of Southampton's battle with its own conscience, the council considers other systems of control in the Western World. Inside Story examines too the alternative - roaming the streets of Soho, the red-light areas of The Hague, and brothels in Nevada and on the infamous Reeperbahn in Hamburg, talking to policemen, prostitutes and pimps.
Forty years ago to the day, 7 September 1940, Hurricanes of 257 Squadron took off from Martlesham Heath, Suffolk, to intercept a wave of Luftwaffe bombers over the Thames Estuary. Among those lost in the engagement that followed was ' A ' Flight commander, Fl-Lt H. R. A. Beresford. No one saw him shot down and his body and aircraft were not recovered. He was posted as ' missing But in September 1979 a group of enthusiasts in Second World War military aircraft, located beneath the mud of the Isle of Sheppey what they believed to be the wreckage of a fighter ... This documentary pieces together the story of Beresford's last mission.
24-year-old George Roberts feels that he is a woman, and he wants to have sex reassignment surgery. Before the National Health Service will approve the surgical procedures, they refer him to a psychiatrist in the Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital. The psychiatrist tells George that he must first live as a woman for one year. George throws away his men's clothing, informs his employer, and (per the hospital's requirements) finds a new flat nearer to the clinic.
The blizzard that engulfed the South West of England in February 1978 was the worst in living memory on parts of Exmoor. Marooned and alone hill-farmers searched frantically for their flocks buried under tons of snow. This film begins as farmer Tony Takle is digging his sheep from huge snowdrifts. Some are dead, some alive, and some moribund. Worse follows as his ewes, all of them in lamb, abort, or themselves die, enfeebled by their ordeal. But the cycle of the season brings relief. A flock that was all but destroyed is saved. But it has taken one year of unremitting toil to undo the work of one terrible night.
HMS Guernsey is a policewoman of the sea. The laws she enforces define the dos and don'ts of fishing. Her beat is three-quarter-million square miles of coastal water. The trawler skippers she orders to accompany her to the nearest port appear before magistrates with the power to fine up to £50,000, and confiscate the catch and the nets - crippling blows to the master of the Jose Caesareo and the master of the Candida Viera , whose stories are the subject of this film. Both were caught with their nets down inside Britain's 200-mile limit. Both faced bankruptcy and ruin. But for the men who sail the Fishery Protection Vessels it was a success, an essential demonstration that valuable fish stocks must be protected and conserved, so that when finally the argument over Britain's fishing limits is settled, there will at least be something within those limits left to catch.
Timothy Jones is a child. When the strain of looking after him began to affect his parents' marriage, Mr and Mrs Jones agreed that it would be best if he were sent away from Solihull into a private residential home in the country. The move was a success. But four years later, Solihull Social Services Department had vacancies for the mentally handicapped at its own modern day-care centre, and it was costing Solihull's ratepayers ã5,000 a year to keep Timmy in the country. What was more logical than to bring the boy nearer home. and ease the borough's financial burden? It was not a form of logic that convinced the Joneses. They strenuously resisted all arguments. So the battle lines were drawn up, and this film is an account of how two determined lay-people took on a whole department of experts.
After the failure of the plot to blow Adolf Hitler to pieces as he studied his campaigns in the Wolf's Lair on 20th July 1944, the conspirators were rounded up, put on trial and hanged. To savour his revenge at leisure, Hitler ordered the trials and death throes of his enemies to be filmed. Four hours of Hitler's film have been tracked down, and from it emerges a unique and bizarre parody of justice, as the traitors to the Third Reich are hounded to their death. Hitler's avenging prosecutor is Roland Freisler, a perverted star in a sadistic screen role that he knew would please the Führer as he watched these pictures in his cinema in the Wolf's Lair.
The oil bonanza, which breathed life into the nation's economy, also spelled death to many young men who worked under the icy waters of the North Sea. constructing and maintaining the oil-rigs. This toll of diving tragedies prompted the Government to set up schools training divers up to a recognised standard. One such is Fort Bovisand, Plymouth. In this film, the progress is charted of 16 would-be divers, who embark on a three-month course that will equip them for work on the rigs. Some learn quickly that they are ill-suited. Under stress physical disabilities come to light, as do mental shortcomings: indiscipline. inattention, claustrophobia and panic. One by one the 16 are eliminated, and at the end very few graduate to their cold, dark, dirty, difficult. dangerous - but highly-paid - profession.
When the converted Greenpeace trawler sailed out into the North Sea in June this year bound for Iceland, the eyes of all who cared for the preservation of the whale Were on her. For the purpose of this voyage was to touch the conscience of the world and its whaling nations on the eve of the annual conference of the International Whaling Commission. This film is a record of the clashes On Iceland, as Rainbow Warrior tried in vain to stop the carnage - falling foul of Icelandic gun-boats and Icelandic law courts. But the voyage seemed to have worked. After years of siding with the whalers, Iceland's crucial vote helped tilt the balance at the rwc. A ban on whaling for most species for an indefinite period was agreed. But was this a success? A closer look at the small print of the agreement shows that Iceland can continue her killing operation.
A 17-year-old tourist stabbed to death. A young woman taken hostage and raped. Just two of the 16,000 crimes that occurred last year on London's Underground. For the first time, a BBC film crew goes undercover with the 'Moles', a specialist. Underground police unit. Heavily outnumbered, the 'Moles' contend with an army of muggers, pickpockets, molesters, drunks and hooligans. As for the Guardian Angels: 'They've got to be a good idea,' says one detective.
'To know is to avert, if you know the future you can change it,' says Hollywood psychic Kebrina Kincade. All over America, from the psychic tearooms of Sunset Strip to the salons of Beverly Hills, more and more people are leaving their psychotherapists and heading for psychics. Some, like Catherine Oxenberg , won't make a move without consulting hers. In this film with the help of Dolphin Man, astrologer Jacqui Stallone , fat Bernice, and Mafu the 1,000-year-old man 'channelled' by Oregon housewife Penny Torres , we look at the 'seekers'; how they are helped or hindered by what the future holds ...
A woman is battered in her own home. Trying to escape, she's dragged back by her feet and attacked with an axe. Only a 999 call saves her life. Horrific, but for Police Sergeant Colette Paul and Police Constable Annette O'Reilly , it is tragically familiar. They volunteered to run the first domestic violence unit in a British police station in Tottenham, London, which has since dealt with more than 2,000 local incidents. For Britain's real life 'Cagney and Lacey' the violence never seems to end.
