12 episodes · 19th May 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.
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