6 episodes · 10th July 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.
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.
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