The Americans have just finished an experiment which allowed television networks to plug into criminal courts. The test case was the trial of Joel B. Steinberg , a wealthy Manhattan lawyer accused of murder. The only witness was his live-in lover, Hedda Nussbaum , a children's book editor who had been battered by Steinberg over 12 years. Some stations took off soaps and game shows to run Nussbaum's testimony live. It raised important social issues, and put the cameras themselves on trial....
In the last year there has been another wave of executions of political prisoners in Iran's prisons. How can a revolution have come to this? In The Road to Terror, revolutionaries tell how their dream descended into a nightmare of terror and execution. They speak as exiles in Paris, a city preparing to celebrate the glories of the first mass revolution of 1789. Behind its strange images, the struggle for power in the Iranian revolution has followed a pattern uncannily similar to many of the great revolutions of the past. Just like 200 years ago in France, the Iranian revolution has gone down the old road from liberation to repression, the road to terror.
Documentary that reviews the case of Jeffrey MacDonald, the U.S. Marine physician who was convicted of the 1970 murder of his wife and two young daughters in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Over ten years, the secret intelligence service MI6 infiltrated about 30 British agents into the Soviet Union to operate with anti-Communist partisans. By 1954, Harry Carr, MI6 chief, believed that his spy network stretched from the Baltic States to Siberia. Then Carr discovered that MI6 was the victim of an astonishing sting organised and orchestrated by the KGB. Not surprisingly, the disaster was covered up and the blame erroneously placed upon the traitor, Kim Philby. For the first time, the inside story of an MI6 operation is told by MI6's officers and agents and, uniquely, by those on the other side of the Iron Curtain - the KGB officers who deceived Britain's pride - the Secret Intelligence Service.
'I'm probably one of the last bounty hunters left in America,' says Leonard Padilla , a gun-toting Mexican with a black sombrero. Padilla and his two sidekicks go after fugitives who've jumped bail - and they boast a 100 per cent success rate. Are they romantic leftovers from the wild west, or villains running roughshod over citizens' rights? This film follows them in the pursuit and dramatic capture of an armed drug-dealer.
Why do radishes weep and cabbages demonstrate with Placards? What's it like to fly through the air on a large pink pig or watch your father dancing on a wardrobe in a frilly ballerina's tutu? What do you feel like when you fall off a cliff - and how do you stop the nightmares that come after you have watched as masked men shoot your grandfather? Find out in tonight's Inside Story, as dream counsellor Brenda Mallon talks to the children of Belfast, Manchester and Cambridgeshire.
In a country where cosmetics, condoms, tights, tissues and tampons are largely unavailable, and where alcoholism and abortion are commonplace, some Soviet women doubt whether a beauty competition would improve their way of life. This doesn't stop 'pretty girls' from all over the USSR converging on Moscow. Their hopes, dreams and disillusionment are the inside story of Miss USSR.
At 6.01pm on 4 April 1968, Dr Martin Luther King was shot dead by a sniper in Memphis, Tennessee. Who fired that shot and why? For more than 20 years, the man convicted of King's murder, James Earl Ray, has protested his innocence. He says he was framed. Now Inside Story's dramatic new investigation closely examines the evidence and seriously questions whether Ray actually pulled the trigger. After an extensive inquiry in America, the film tracks down key witnesses, who provide startling new allegations about the conspiracy to kill Dr King.
During the years 1939 to 1945, more than a quarter of a million European gypsies were rounded up and deported to ghettos and concentration camps, where they were gassed or starved to death. Through the moving testimony of gypsy survivors from Auschwitz and other camps, Inside Story tells for the first time on television how the Nazis planned the systematic genocide of the gypsy race. Filmed in Poland, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, Holland and Germany, their story is the Forgotten Holocaust.
For the first time, a documentary crew is allowed inside the South African police force. This film is the story of the Cape Town riot unit, the largest in the country. The local black township is in a state of unrest, and the riot unit is busy enforcing a curfew and 'taking action' against residents. Serving officers talk frankly about doing a job that sometimes means killing black people, and express their apprehensions about the dramatic political changes.
Aids is a disease which threatens every one of us. Heterosexuals are now becoming infected at a faster rate than gay men and many families will be devastated by its impact.
British Rail's crack Yorkshire Pullman carries business people to London from Leeds in two hours precisely. A first-class service is demanded by first-class passengers from a staff many of whom date back to the great steam age, with all those old-fashioned notions of dedication to service and loyalty. In foul and fair weather we see how the stoic railwaymen struggle to maintain the service. Battered by the 'great British winter' of 1991 both railwaymen and the great British public suffer together from the short-sightedness and poor planning of someone up there.
During the 60s Colonel Oleg Penkovsky , a senior Russian intelligence officer, had proved himself to be 'our spy of the century'. For 16 months he passed the Kremlin's vital secrets to MI6 and the CIA. Suddenly the KGB arrested Penkovsky along with the British businessman Greville Wynne. Their joint show trial abruptly terminated M16's precious asset. But how did the KGB find out about Penkovsky's activities? For the first time the KGB investigators and Penkovsky's CIA case officers disclose the innermost secrets of the case, and reveal that they blame MI6 for Penkovsky's demise.
"I realised that I was going to be raped and that being raped was better than being dead, so therefore I was going to submit." (Rape Victim). For most women, rape is a life-threatening situation. In nearly 70 per cent of cases the woman knows her assailant. This film takes a close look at the violent crime of rape. It talks to women who have survived it, men who have committed it and follows the Metropolitan Police as they investigate an allegation of a brutal gang rape of an 18-year-old girl.
The war is over, but thousands of families in Kuwait have loved ones missing. During the occupation large numbers of Kuwaitis were taken as prisoners to Iraq. Many were tortured, some will never return. Today, their families wait anxiously for news of their fate. Meanwhile, in liberated Kuwait, others have gone missing since the war ended. They are Palestinians suspected of having collaborated with the Iraqis. Their families are not told why they have been abducted, and there is growing evidence that, they, too, are being tortured. The war may be over, but the brutality and the suffering still continue.
The last American GIs left Vietnam in 1975. They left behind them the Amerasians - the children of American soldiers and Vietnamese women. Following the recent US Amerasian Homecoming Act, thousands of these youngsters are expected to arrive in the States in search of their fathers and a new way of life. Three young Amerasians, Sonny Ngygen , Linda Vo and Trang Ngugen , all in their early 20s and all haunted by the question 'Who am I?' have just arrived in the States. Their stories are interweaved with the experiences of American-born children of GIs who died in the war, and set against a backdrop of 1990s
London is choked by illegally parked cars. Emergency services are obstructed and public transport hindered. Enter the dreaded 'clampers' and their partners in misery, the 'towers'. Between them they immobilise or remove more than a quarter of a million cars a year, leaving their owners frustrated, fuming and fined.
