Man Alive

For 16 months men and women workers at the Triumph motor cycle factory at Meriden, near Coventry, have occupied the premises in a bid to run the place themselves as a workers' co-operative. The old management, Norton-Villiers-Triumph, closed the factory in a rationalisation scheme and sacked 1,700 men and women. But half the workers refused to go. They closed the gates on their bosses, set up a 24-hour picket, and occupied the factory. Man Alive was there then. Ten months ago the company offered to sell them the factory. Then, six months ago, the Government announced it would grant loans of £5m to their co-operative to help them. But the sale has not been finalised, the Government offer and money hasn't come to anything, work never started. But still 300 workers, whose hopes have been raised; and then dashed time and again, man the picket line. Their severance pay is spent; their life savings gone. Harold Williamson returns to Meriden and tells the story of their long struggle as they

It is, perhaps, the nearest man will come to having wings. Gliding: flying without power, silent, awesome, seemingly miraculous. The 14th World Gliding Championships were held last year at Waikerie in South Australia. In a cloudless sky, 67 pilots, from 22 countries, swooped and soared as they competed, at the fastest speeds and on the longest course - ever. Pilots like American school-teacher (and world champion) George Moffat, trying again for the championship in his glider 'Nimbus 2'; pilots like Adele Orso, the only woman competitor, flying for Italy. This film is not only about the pilots but also their wives, their ground crews, the tensions and the jealousies as they go through the 11 days of the championship. Australia's leading aerial cameraman John Haddy captures the joy of gliding - a sport which has already inspired ten thousand glider pilots in Great Britain.

This year nearly half a million couples were married. And almost a third of them will end up divorced. New law has made divorce more common - but certainly not easier. Too often the apparently detached calm of the divorce courts may be the calm of exhaustion at the end of years of fighting over property, money - and children. Too often, those getting divorced seem to be encouraged to fight for what are termed their rights; too often, solicitors draw up lines of battle instead of peace terms. Barristers are sometimes accused of earning princely fees for posing ritual questions so that the divorce shall be seen ' to be legal. Divorce costs the taxpayer 17 million in a year in legal aid. Jeremy James has been talking to those who have suffered the anguish of the prolonged battles of divorce; to a solicitor who believes although the law may be right, the administration is certainly not, and divorce should be totally removed from the courts and lawyers; and to others who believe that men '

' If rates go on increasing like this,' calculated a ratepayer at a meeting with his local authority, ' the £130 I paid in 1974 will be £1,000 by 1978.' Last spring, local government was reorganised: hundreds of councils were swept away and a rash of new names appeared on the map. Jack Pizzey and a Man Alive team went to one of these new creations, Kirklees - made up from Huddersfield, Batley, Dewsbury and other parts of the West Riding - to find out where the money goes and why so many ratepayers think it's wasted. Desmond Wilcox brings the ratepayers and the rate spenders together in the studio to ask whether there's a fairer way of paying for all the things local government provides.

Mexico has a 1,200-mile border with the United States. Every year nearly two-and-a-half million people illegally enter the United States in search of a better way of life, mostly from Mexico. The US Border Patrol uses aircraft, seismic detectors, radar and infrared to try to stem the flow. It is estimated that between six and eight million Mexican immigrants are living illegally in the USA.

' I think for the man in his 40s to become unemployed is the ultimate in personal tragedy,' says a man who used to earn 15,000 a year as the managing director of an oil subsidiary. He spent six months on E15 a week social security money, wrestling with debt and humiliation. That was in 1971. The experience changed his life completely. 1971 was a year of high unemployment. At that time James Burke met redundant top executives to find out what it is like to be a boss with no prospect of a job. Now, as the unemployment figures soar again, there are more unemployed executives than ever. JAMES BURKE returns, with a Man Alive team, to look at the long-term consequences of executive unemployment. How did the people he met in 1971 oope after they had reached rock-bottom? How drastically have their experiences affected their lives?

For 16 years MAJOR GARDINER has been running a soup kitchen in one of the poorest parts of Calcutta. With support from charities in England, Australia and Calcutta he feeds 6,000 people every day. The hungry and the starving who can come to his kitchen are given a midday meal. For those living further away, Major Gardiner sets out every afternoon on a 35-mile drive round the city giving food to the most needy. Harold Williamson went to Calcutta to talk to Major Gardiner about his work and ask him why he chose to dedicate his life to feeding the starving: in 16 years he has never missed a day - they even had to pin the MBE on him in his kitchen.

