Man Alive

Trevor Philpott investigates how class is categorised. He asks whether old snobberies are dead or whether they're merely being replaced by new prejudices.

Man Alive speaks to couples who, for various reasons, have decided not to take the traditional route towards marriage.

Even doctors, used as they are to death from disease, find that the argument about ' mercy killing' faces them with a great moral issue.

The star business is a money spinner. About every mass circulation newspaper or magazine has its star column and its professional star gazer. The public, they say, demands them -and anyway, they add, it's only harmless fun. But is it so harmless? Man Alive tonight examines some British astrologers, their craft, the addicts, and doctors, who maintain that astrology has the power not only to amuse-but kill.

American Independence Day 1966 and 300 members of C.O.R.E. (Congress of Racial Equality) move into Baltimore, Maryland. In America's long hot summer of violence over the integration issue Baltimore was picked as a number one target by race equality workers. Violence was expected. But what was achieved? A Man Alive team was there.

Twenty-five million of us live in houses that do not belong to us, pay a landlord, obey his rules. Council flats, private houses, rooms for rent: a headache for local government, new legislation for Parliament. Misery for some tenants. Crooked profits for some landlords. In a four-part enquiry Man Alive looks each month at the world of the landlord, the tenant, the area where they confront each other, and the alternative - buying a home of your own.

Thousands of parents in this country are coping, or attempting to cope, with the problem of bringing up handicapped children. Their lives are different, their family circumstances dramatically altered. For many the problems seem insupportable. Theirs is a life containing a unique kind of stress.

The oldest criminal organisation in the world. With its roots in the poverty and misery of Sicily, with its twentieth-century manifestation in the waterfront rackets and drug-smuggling gangs of America. For more than 300 years Mafia has plagued the forces of law and order. After a new purge, many of the alleged leaders will be brought to .trial this autumn. But will this finish the Mafia? Will its power ever be broken?

What happens when the children have grown up and left home? Is the marriage empty? What happens when married and single women must accept middle-age? Increasingly today, women from their late thirties to their early fifties find ' that certain age' involves special stress and a unique loneliness.

In the second part of this four-part enquiry Man Alive looks at the world of the landlord, from private operators to the municipal corporations. Who are the men to whom we pay our rent? Who are the men who make the rules tenants must obey? And what are the profits? Twenty-five-million of us live under landlords: few of us know anything about them.

The unobtrusive, speckled grouse Is the most prestigious bird in the world. A good grouse moor in August is a very exclusive place. The first line of Grouse Shooting and Management runs: ' It would be idle to pretend that grouse driving is the sport of other than the rich.' To provide a party of seven guns with a week's good shooting may cost more than £ 1,000. Why does it cost so much? Who are the people that can afford this sort of luxury? What makes them feel that their money is well spent?

The will to fight, they say, comes from the hope of victory. But what about the men who have to fight without any hope at all; who know, even before they begin, that they are doomed to lose? For that sort of fight a man needs a special kind of stomach

The half-castes are not wanted in the Blacks' camp and they're not wanted by the majority of Whiles; so we give them a good education and if they've got a good education, well they've got a chance then of looking after themselves. When you are 1,000 miles from the nearest civilisation, in the heart of the Australian bush, freedom has a special name to the White rancher and the Aborigine farmhands.

Twenty-five million of us live as the tenants of landlords. In the first programme of this four-part series Man Alive looked at the problems of tenants; in the second, at the attitudes of landlords. Tonight's programme looks at the area of conflict between the two. When landlord evicts tenant, when tenant calls in the rent officer, when both disagree: how are the differences resolved both inside and outside the law?

The wily Steptoe and his son have made national characters of the Cockney totters. Every morning hundreds of real-life Steptoes set out in their carts to drag the city streets for treasure-and for bread. What manner of men are they-businessmen, or beggars, rich men, poor men, or thieves? What do their families think of them? What are the tricks of the trade?