With vast reserves of diamonds and valuable minerals, seas heavy with fish, the West African country of Sierra Leone should be rich. But this year, the United Nations declared it the least developed country in the world. Inside Story examines how the infrastructure and natural wealth of this tiny nation have been devastated by foreign exploitation, corruption, economic mismanagement and a crippling debt.
In the wake of the Birmingham Six appeal, Michael Mansfield , QC, a leading defence barrister, reveals exclusively to Inside Story his radical proposals for transforming the criminal justice system. Mansfield maintains that the scale and frequency of miscarriages shows them to be an integral part of the system and, through the testimonies of people who have suffered injustice, demonstrates that a person's right to be thought innocent until proven guilty has been eroded. Taking the best from the French and American systems, Mansfield constructs an alternative for Britain that is based on reaffirming this right.
The Nightrider uncovers the disturbing truth about the murder, 28 years ago, of black civil-rights leader Medgar Evers by the Ku Klux Klan. His widow tells of her obsessive hunt for the man whom she believes to be the killer of her husband. He is a white supremacist who "confessed" to the murder at a Klan rally, was tried by the courts but not convicted. He is due to stand trial again soon. The programme, which is a part-dramatisation of events, uncovers new evidence and makes it horrifyingly clear that in the Mississippi swamplands racial hatred remains a reality. Indeed, filming took place in an atmosphere of increasing tension that culminated in the production team being shot at.
The Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka are one of the most ruthless groups of independence fighters in the modern world. The Indian authorities believe that Rajiv Gandhi , killed in May this year, fell victim to a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber. Many members of the group are willing to take part in suicide attacks, and a large number of the frontline fighters are just young boys and girls. Inside Story talks to the Tigers' leaders and to those who are prepared to kill themselves for the cause. What motivates their "fanatical" commitment and why would they have wanted to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi ?
1993
Every day half a million commuters pour into London on British Rail trains and every day something goes wrong - trains run late and passengers crush into ancient carriages. "Operating difficulties", staff shortages, leaves on the line, even the wrong kind of snow count among the excuses. This film spends a week behind the scenes with Network SouthEast, the busiest railway in the world, to discover what lies behind the commuters' misery. "You'd think we make their trains late on purpose the way they talk to us," says one weary BR manager as he tells of the abuse he faces.
The first major investigation into Roland "Tiny" Rowland whose company, Lonrho, was 20 years ago unforgettably castigated by Edward Heath as "this unacceptable face of capitalism". At that time, surrounded by scandal and allegations of greed and deception, Rowland's ambitions seemed devastated. Ever since he has fought a bitter campaign to establish his respectability and importance. Few men in public life have so successfully concealed their activities and provoked such controversy. Robert Maxwell 's biographer Tom Bower has written and produced this film which attempts to discover the man behind the multimillionaire, merchant adventurer, political intriguer and accomplished powerbroker. He unravels Rowland's past and interviews those who have benefited and suffered from his ambition.
Documentary on Karlovac, a UN transit camp in Croatia that offers sanctuary to 3,000 broken people. It records the shattered lives of those for whom it has now become "home".
The recent murder of Liverpool toddler Jamie Bulger , allegedly by two 10-year-olds, shocked the world. As concern grows about juvenile crime, this film goes behind the locked doors of the Aycliffe Centre for Children to discover what happens to Britain's most dangerous children. Surrounded by cuddly toys and affectionate staff, most have committed crimes which, had they been adults, would have attracted sentences of 14 years or more. Inside Story focuses on a handful of the children whose crimes range from armed robbery to murder.
Far from the image of LA Law, the New York City criminal courts sit 24 hours a day handling one million court appearances and 250,000 new defendants a year. But a defendant's fate hangs not upon the decision of a jury but on the outcome of discreet negotiations between his or her lawyer, the prosecution and the judge. These deals were off the record. Until now. Currently under discussion for introduction to British courts, this system of "plea bargaining" means that for the majority of Americans the constitutional right to a trial by jury is a thing of the past. With comprehensive access to the New York criminal courts, Inside Story observes and records this system at work. What emerges is a frightening vision of the future where gun law rules the streets and justice is little more than social control.
"There is very much a 'not in my backyard' attitude to mental health problems," says Paul Savage , a community psychiatric nurse in north Tyneside. Paul has 30 clients on his caseload, all of them long-term mentally ill patients, many suffering from schizophrenia. Some are violent; some feel isolated; most are depressed and hear voices. So what can be done to help them? Inside Story has been given special access to witness Care in the Community at the sharp end by following Paul on his daily rounds to visit his clients.
The violent, degrading and complex relationship between pimps and prostitutes in London is explored in this film by Olivia Lichtenstein. Shot in the hotels and streets of Paddington, it reveals the brutal methods used to keep girls on the game. The camera follows the Metropolitan Police's vice unit on the trail of the pimp of a 16-year-old prostitute, and on a raid of a brothel run by organised crime. A 36-year-old woman tells of how, when in fear of her life, she was persuaded to testify against her pimp, who was jailed for ten years. "We crave love and attention," she says, "and when we find someone we don't want to let him go, even if it means giving him every penny you earn." Of the pimps Insp Theo Dawson observes: "A lot of people say that living off immoral earnings is a victim-less crime.... Clearly it's not, and the women are the victims."
Battersea Technology College in London is one of the roughest comprehensive schools in the country. The local council, Conservative flagship Wandsworth, is the first council aiming to abolish the comprehensive system by introducing "aptitude selection" for all new entrants. To ring the changes and sort out the staff (most have had to reapply for their own jobs), the council brought in a new principal specially head-hunted for the job. Inside Story has spent a year inside Battersea Tech following the new principal, Michael Clark, as he tries to turn this "sink" school into a success. "We are 4,382nd in the league tables - 18th from the bottom," says Clark. "In some ways it's very depressing. In other ways it is an interesting starting point. One can only get better."