On 7 January, Clifford House Adolescent Unit opened its doors to 13 boys and girls in care of the Local Authority, Westminster. Most of them had been rejected by other children's homes; most had been in serious trouble with the police; few had parents to support them. One man, Derek Garner , and four house-mothers undertook to look after them. Their aim is to change attitudes in child care; to banish the unquestioned authority of the social worker - the ' do as I say or else ' attitude; to treat these adolescents as friends and give them the love and support they need.

The Children's Charter - that was how the 1944 Butler Education Act was heralded in post-war Britain. For the first time the State would provide free secondary education for all. The aim was ' Equality of Opportunity.' Thirty years on Desmond Wilcox leads an investigation into the fairness and effectiveness of our state schools; and examines the controversies which surround the changing ideas, structures and teaching methods experienced by two generations of Butler children. Jeremy James , with a film team, reports on the educational experiences of three families in Leicester, Sheffield and Coventry.

Showbusiness has a uniquely cruel side to it: you can be right at the top one moment and right down the next. Jeremy James , with a Man Alive team, talks to three top people who have fallen. Comedian BILL MAYNARD was forced to sell hearth and home when his career collapsed ten years ago. He's made it again now, but it isnt so easy far film star ANTHONY STEEL, heart-flhrob of the 50s. With 60 films behind him, he suddenly found himself with a broken marriage to Anita Ekberg and a broken contract with the Rank Organisation.

MIKE TAYLOR , a successful art historian at the British Museum, has turned his back on London to seek the simple tranquility of a croft on the Isle of Skye. PETER BRADBURY and his wife have started a commune with 11 other families in a former Suffolk friary. Kieran Prendiville and a Man Alive team. have been talking to people who believe they have found a richer and more rewarding way of life. Not by opting out but, they believe, by pioneering the way more of us could - and should - live.

A fire in a high rise block of flats and on the top floor a man forced by the flames on to a balcony cries for help. But no fireman's ladder can reach him and rescue from inside is hampered by an out of order lift wrecked by vandals. Before the fireman could reach him the man died. It happened recently in London. Can it happen again? Can worse happen? How safe from fire are buildings we live in and. work in -the flats, the office blocks and skyscraper hotels? Are the building regulations strict enough? Always obeyed? The recent film Towering Inferno focused attention on a real problem. Men and women who have been involved in such fires talk on film to Harold Williamson , and in the studio Desmond Wilcox discusses ways of making our lives safe from the danger of towering infernos.

A glance at any movie guide reveals the bare facts. They rarely make nice pictures any more; nowadays it's all naughty films about naughty people doing naughty things. Who's to blame? ‘The public’ say the filmmakers. ‘These are the films they want and therefore these are the films we have to give them.' As John Pitman discovers, it’s a scene which saddens many people in the business. ‘Serious’ actresses find they have to strip if they want work, and writers and directors who would rather make family films must churn out titillation and terror. With the result that there are some surprising characters behind x-ploitation, including a university student reading English and a granny who use to write Mrs Dale's Diary

Henderson Hospital in Surrey is a very unusual mental hospital. The patients live in a jungle where they must make their own rules for survival and face up to what happens when they behave like children - whether it be failing to wash up or smashing the place to pieces. Somehow they've all failed to absorb deep lessons that most of us learn as children - the lessons of give and take which enable us to love, keep jobs and friends: to belong to society. The result is officially known as ' personality disorder,' and it turns talented, energetic and often charming adults into spoiled, sometimes aggressive and foul-mouthed kids. Some are so aggressive that they've spent much of their lives in prison; some are so desperate that they've overdosed repeatedly and drifted in and out of psychiatric hospitals; most see Henderson Hospital as their last chance. Jack Pizzey and a Man Alive team have been filming the Henderson answer - a crash course in living.

It has been called Bermuda without the sun, the Bahamas without the Mafia. The Channel island of Guernsey, a rock in the middle of the English Channel, is not exactly sun-kissed, but it does have a climate favourable for tomatoes, tourists - and tax; an island where the Chancellor does not surface annually with new implements to make the pips squeak; where the tax rate is steady - a modest 20 per cent. Unlike neighbouring Jersey, Guernsey does not have a quota system and income regulations for its immigrants. But there is one small hurdle: only certain houses in what is called ' the open market' can be bought by would-be emigres. They are few and bieathtakingly expensive. Jeremy James has been talking to those who bought relief from taxes; about the morality of going; the cost of tearing up roots and trying to buy peace of mind.

We are making more toxic waste than we can easily get rid of. Drums of cyanide have been washed up on beaches, poisons have been fly-tipped near water supplies and although Parliament has brought in safety measures, many are still disturbed. Meanwhile, we're piling up another form of waste with uniquely alarming potential - radio-active waste from our nuclear power stations which could remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years. Jack Pizzey reports from Pitsea, the centre of the toxic waste industry, and from Windscale, where our radio-active waste is stored and monitored while scientists try to discover a way of getting rid of it. Scientists inside the waste business are optimistic but others are less sure. In the studio Desmond Wilcox discusses the issues with those most concerned.

