Man Alive

Colonel Eric Hefford. C.B.E., D.S.O. retired from twenty-four years of army life, looked around him at the crumbling British Empire and stepped deftly on to the band-wagon. He set up shop selling Independence Celebrations to any new nation which cared to call, and eight have so far obliged. Prime Ministers are awed by the pomp and precision he can bring to chaotic rehearsals of Governors and Field-Marshals and thousands of flag-waving children. Always they recommend him to other newly emerging countries. Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Jamaica, Malta, Guyana, Barbados have been through it all with the Colonel. This time it was the turn of Mauritius.

In many countries today the police are armed and ready to face the long hot summer the way they believe best. Could these methods be adopted here soon? How would they affect the role of the British bobby? Is he to remain the crime fighter, servant of the public and friend of children? Or is he to become the tool of local or national government and, perhaps, a public enemy?

In the first of two programmes concerned with mixed marriages, Man Alive looks at the problems and the different solutions found by five different couples.

When a racially mixed couple-black and white-decide to marry it is a brave decision, frequently one made in the face of prejudice and bigotry. White girls married to coloured men or coloured girls with white husbands must find their own answers to the many extra problems that are bound to beset their marriages. But frequently the main consequence and burden of their decision to marry is one that concerns their children. For the children: neither one world nor the other, in a society in which there exists violent race prejudice. How can the parents protect them? What special armour do they need to face the life ahead?

Up in the Catskill Mountains, two hours' drive from New York City, stands the Concord Hotel, a vast concrete camp renowned for one speciality-mating. Here most weekends a human hotchpotch of 3,000 men and women pay nearly £ 20 a day to be herded together, like cattle in a market, and forcefully paired off by a social hostess called Rose. Girls living dull city lives plan their robes and their roles weeks ahead; men who are normally office clerks promote themselves to lawyers and doctors. Most of the women are hunting for husbands. Most of the men are not hunting for wives. It's a loud, brassy, boozy free-for-all. But despite the seemingly jolly veneer the more honest among the participants will admit that the whole scene is a sad charade. Even the snow on the ski-slopes was artificial.

There are now 12,000 registered members in nudist clubs in Britain today-their numbers are on the increase. And the number of clubs catering for them has nearly doubled in the past five years; clubs where they can pitch their tents, park their caravans, or just take off their clothes. The fantasy is familiar: the sea, the sand, and a body tanned by the blazing sun; but reality lies a . good distance off. Nudism in this country is more likely to mean a wet weekend in Cheshire or a chilly day near St. Albans. But die-hard nudists are not easy to deter. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some families even live permanently in nudist colonies. This summer more applications than ever before have been made by groups of nudists to use beaches and swimming pools to prove their point. Exercise keeps the cold out. If it rains we don't spoil our clothes, the argument runs. If it snows you can always keep your Wellingtons on. What sort of people are they? What is the life they believe in so passionately? In nudist resorts and at a nudist hotel Man Alive takes a frank look at the people who mean it when they say ' Take off your clothes and live.'

Henry Higgins is a twenty-four-year-old Englishman, and a bullfighter. Some aficionados (the word for bullfight fans) say he'll be a good one. He has been gored, tossed, and nearly killed. In turn he has already ritually finished off hundreds of four-year-old Spanish fighting bulls His whole life is devoted to bullfighting; both in and out of the bull ring. Man Alive film cameras set out to discover what sort of man he is, what sort of world he lives in. And in the studio we ask cruel to whom?

As many as one million adult people in Great Britain today may well be able to watch and understand tonight's Man Alive programme. But they won'be able to learn about it in advance by reading this. They are illiterate. Men and women of all ages who frequently lead lives of deceit and secrecy in an attempt to conceal their inability to read and write. Women who shop in fear that the colour and shapes of household packages may change-because the words and brand names might as well be Chinese. Men who invent excuses about lost spectacles when faced with forms to fill in and directions to read. People travelling around with their own invented systems of remembering railway stations and bus stops. And perhaps the biggest scandal of all - in 1968 - an estimated fifteen per cent of fifteen-year-old school leavers who have failed to learn effectively how to read and write. Whose fault is it? And what should be done?