In January 1987 Terry Waite was taken hostage in Beirut. During the 1,763 days of his captivity, rumour and speculation mounted over the events leading up to his kidnapping, in particular the extent of his association with Oliver North , the American colonel at the centre of the arms-for-hostages deals. Was Waite naïve or headstrong in returning to Beirut? What were his motives at the time? Did he have the right sort of personality to negotiate successfully with the kidnappers? In this exclusive film Waite faces up to these issues, he describes the deprivation and tortures of nearly four years of solitary captivity, reveals the tensions of life with the other hostages and explains how the legacy of those years is a haunting sense of vulnerability.
It's no longer just question of someone down on their luck fiddling a few pounds they're not strictly entitled to. Not even of determined but small-scale fraud. Now the crime gangs are moving in, determined to exploit the benefit system, and Lesley and Ray are two of the social security fraud officers whose job it is to grapple with them and expose systematic theft. "Organised crime is gouging its way through the benefit system," they say. "Every year we are losing millions, if not billions of pounds." But they are under-resourced and overworked, and may be doing little more than scratch at the surface of the crime. Inside Story has gained first-time access to their unit as they investigate those perpetrating this theft.
On a Saturday morning in August, traffic on a long section of the M1 has come to a standstill. A minor collision in roadworks near Luton has had a huge knock-on effect. Within an hour there are five more pile-ups and a 13-mile tailback. Tempers and radiators are at boiling point. Every day hundreds of thousands of caravans, lorries and day-trippers travel this stretch of the M1, Britain's busiest motorway, and they have to negotiate the crashes and the contraflows. Inside Story steps smartly through the barrier of cones to find out who is responsible for the chaos on Britain's roads, and asks, on behalf of every motorist: "Why does no one seem to be working in the coned-off lane?"
During the presidential primaries in 1992, would-be Democratic candidate Bill Clinton faced an agonising decision as Governor of Arkansas. A convicted killer named Rickey Ray Rector was languishingon death row in Clinton's own state awaiting execution, while pressure mounted to commute the sentence on the grounds that Rector was mentally unfit to receive the death sentence. Clinton was torn between his liberal sympathies and his need, as a politician, to take a tough stance on law and order. News footage, eye-witness interviews, and analysis from Clinton's supporters and opponents re-create a controversial episode in last year's campaign that ended with Clinton in the White House and Rector dead. To the end, Rector had no understanding of his fate. Effectively lobotomised after firing a gun into his own head, the day before his execution he said he would vote for Clinton.
1995
Documentary follows the BT Nuisance calls bureau in combatting nuisance callers and working with police to support the victims
The harrowing story of Caroline Beale, a woman from east London, charged with murdering her baby daughter in a New York hotel bathroom. The complex issues involved in her case will come before an American jury in June.
Tonight's programme looks at three victims of post traumatic stress disorder and the new treatment they are undertaking.
Mountain climbing is currently Britain's fastest growing sport. However, with the increase in popularity comes an increase in the number of people who need to be rescued. This past winter 64 people were caught in Scottish avalanches and ten of them died as a result. Tonight's programme features unprecedented access to the organisations that make up the Scottish Mountain Rescue, which include 25 civilian units, two teams from the RAF and helicopters from both the navy and the air force, as they attempt to battle against the elements to rescue injured climbers.
London has become the international clearing house for thousands of stolen paintings and antiques. Detective Inspector Jill McTigue and her "Art Squad" at Scotland Yard find themselves investigating thefts that can take them from the streets of London to the Egyptian desert. They also go on the trail of two Turners stolen from the Tate worth £24 million.
According to the AA, nine out of ten drivers have experienced road rage. Inside Story tries to discover what makes ordinary people become raging beasts when they sit behind the wheel of their car.
An investigation of a court system set up to deal with domestic violence. Each year in the USA, over six million women are beaten by their abusive partners and around 4,000 thousand are killed. To deal with this hidden crime, a unique and ground breaking court was established in Miami, Florida. Inside Story travels to the Domestic Violence Court where the judges are determined to break this horrific cycle of violence. The court deals with wife beaters by sending them for treatment to reform their abusive behaviour. Since the court was set up, the number of victims prepared to prosecute has more than doubled, and many women tell the judges that they have literally saved their lives.
In the wake of Rosemary West's trial we hear exclusive testimony from the only people qualified to describe life as it really was inside 25 Cromwell Street: this is the story of Stephen and Mae West - the oldest surviving children of Fred and Rosemary.
1994
"You can close your eyes but you can't shut your ears off, "says John Wilkinson of Westminster Council's noise team. The first film in this new series follows the team as they try to make central London a quieter place. Barking dogs, blaring music, shouting neighbours and screeching burglar alarms can turn rational people into paranoid wrecks. So, although they now have extensive powers to break into cars or property where there is a noise nuisance, much of their work involves diplomacy as they diffuse explosive situations and soothe shattered nerves.
When the owner of Birmingham City Football Club, publisher David Sullivan, appointed 23-year-old Karren Brady as the club's managing director, she became the most powerful woman in football, in charge of a club with a macho reputation for hardness. She got the job because her track record proved that she had the hard-nosed business acumen that the club needed to re-establish itself as a major force in the game. Commercial common sense had to be brought to the fore. However, matters have gone far from smoothly. The film traces her tempestuous and controversial first season, during which manager Terry Cooper resigned to be replaced by Barry Fry, relegation loomed and the club reached its lowest point by being knocked out of the FA Cup by non-League Kidderminster Harriers.
Sean is 15 and well known to the Gateshead police as a juvenile car thief and burglar. He reckons he can break into a house with "good gear", grab the TV and video and get away in less than five minutes. Gladys Smith is 80 and suffering from Alzheimer's disease. When a man posing as a council officer burgled her home she couldn't remember anything about him or tell the police what had been stolen. Filmed on the streets of Gateshead, this Inside Story investigates breaking and entering by talking to the cops, the robbers and the victims. It includes footage of a police stake-out in which detectives watch a street they believe is a haven for the area's most prolific house-breakers. After many uncomfortable days, they finally move in. There is a break-in every 20 seconds in Britain - so in the time it takes to read about this documentary, another home will be burgled.
This film sounds a warning that paedophiles are often the least likely people. It investigates a man who was a top-ranking consultant on child care and yet for 30 years has secretly abused that position of trust with his paedophile cravings. Unnamed until the programme is transmitted, the man - a former teacher - managed to keep his activities undetected by his colleagues - or if they suspected, they said nothing. They - as well as some of his victims and duped friends - are among those interviewed in the programme, which reveals the full extent of one man's double life as official child protector and secret child abuser.