In the last ten years the number of pistols and revolvers in the United States has risen from 10 million to 40 million. What was a problem of the urban ghetto areas has spread throughout the country. Shopkeepers are arming themselves against violent robberies. Families are buying guns to protect themselves from armed burglaries. Teenagers are carrying guns as status symbols. This report, made for NBC television, shows the frightening escalation in small arms - estimated at 21 million a year. Forty-two states require no licence. In the other states a gun can be obtained by filling in a form which is easily falsified. Gun manufacturers have successfully opposed stricter legislation and delayed the broadcast of this film in the United States.

In the summer of 1973 Gary Todd was asleep in bed when he was disturbed by an intruder. He pulled a gun from under his pillow and shot his friend, Nancy Conley , dead. Nancy Conley 's death would never have happened if guns in the United States were better controlled. This second part of Man Alive's report on the 10,000 Americans killed every year by pistols and revolvers is a filmed record of a one-day murder trial in Richmond, Kentucky. The defence lawyer argues that Gary Todd believed he was protecting himself from an intruder. The prosecutor claims that he shot Nancy Conley in cold blood. The film is a unique and remarkable insight into the workings of American justice.

'It was a violent entry into the minds of the people of the world but what is important to us is that it was an entry' - a Palestinian guerrilla talks to Man Alive about the dramatic multiple hijacking in 1970 he helped to mastermind. The programme traces the origins of the apparently illogical acts of violence, the skyjackings and the political kidnappings. Jeanne La Chard talks to some of the men and women behind them, including Leila Khaled, who gives her first ever television interview to the West, and to men like Chancellor Kreisky of Austria and General Dayan of Israel who have had to make the agonising choice between whether to sacrifice hostages or give in to blackmail.

5 Oct 70: James Cross , British diplomat, is kidnapped in Montreal. 8 Jan 71: Sir Geoffrey Jackson is kidnapped in Uruguay and imprisoned for eight-and-a-half months. The conventional forces of law and order face an agonising dilemma when confronted by the urban guerrilla. Jeanne La Chard talks to James Cross and Sir Geoffrey Jackson. The programme includes rare film of srR GEOFFREY in his prison cell with a Tupamaro member explaining the reasons for his imprisonment. And the New York police, in the holt-seat over so many hostage situations, are shown in training as negotiators. But it is the question of whether to ' deal with terrorists on which world opinion is most divided, and it is in Germany, recently, that the dilemma has been most clearly speit out

In Belfast it is always easier to remember than it is to forget. The voodoo of party tune and rebel ballad make sure of that. But never has there been such a revival of old songs and the writing of new ones as there has in the past six years since the modern ' troubles ' began. Dates, battles, tribal scores still to be settled in the fulness of time - all, it seems, have to be rushed into verse and, frequently, the same tunes are employed by both sides. Alongside the records and the broadsheets stand the ' souvenirs,' from the Maze Prison, Long Kes.h - plaques and carved guns.

1975 is International Women's Year; the year when Equal Pay becomes law. But behind the paper promises lies the bitter experience of women who work in small factories in places like Inkersall, a village in Derbyshire. There, a strike by women workers over a wage increase has split the community. It has left many of them with a deep sense of betrayal against their fellow men trade unionists. They claim that no one took them seriously, with a show of solidarity, because they are women. Harold Williamson talks to the women on the picket line; to trade union officials and management, experiencing their first real taste of determined industrial action by women.

A jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide who has the best lawyer. (ROBERT FROST) The ancient institution of the jury, and the system of trial built around it, is coming under increasing attack - from lawyers, from policemen, from jurors themselves. They say that the acquittal rate is too high; the average juror often doesn'understand what is going on; the system is haphazard and prevents an effective appeal procedure; it is high time to replace ' this apotheosis of amateurism' with something less dated and less fallible. While, according to some, our system of criminal justice - founded on the jury-is the best in the world, to others, this means no more than that the alternative systems are appallingly bad. On film with Michael Molyneux , and in the studio with Desmond Wilcox , Man Alive looks at the criticisms and asks the lawyers, policemen and laymen to suggest alternatives.

