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.
First broadcast in 1975, this provocative documentary about an 11-year-old serial arsonist shocked millions across the UK. Michael 'Mini' Cooper had already torched a church and set his family home ablaze, knowing his father to be inside. The film follows the angelic looking Mini in a young offenders home in County Durham, as social workers and psychiatrists quiz and probe the charismatic and intelligent tearaway to determine his future.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This documentary explores the culture of Barings and of the financial markets during the 1990s, and how Nick Leeson was able to cause a huge loss of money to the bank, bankrupting the company.
The eldest surviving children of Fred and Rosemary West talk about growing up in the house where the bodies of nine women were discovered.