If you think that Michael Elphick 's Harry was tough, stand by for the real thing. News Team in Birmingham is one of the country's leading news agencies, working at a frenetic pace to place their locally generated stories on to the nation's breakfast tables. "You've got two or three minutes to phone a desk and get an order," explains picture editor Nick Bowman. Doorstepping the bereaved, dogging celebrities believed to be "playing away from home", poking their telephoto lenses through the shrubs, the job demands a ruthless streak. And if it comes down to trying to do a deal with a rival, then as head of news Christine Challand says, "you hope there's a bit of honour among thieves".
Can a person so totally suppress recollections of sexual abuse during childhood that the memory of it can only be recovered through therapy? Or are "retrieved memories" the result of overzealous therapists planting the idea in what is an already vulnerable mind? In America recently Gary Ramona was awarded $500,000 in damages from two therapists whose treatment of his daughter with truth drugs resulted in her accusing him of abuse. Now scores of British parents are claiming their children were coaxed into fabricating memories of childhood abuse. But no matter what the courts decide, families are destroyed by these claims. In tonight's Inside Story, some accused fathers and mothers in this country bravely tell their stories - as do two daughters who now believe their recovered memories were untrue. As one American psychologist points out, while abuse certainly happens, so do false allegations.
An investigation of the accident on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, in July 1969, when Senator Edward Kennedy's car plunged off a bridge and Kennedy's companion, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. The film was made in 1994, for the 25th anniversary of the event.
Are you driving a stolen car? Thousands of motorists are but do not realise it. They are victims of "car ringers" who steal cars, falsify their identities, and sell them on the second-hand market. Inside Story joins a unique operation by a police stolen car squad to seize 200 vehicles from innocent families and track down suspected ringers.
The astonishing story of June and Jennifer Gibbons, identical twin sisters locked in an all-exclusive love-hate relationship which eventually drove them to arson and an indefinite sentence in Broadmoor Hospital. In tonight's Inside Story, June tells their story.
The beach and beer are the main preoccupations in Malia, a lively resort on the island of Crete. And Louise, a 21-year-old from Blackburn, is the holiday rep whose job it is to deal with the consequences. Tonight's Inside Story follows her progress as she works long hours dealing with thefts, fights, hangover horrors, noise complaints, drunken rows, smashed up furniture and mosquito bites.
In the last four years the Lloyd's of London insurance market has lost £6.6 billion - more than in the whole of its 300-year history. This loss has had to be borne by Names - private individuals who agreed to be liable for everything, down to the last penny they own. For many this has been literally true and tonight's programme meets a few of those who feel they have lost more than they ever imagined possible. See today's choices.
What drives someone to it? Is it only for the rich and famous? Why are more and more men doing it and what difference does it make to people's lives? This week's programme lifts the lid off cosmetic surgery, going behind the scenes at one of Britain's largest centres for aesthetic plastic surgery and exploring why so many people want to change parts of their bodies, opting for the scalpel to do it.
The world of the junior doctor has been dramatised in series like Casualty and Cardiac Arrest, but what is the reality? Life on Call provides a compelling and revealing insight into the challenges two young doctors face as they start work.
1999
First transmitted in 1999, a self-made multi-millionaire, a would-be rock star and a veteran fish trader are among the many dedicated traders wheeling and dealing at Billingsgate, the early morning seafood bazaar which is Britain's largest inland fish market.
The documentary series continues with this film about Corinne Landriscina and Mark Stebbings, who live together and also work together as bailiffs recovering unpaid council tax in Leeds.
On 7 December three members of the Essex drugs underworld were found executed in a Range Rover. Their killers were convicted solely on the basis of testimony by supergrass Darren Nicholls, who is interviewed in this film exposing the myths and realities of life as a supergrass.
The documentary series takes a revealing look at modern relationships through the eyes of various couples in emotional turmoil.
The documentary series concludes with an examination of how gun ownership in America has affected young people. In Texas, the film looks at Houston's most violent areas and meets children who have suffered the trauma of being shot.
Tonight's programme explores the world of heart transplantation at Papworth hospital. It is 20 years since the first successful heart transplants were carried out in the UK at Papworth and the demand for transplantation now far outstrips the supply of organs. Doctors are faced with tough decisions as they decide who will live and who will die.
Tonight's film tells the story of a "supergrass" whose information led to two men being jailed for life for murder. After three members of the Essex drugs underworld were killed in 1995, the police had no leads - until getaway driver Darren Nicholls turned informer. But the family of one of the convicted men are fighting to prove his innocence. Actors speak the words of Nicholls and his wife.
Tonight's film travels to Rostov in Russia, a city that has earned the reputation of serial-killer capital of the world. Inside Story meets top psychiatrist Dr Alexander Bukhanovsky and investigates his continuing efforts to unlock the inner mind of the serial killer.
Despite contravening the law and being banned by the Mormon church, polygamy is still thriving in Utah. Tonight's film presents an insight into the secretive and often bizarre world that polygamists enter into. They believe that the arrangement is a step forward they must take on the road to heaven.
On Boxing Day 1994, young doctor Joan Francisco was found strangled at her London flat. The victim's family were convinced they knew the killer, an obsessed ex-boyfriend, but police claimed there was insufficient evidence to arrest him. This Inside Story special chronicles the family's five-year quest for justice.
Author Binjamin Wilkomirski's book Fragments, an account of his childhood in the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Majdanek, was acclaimed as a classic of Holocaust literature. However last year a newspaper declared Wilkomirski a fraud. This Inside Story special examines the historical evidence to establish who is telling the truth.
1992
Last year, in America, 682 men were killed by their wives or girlfriends. That is the tip of an iceberg in which an estimated three or four million women are physically and psychologically battered and abused by their partners each year. Some kill to escape their predicament, but in many cases the courts will not let these women explain what motivated them. A life sentence is not unusual and some women are even sentenced to death. In this programme prisoners in Alabama and Texas reveal how they came to commit such acts.
The lives and times of British mercenaries fighting in the Yugoslavia Civil War, earning as little as £100 a month in the Yugoslavia army's only English speaking company.
Just when majority rule is in sight, South Africa's black townships are in despair. Murders, rapes, broken families and abandoned babies are at record levels, and nowhere is the crisis greater than in Soweto, where the rebellion against apartheid began. This film focuses on the sprawling township's hospital, which every night is packed with the broken, bleeding bodies from another day's violence. Against all the odds, the hospital staff struggle to save the victims of a community at war with itself. More than 100 victims of assault arrive in the casualty department every night. Bernard Rabinowitz , a surgeon at the vast Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, says: "We get 3,500 to 5,550 stabbed chests and 5,000 to 7,000 bad head injuries - every year." And now, adding to this suffering, is an increasing Aids problem.
