6 episodes · 15th February 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.
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