9 episodes · 1st January 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?
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