The investigative documentary series goes on the buses to take the pulse of a city that is grinding to a halt. Driving one of London's famous red buses has become a nightmare. One veteran double-decker driver, John Elwood , fears for his health: "I've driven a red bus for 33 years, but now the stress is too much. I've got a real blood pressure problem." Traffic congestion, irate passengers, bomb alerts and the threat of privatisation are constant hazards facing the busmen and women of a capital city on the brink of crisis.
The investigative documentary series reveals the story of Russia's master spies - known as the "illegals" or "sleepers". "We take a standard Russian," explains one retired illegal, "and turn him into a standard Canadian. Then we infiltrate him into another country and let him burrow his way into the highest levels of government, army or establishment. This takes years, but we are patient." Despite the end of the Cold War, spies are still a vital ingredient of all governments in Russia - whether communist or would-be capitalist. But they are now denied the ease of operating from embassies under diplomatic cover, so Moscow's rulers are even more dependent upon the elite of Russia's intelligence officers whose activities have until now been shrouded in secrecy.
Police on Humberside have set up four specialist units to deal solely with the growing number of reported child abuse cases. At Tower Grange police station in Hull, eight specially trained detectives are investigating over 35 cases a month. The police unit works closely with the local social services, pooling their skills to ensure that the cases are efficiently and sensitively handled, and that the victims of abuse, and their families, are properly supported. For the first time, a film team follows the police and social workers as they tackle an alleged case of sexual abuse - from the first disclosure by one of the victims, through the police investigation to the trial.
When British soldiers shot dead 24 Chinese "terrorists" in Malaya in December 1948 it was said to be one of the most successful operations in the war against the communists. However, the truth of what happened in this tiny Malayan village has haunted the British army for more than 40 years. Eye-witnesses claim that the dead were unarmed, innocent civilians, who were shot down in cold blood. Wong Ying, who was one of the witnesses to the incident, says: "In my mind it was an atrocity. No questions asked, no investigations. It was a cruel slaughter." Eric Lazenby and Don Houlston, the first soldiers to come upon the carnage in the days after the shooting, were never told exactly what their friends had done. Returning to the scene of the killing, they try to unravel the mystery.
Hidden cameras expose a cruel "flesh trade" in which thousands of women from poor countries are lured to Europe for jobs that turn out to be in the sex industry. In strange cities, and without money or passports, they are tricked and trapped into unwilling prostitution, and many fear shame, debt and reprisals if they speak out. One woman who expected to be employed as a barmaid says: "On the first day I knew what they had told us in Poland was one big lie. We couldn't move because we had almost no money and no passport. We were just scared really. The boss looked as if he could kill you if something wasn't going the way he wanted."
Maggie carries all she owns in a bag. At 42 she has lived much of the last 20 years on the streets of London, where robbery and attacks are common. What led Maggie, once a social worker, to abandon her promising career for this precarious way of life? And what is the fatal accident she drinks to forget? The story of Maggie's road to ruin provides a remarkable insight into life on our streets.
For the first time, the man the FBI described as "the perfect assassin, the very essence of evil: a man so blindly, terrifyingly obedient he would kill anyone, anywhere, without hesitation" tells his story. The son of wealthy, well-travelled parents, Michael Townley was an unlikely assassin. Yet both he and his wife were agents of DINA, the Chilean secret police, who were as ruthless as the Gestapo. Inside Story reveals how a reasonable, quite ordinary man crossed an invisible line into a world of torture and death, convincing himself that murder was moral - even normal.
As many as one in five women in prison in Britain today is a Nigerian woman convicted of smuggling drugs into the UK. Driven by desperation and poverty, the women swallow the drugs in packages or stuff them into body orifices. Inside Story follows HM Customs and Excise at work at Heathrow Airport and talks to the women in prison themselves who reveal their heart-breaking stories as the victims of the drug trade.
This film goes behind the scenes with a south London undertaking firm as they visit grieving families, collect bodies from hospital mortuaries, embalm them and prepare them for view. From the makers of the recent Town Hall series, it provides a rare glimpse inside the secret world of the funeral parlour and dispels many myths about the business of death.
1990
The last time they gazed on Japan they were watching the most horrific single event in the history of war - the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima. Forty-five years later the American airmen who dropped the bomb return to see the city they annihilated. This remarkable film tells their story as they retrace wartime steps across the Pacific and come face to face with survivors of their nuclear attack.
Investigates the fire inside Reactor One at Windscale in October 1957, and the previous emissions and leaks of radiation that occured there, contaminating the area, in spite of denials from the authorities. Workers from the site at the time corroborate this and the programme considers the secrecy surrounding the events.
As Gorbachev draws back the iron curtain, western ideas and lifestyles are changing the Soviet Union. Not all of them are positive: there is a growing vice industry in the country's major cities. Soviet police claim there are 10,000 prostitutes in Moscow alone. The shops are empty and most women's lives are unrelentingly drab; more and more young girls are drawn by the 'high life'. A foreign currency prostitute can earn 1,000 roubles for one 'trick' - five times the national monthly wage. Inside Story goes under cover with the police and the women themselves tell their story.
Black sportsmen and women, wearing British colours, are winning more gold medals, setting new records and scoring more points, goals and runs than ever before. Some claim this is evidence of a natural black aptitude for sport. Others argue that sport provides the best opportunity for people often discriminated against. This revealing film challenges both views and asks: does the best man always win - whatever his colour?
Three thousand people have been killed in the Natal province of South Africa during the last three years in a bitter struggle for black political power. The fighting between the African National Congress and Inkatha, Chief Buthelezi's political organisation, threatens to destroy any prospect of peaceful change in South Africa. Using the emotional testimony of people caught up in the conflict, this film reveals a systematic campaign of violence by Inkatha, supported by the South African police.
The Broadwater Farm riots and the murder of PC Keith Blakelock in October 1985 led to a ten-week trial and life sentence for three young men - Engin Raghip , Mark Braithwaite and Winston Silcott. All three convictions were based on uncorroborated confessions obtained by the police in the absence of solicitors. There were no witnesses and no forensic evidence. Charles Wheeler examines the murder investigation and the ensuing trial, and questions whether any of the three should have been convicted.