The richest nation in the world has problems to match its affluence. Alcoholism has become America's fourth biggest killer disease-after cancer, heart disease, and mental illness - and of the six million alcoholics in the U.S. today, seventy per cent are not to be found on Skid Row. They live with their families, attend church, pay taxes, educate their children, and continue to function on just the edge of social acceptability as farmers, teachers, clergymen, doctors, and housewives. In the first of a two-part inquiry into alcoholism, Man Alive looks at alcoholics and their families from Long Island to California, visits them in prison, and investigates what happens to them in treatment clinics: and then asks ' Is this the way to deal with the problem? '

In Britain today there are at least half a million alcoholics-some ignorant of the illness from which they suffer; others, ashamed and afraid, hiding it from family, friends, and employers. Industry alone has to face a bill estimated at £ 50 million a year in lost output. Are employers facing up to this fact too slowly? Are they slow to recognise the significance of the' Monday-morning hangover,' which keeps hundreds from work? Are they slow to reach out to help the executive who is drink-fuddled through most of the day? Is the drinking executive only steps away from the meths men? What research is being done to find out about the disease and to collate information about treatment methods? In this the last of a two-part enquiry, Man Alive tries to find out.

... the Fifth of November, Gunpowder Treason and Plot But why should we remember? And, more important still, how many needless accidents does it cause each year? What really happened on that first gunpowder night under the House of Commons 350 years ago is vague; no one knows the facts for sure. But what is crystal clear - as far as the casualty departments of our hospitals are concerned-is that today, fireworks are an annual hazard which disable and scar thousands of children. Millions of people get pleasure and enjoyment from fireworks. Firework displays can be exciting and picturesque. But we are still one of the few countries left that sell fireworks to children. The law now says that children must be over thirteen before they can buy. But those who are badly burned are frequently very much younger. Is it worth it when we count the cost? Should we continue to put danger in the hands of children?

What happens when planners build houses for people who then find they don't want to live in them? And industrial estates are offered to employers who prefer to build factories elsewhere? Some say the answer can be found at Haverhill, in West Suffolk. Twelve years ago a dying community of 3,000 country people, it's now an expanding town, population 12,000, most of it ' overspill ' from London. They live in housing estates financed by the Greater London Council. But many houses in Haverhill stand empty. Wages are below and prices (say the wives) above the national average. The planners, they say, have built not a Utopia but a ghetto of city dwellers in the Suffolk countryside.

'Go Back Where You Came From' ... is the ugly phrase of prejudice, the discordant command of bigotry, too frequently heard in the streets of our cities these days. The row about Enoch Powell 's suggested ' ministry of repatriation ' still rages; and the problem for coloured immigrants living in this country is hardly lessened when our vocabulary finds a new word added-' Powellism.' Supporters of Mr. Powell may not see this programme, may not be interested in the story of three West Indian families who did return home after trying to make a go of life in this country; who did, with reluctance and disillusionment, give meaning to the slogan they'd been shocked to find on walls here: Go back where you came from.' They came to Britain full of hope, holding British passports, confident of welcome from the mother country. Now they've undertaken their own ' voluntary repatriation.'

Principal boys used to be girls-now they are boys. This year we have Jimmy Tarbuck at the London Palladium. But at the Victoria Theatre, Salford, there's Bryan Johnson. Remember him? Runner-up at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1960. This year he's Robin Hood. But Nurse Twinkle is a man - Ronnie Coyles. He lives in a flat in Morecambe, far from the sea. The summer season is over, so until opening night he must watch his savings carefully. Rehearsals are hard work but unpaid. That is how pantomime survives. Man Alive goes behind the scenes and traces Babes in the Wood from its early birth pangs right through to the grand finale when Robin gets his Maid Marian and the Sheriff of Nottingham hies off to the woods with Nurse Twinkle-all in Salford, Lanes.