In the struggle for racial equality there are two ways for the American Negro. The militant, vociferous, demanding way of the civil rights demonstrators; or the other way, the middle-class way, the soft approach to integration. When a middle-class Negro is well-off, educated, professionally successful, he has all the things that should make him acceptable in a prejudiced society. But do they?

'Jesus Wept and so Should All the Sinners' is the command of evangelist preacher David Wilkerson , an American with a message for Britain. His critics accuse him of using mass hypnosis to produce the crowd of weeping sinners who come forward at his meetings to be ' saved.' He justifies his techniques by reminding critics that Jesus wept. He weeps himself - frequently.

In Great Britain in 1966 we have the mini-skirt, swinging London, the highest average wage in our history, a Labour Government, and the wage freeze. We also have the most complicated and the oldest system of aristocracy in the world. There is something very British about the way we regard our Peers. For those who inherit-and for those who are appointed—what is it like to be living like a lord?

Thirty years ago. going Into service was a way of staying off the dole, of keeping your daughter out of trouble. They went into a servant's hall, a family within a family ruled by butler and housekeeper. Every underfootman, every house or kitchen maid, knew his place and kept it. Promotion was certain, if slow, but none were ever allowed to forget they were servants. Today the big households are disappearing, servants are harder to come by. So, who does answer the bell-and, with the aristocracy impoverished, who rings it?

At only nine years old the average American girl is almost certain to be taken by her mother and fitted for a bra: just one of the commercial pressures brought to bear on the sub-teenagers of the United States -children with a billion dollars a year to spend in pocket money, children who are a target for the men with something to sell

Twenty-five million people live In homes owned by landlords, and, as was seen in the first three programmes on this theme, it causes problems. There is an alternative-for some: house purchase But that too can cause trouble, bring problems and pain to the person who tries buying the roof over his head.

Most of us see the fairground only once a year, think of fairground people as a cross between con-men and gypsies -out to take our money from us in the few hours they are in town. But what really goes on in the world of freak shows, hoop-la a stalls and the giant machines? Who are the families who control the fairs and make a fortune from them? Who are the gaff lads with dyed hair, earrings and tattoos who follow the fair for the fun - and the girls?

Most of us at one time or another must have considered dying; considered how we would feet if we knew about it in advance; how much would It affect those we leave behind. An idle speculation? Not for thousands of us. Many men and women know they are going to die, know almost exactly how much longer they have to live. How do these people adjust? What can they do for those they must leave behind? How are they affected when every day they find themselves living with death? And what is it like for those who must wait with them-and then live on after?

Every night they thunder across our television screens - Red Indians: proud heathen warriors, a legend from the past. But nearly half a million American Indians still live on reservations in conditions described by President Johnson as ' enough to brine the blush of shame to our cheeks when we look at what we have done to our first citizens.' The tribes still have war dances at night -for the young men in uniform going overseas to Vietnam to fight for the American cause. But how do they live on the reservations? What is their pride? And whose is the shame?

When election time comes around everybody with a vote has the chance to send the man of their choice to Parliament. But who chooses the candidates themselves? What secret procedures take place behind closed doors? What questions are asked? And who vets the candidates' wives? Man Alive cameras have, for the first time, been behind the closed doors to find out.

The conventions have not changed much in a hundred years. It's still a ring announcing to the world a girl has got her man: it's still a time of waiting, of saving, of preparation, and of stress. Being married presents problems enough. Being engaged to be married brings problems of its own. Is virginity old-fashioned? Do you save for a home or spend on your courtship? It's a testing time - and a trying time.

On a small island off the coast of China an old man and an ageing army wait-in the forlorn hope that the day will come when they return to the mainland as the liberators. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist Chinese army who retreated to Formosa seventeen years ago, flushed off the mainland by Red Chinese victors, still believe that they will one day rule China. In the meantime they bombard the mainland with little hydrogen balloons and propaganda messages, and have spent £1,500 million of American money. But as the old soldiers fade away does the dream fade too?