Most of us shudder when we see a rat. Nearly all of us call for help. Ratcatchers are the men who come to answer our calls and soothe us. Those calls increased by 20 per cent last year. City rats live in our sewers. Here they multiply in a nice warm environment and we throw away an ever increasing amount of waste which sustains them and their young. From time to time they break out of the sewers bringing disease and destroying property. Some even appear in our toilet bowls.
Ten years ago the workers at the Gdansk shipyard went on strike, an action that was to lead eventually to the fall of the Polish government. It was a long and bitter struggle, fraught with danger and personal sacrifice. From Gdansk, Inside Story uncovered secret police film and the strikers' own video record of those turbulent events.
Our Kev' says the fresh wreath laid year after year on her son's grave by a still bitter Phyllis Freeman. Kev was one of the 95 people who die every week on our roads. The driver was fined £400 for driving carelessly. Inside Story asks whether that is just.
Doctors around the world are monitoring and participating in torture. Inside Story talks to them, to the tortured prisoners and to the campaigners risking their lives to clean up the medical profession.
For 18 years George Blake served as a senior MI6 officer. In 1952 he became a double agent, betraying MI6 operations and personnel to the KGB. Over nine years, during the critical period of the Cold War, he destroyed most of M16's activities in eastern Europe. His conviction in 1961 and spectacular escape bequeathed a legacy of speculation, intrigue and outrage - the stuff of a John Le Carre novel. But fiction gives way to fact in this unprecedented documentary. For the first time the KGB's most devastating agent in Britain answers his accusers - and reveals some astonishing secrets to reporter and producer Tom Bower.
Howard Marks was an underworld myth: drugs trafficker, fugitive and Oxford graduate famous for his impersonations of Elvis Presley. For years, he eluded the law. His wealth and charm were legendary. He was untouchable: a middle-class outlaw. He came to obsess and repel Craig Lovato of the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Lovato determined to track him down. The key would be Lord Moynihan, an exiled peer who ran massage parlours in steamy Asian cities. He was persuaded to betray his old friend Howard Marks by recording their private conversations on a hidden tape recorder. This would be a manhunt like no other.
Directed by the celebrated French film-maker, Marcel Ophuls , whose Oscar-winning film about notorious war criminal Klaus Barbie Hotel, Terminus was shown on BBC television last year. The programme started out as a documentary celebrating the disappearance of the Berlin Wall, but in the making it turned into a musical comedy about the peaceful revolution. The voices of the people who were astonished and overjoyed, the choices of their politicians who had to think fast as their world came crashing down. All these are interwoven with snatches from old songs, films and BBC news reports. And what commentary could be more relevant than Bing Crosby singing Irving Berlin's Song of Freedom, inspired by US President Roosevelt's 1941 message to Congress calling for freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
A documentary containing rare footage inside Long Kesh in 1990. It includes interviews with many republican and loyalist prisoners at the time. Well worth having a look at this.
2000
A report on the struggle of an attractive young woman, Gail, whose little-understood condition of body dysmorphic disorder led her to believe herself to be ugly and to repeatedly mutilate herself.
In 1995 Len Carter shot his estranged wife Loraine Whiting and then killed himself. Although Loraine called the police, by the time they entered her house she was already dead. The police maintain they did everything possible, but Loraine's family are convinced more could have been done to save her life.
An Inside Story documentary looking at the poetry written by Tito, an 11-year-old Indian boy with autism whose work gives a rare insight into this condition.
Tonight's Inside Story documentary focuses on the vociferous opposition by residents of Sherwood in Nottingham to the news that two sex offenders, who had completed their sentences, were to be moved into special accommodation in the local prison.
1997
A new six-part series of the investigative programme begins with a look at the KGB and its recruitment of women to seduce information from foreign diplomats, businessmen and military personnel. The programme highlights one recruit, Violetta Seina, who targeted an American marine, while former KGB officers and "swallows" speak for the first time about their "bed espionage" duties.
The investigative series looks at the Royal Navy's arduous two-week survival course. The film follows a mixed group of marines, air crew, divers and a female flight observer, as they struggle to survive in the wild with few supplies, also avoiding mock enemy forces in the face of exhaustion, cold and hunger.
Following the rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in a small New Jersey town three years ago, by a convicted paedophile, her mother Maureen successfully campaigned for a new law in the United States to make known convicted sex offenders. Tonight's programme highlights her campaign and asks if this is the answer to preventing future crimes of this nature.
For more than 20 years heroin has been the most important thing in the life of addict James, but now his health is deteriorating and he knows he must kick the habit. His wife Natalie has also had enough of the lifestyle. Inside Story follows his struggle to beat the addiction and graphically reveals what happens after he checks into a detox clinic.
A government hotline set up last year, invited the public to help catch benefit fraudsters who each year cost the DSS three billion pounds. Inside Story looks at how fraud investigators raid suspect businesses, descend upon the homes of alleged cheats and check the thousands of anonymous tip-offs which flood the hotline each week. This documentary ponders the incidence of people in the UK claiming single parent benefits from the state whilst continuing to see their partners. Concentrates on the efforts of two regional fraud offices, in Hull and East London, to recoup some of the millions lost by the DSS in benefit fraud every year.
The story of Jan Ruston, who, when her 20-year marriage ended three years ago, did a "Shirley Valentine". She travelled to Cyprus to get away from it all, and found new love. But the man she fell in love with and trusted, knowingly infected her with HIV.
How have Swiss banks profited from Nazi Germany? In their search for the missing millions, two men, Edgar Bronfman and Israel Singer, uncover what they believe to be evidence of Swiss collusion with the Nazis. The programme includes accounts of survivors who continue a struggle against the obduracy of Swiss banks and explores the truth of Switzerland's past.
In this first of five new documentaries, the spotlight is on Britain's gangster underworld and the women who share their lives with some of its key players. The film includes interviews with seven gangsters' molls, who talk about the pros and cons of life with some of the country's most dangerous criminals and what attracts them to this risk-ridden world.
On 26 March this year, the bodies of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult were found in a house in San Diego. They all recorded their farewells on videotape and committed suicide by taking a fatal cocktail of drugs and alcohol. Who were they and why did they end their lives?
A look at the growing number of agencies and individuals who are willing, for a price, to seek revenge on behalf of others. Inside Story explores the psychology of revenge, from the bizarre but legal antics of the Get Back Agency to the terrifying retribution of the hitman.
From London to a Triad-controlled black market in the Far East, Inside Story this week probes one of the world's most organised smuggling rings to expose a lucrative and violent illegal tobacco trade.