The city of Swansea is alive with allegation and rumour. A radical magazine is publishing regular ' Corruption Supplements ' and an anonymous leaflet has been circulating in South Wales linking a group of local property developers with members of Swansea Council. ' Grossly defamatory,' say two of the named men insisting that, if allegations against them are to be investigated at all, the job should be done only by the police. Why so many rumours? Are they facts or smears? Why has Swansea become a place threaded with suspicion - where many make accusations in private but seldom in public? Jack Pizzey and a Man Alive team investigate.

John Pitman and a Man Alive team follow the fortunes of the officers and their clients in West Yorkshire where probation officers are confronted with the dilemma now facing most of the 4,500 men and women in the service. Should they ' care ' for their clients and try to rehabilitate them? Or should they use their powers of control to keep a large section of society happy by helping to ' lock them up and put them out of harm's way?

After ten years and more than 400 programmes, Man Alive looks back, in a short season, at some of its more memorable moments in the last decade. Desmond Wilcox comments and also explains how the new lightweight camera equipment available in 1965 enabled Man Alive to get away from the pundits to people - ordinary people. Neighbours who rowed with each other; the men who cheat their bumper-car customers at the fair; the election candidates who were a hundred per cent sure to lose; and Cousin Brucie the New York disc jockey who advised nine-year-olds on their sex problems - ten years ago.

The second in a short season of memorable moments from earlier programmes, introduced by Desmond Wilcox In its pursuit of ordinary people, Man Alive quickly learned that there was no such thing. GILLIAN STRICKLAND discovered nudists near Jodrell Bank; JOHN PERCIVAL talked to a woman in love with her cat; ANGELA HUTH to a man who was terrified of rhubarb; JEANNE LA CHARD tackled the problems of mixed marriages and HAROLD WILLIAMSON reported on the dangers of fireworks in the hands of children - a shocking programme but one which caused a dramatic reduction in the number of fire-work accidents.

The third in a short season from earlier programmes introduced by Desmond Wilcox To look back now on the many programmes Man Alive made in the United States during the late 60s gives a remarkable insight into the crisis of those times. It was the time of the Vietnam war; of doves and hawks; of families put asunder: the hippie generation and draft dodgers confronting patriotic parents bewildered by the generation gap a mile wide. Reports by DESMOND WILCOX : Protest in the Ranks and Daughters of America

The last in a short season from earlier programmes. In the United States only one beauty contest really matters - Miss America. Miss America isn't just another bathing beauty competition. Miss America is beautiful, truthful and wholesome. Miss America is the symbol of all that America possesses. All the good things, that is. John Pitman for Man Alive looks at American competitions beginning with the La Petite Miss. In 1974 the winner was quite old - five. She confidently explained to the judges what she wants to be when she grows up: Miss America.

The fourth in a short season from earlier programmes. Gale was beautiful, intelligent and - according to everyone who knew her-had much to offer; everything to live for. At 19, a drug addict, she was found dead in the basement of a derelict house in Chelsea. The Man Alive team first met her in 1969 when making a programme about people who had been brought up in children's homes. After she died the people who were in her life and those who cared for her in and out of various institutions examined the short and hopeless life of a girl who many tried to help but in the end felt she belonged to no one. They asked: need she have died?

Just over half a square mile in the centre of overcrowded London. One of the most unusual parks in the world. A place for eccentrics. A place for speakers and lovers, winter swimmers and yoga fanatics, brass bandsmen and amateur horsemen, children and dogs, policemen and pop protesters-and even ex-actresses exercising their pet ducks. A park which needs its own police station and has its own pets' cemetery. A royal park, where monarchs hunted wild -boar and gentlemen duelled. A report by one film crew, with one reporter, JOHN PITMAN , and one director, JENNY BARRACLOUGH , of one day in Hyde Park. It wasn't a day of demonstration or protest or pop concerts - nothing special about it. Except that, perhaps, any day in Hyde Park is special-if you're there.

The sixth in a short season from earlier programmes. Child cruelty cases provoke strong reactions. But it is now accepted that while protecting the child is paramount, understanding the parent is better than punishment. HAROLD WILLIAMSON talks to JOHN ROBINSON who went to prison for attacking his 18-month-old son and sees how some London mothers, who live in fear of repeating attacks on their own children, are being helped.

The seventh in a short season from earlier programmes. Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music is a big production. There is a cast of children, nuns, novices, postulants, neighbours of Captain von Trapp and assorted Nazis. There is thunder, lightning and special moonlight effects. The feature film has become the biggest money spinner in the history of cinema musicals. The Sound of Music opened at the Lunt-Fontanhe Theatre in New York on 16 November 1959; the London production at the Palace Theatre started on 18 May 1961. On 12 February 1973 The Sound of Music opened in Herne Bay-an amateur production. JACK PIZZEY was there with a Man Alive film team to chronicle the birth pangs of this ambitious enterprise.