Every year the island of Majorca draws two million British tourists, but the combination of cheap alcohol, high spirits and scorching weather can spell trouble for some. Her Majesty's representative in Palma de Majorca, John Blakemore, has to pick up the pieces, working in one of the world's busiest British consulates. Inside Story joins him and his wife Joan as they deal with this year's summer season.
1996
Left brain damaged after an operation, two-year-old Ian Stewart is in pain day and night and not expected to reach his teens. His parents, who have sacrificed their careers to care for Ian, feel his quality of life is negligible. This film records both their tragic situation and the moral dilemma they face: is euthanasia the answer?
This programme goes behind the scenes to show how pop industry bosses manufacture the latest teenage "boy band" sensation, Upside Down, from auditions for the band members through to their first performance.
Update on the story of a London Civil Servant who was arrested in New York in 1994 carrying her dead baby. After eight months on remand, Caroline awaits her trial date.
Julie Hill was paralysed following a car crash, but she is about to become a bionic woman. Julie has been chosen to have the world's first electronic implant which would allow her to stand up at the press of a button, but using her own muscles. Filmed over a year, this programme follows Julie and her family before and after surgery, telling a story of intense effort and personal triumph.
In August 1995, climber Alison Hargreaves , the first woman to reach the summit of Everest alone and without oxygen, was blown to her death on her descent of the world's second highest peak K2. In this Inside Story special her husband Jim Ballard and their children journey to the "killer mountain" to visit Alison's last resting place.
25 Million Pounds details the collapse of Barings Bank in the mid 1990s primarily by a broker called Nick Leeson, who lost £827 million ($1.3 billion) by speculating on futures contracts. The film contextualises the downfall as the history of Barings Bank was one of the oldest and most prestigious merchant banks in Britain, run by the same family for decades with extensive ties to Britain's elites. But in the late 19th century Barings almost went bankrupt after investing heavily in South American bonds, including backing the construction of a sewer system in Buenos Aires. The bank was saved by The Bank of England, but Edward Baring, the head of the bank, was financially ruined and never recovered. This film explores the culture of Barings and of the financial markets during the 1990s, and how Nick Leeson was able to cause another huge loss of money to the bank, this time bankrupting the company.
Los Angeles is the only city in the world which has its own police team dedicated to fighting the crime of stalking. Tonight's first in a new six-part series of documentaries, follows the LAPD's Threat Management Unit - known as the "stalker squad" - as they investigate some bizarre and dangerous cases.
In 1934, in Canada, Elzire Dionne gave birth to five identical girls. To ensure the babies' survival, the sisters were removed from their parents and looked after in a specially built hospital, only to become a major tourist attraction.
A documentary about four intrepid lady shots who have taken on the men at their own game, in the exclusive world of the shooting party.
The story of Christopher, a young boy who suffers from severe epilepsy. The film follows his development over five years, from child to teenager.
Tonight's programme goes behind the scenes of the huge security operation, set up by eight of the country's regional police forces, during this year's Euro 96 football championship - Britain's biggest sporting event for 30 years.
From a bride betrayed on her wedding night to a lottery winner who walked out on his partner, this documentary goes behind closed doors to hear the personal stories of people involved in just a few of the nation's marital break-ups.
Karzan Krekar's family are trapped in a safe haven in northern Iraq. Karzan lives with his wife and child in Britain, watching helplessly as the situation in Iraq becomes evermore unstable and his family are exposed to increasing danger. In February this year, Karzan took his life in his hands and embarked on a perilous mission to bring his family to safety. But he was only able to bring a few of his brothers and had to employ "smugglers" to ensure safe passage. With hidden cameras, tonight's Inside Story charts Karzan's progress as he delves into eastern Europe's underworld to secure fake IDs and passports, and prepares to lead his brothers through a tangled web of secret Mafia routes, across unknown borders and cultures. Will they make it to Britain and will they be granted political asylum? Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein's troops take the safe haven of Arbil and all lines to the city are severed, provoking renewed attacks from the Americans.
The inside story of the life of Robert Maxwell. Tom Bower reveals in forensic detail the financial web which underpinned the Maxwell empire and the people who supported him. This film details exactly what happened in the House of Maxwell in the years, months and days leading to his death on a yacht in the Canaries. Expertly woven together with incredible, previously unseen, private archive of Maxwell from his humble beginnings to his flamboyant, international, jet set lifestyle.
1998
People love to hate estate agents but they also need to use them. Inside Story examines the strange love-hate relationship between the agents, their clients and the buyers.
In 1974 Amy Billig was abducted by a biker gang passing through her small Florida community. Today Amy would be 40. Her mother is convinced she is still alive and has spent the intervening years searching for her. Inside Story joins the relentless search and reveals a dramatic ending.
Britain has the highest number of underage mothers in Europe. Tonight Inside Story takes a look at the different experiences of three young women who all became pregnant before they were 16.
Documentary telling the stories of three Asian women in mixed-race relationships who faced violence, intimidation and isolation after rejecting a traditional arranged marriage.
A behind-the-scenes look at the world of supermodels, following a group of teenage hopefuls during New York Fashion Week.
The series concludes with a film exploring the troubled world of the young homeless through the eyes of Tommy and Crystal, a couple living on the streets of London. As Tommy tries to help Crystal kick her drug habit, they start to dream of getting off the streets for ever.
The programme follows Centaur, a group of Welsh strippers, as they leave their wives and families to perform for audiences of screaming women in Britain's clubs. The resulting film says as much about the sexuality of nineties women as it does about stripping.
In March 1997 The Times newspaper columnist and broadcaster John Diamond was diagnosed with throat cancer. Inside Story follows Diamond through the year that has changed both him and his life forever.
Tonight a look at the sales methods used in car showrooms.
The story of Mary Kay Letourneau who married her sixth-grade student after serving prison time for raping him. Their student-teacher relationship made headlines in 1995 when he was 12 and she was 34.
The sleeping pill Rohypnol has become known as the date-rape drug in Britain and the USA. Tonight reveals the effect the drug has on people's behaviour and interviews women who are trying to seek justice after being drugged and then raped.
Since the Second World War, two million babies have been born worldwide as a result of donor insemination. This programme meets some of the children who are now struggling to come to terms with their identities, and donors who explain their feelings about their offspring.
Britain's first million pound black footballer, Justin Fashanu, seemingly had everything - looks, talent and money. But last May his body was found in a lock-up garage in London's East End. He had, apparently, hanged himself. By talking to those who knew him best, including exclusive interviews with his brother John and other family members, Inside Story seeks to uncover the real Justin Fashanu.