Inside Story - Season 7 / Year 1980

The Spaghetti House, Balcombe Street, the Iranian Embassy .. three London incidents in recent Years in which police hostage negotiating teams have been in action. But the principles and Practices in use in London were Pioneered by the New York Police, after the killings at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. Since that time, Captain Frank Bolz has been in charge of 70 New York cops - specially trained to handle hostage situations.
This documentary film portrays FRANK BOLZ and his men in action in March-New York's busiest month for the seizure, forcible restraint and ransom of hostages

After a change in the law in 1967, in England and Wales a homosexual act in private between male adults ceased to be a crime. But in the eyes of many it still remained a sin. In Scotland and Northern Ireland it is a sin and a crime. So Coming Out even in England - that is, declaring to the world that one is homosexual - is still a course of action calling for resolution and mental toughness. For to 'come out' fully means telling everyone the truth-parents, children and employers, who may be uncomprehending, hostile, or even positively vindictive.
This documentary film follows the events that surround five young homosexuals in the process of Coming Out. It is set in the context of the biggest assembly of homosexuals Europe has ever seen, when thousands of men and women came out on the streets of London to proclaim that they were gay

Stephen is one of 12,000 waiting to be adopted, but he is of a group of children deemed virtually un-adoptable. For when he was only nine days old, Stephen was struck down by meningitis. Nearly five years later he lives in an institution, unable to walk or to talk.

The Dooleys of Haverhill in Suffolk are a conscientious and close-knit family. They earnestly wish to adopt the boy. To a lay eye the match seems inevitable and desirable. But there are complications, and as the weeks turn into months, what seemed a formality becomes a nightmare.

Almost exactly a year ago, Inside Story examined the case of Timothy [text removed] , a hyperactive mongol, whom Solihull Social Services Department were determined to uproot from his residential home in the country to an urban day-care centre in Birmingham. It was a move resisted by Timmy's parents, who fought the Department - and thought that they had won. But this continuation of Timmy's story shows how mistaken the parents were to believe that all was well...

Could brothels ever become legal in Britain? As a Home Office Committee study the possibility of changes in the law on prostitution, the City Fathers of Southampton, faced with a nest of legally untouchable prostitutes in the notorious Derby Road, agonise publicly over the ethics of a council-run brothel. In this story of Southampton's battle with its own conscience, the council considers other systems of control in the Western World.
Inside Story examines too the alternative - roaming the streets of Soho, the red-light areas of The Hague, and brothels in Nevada and on the infamous Reeperbahn in Hamburg, talking to policemen, prostitutes and pimps.
Although denounced from pulpit and bench, the prostitute continues to ply her trade. Hers is indeed the oldest profession, for she seems to fill some deep social and biological need.

Forty years ago to the day, 7 September 1940, Hurricanes of 257 Squadron took off from Martlesham Heath, Suffolk, to intercept a wave of Luftwaffe bombers over the Thames Estuary. Among those lost in the engagement that followed was ' A ' Flight commander, Fl-Lt H. R. A. Beresford. No one saw him shot down and his body and aircraft were not recovered. He was posted as ' missing
But in September 1979 a group of enthusiasts in Second World War military aircraft, located beneath the mud of the Isle of Sheppey what they believed to be the wreckage of a fighter ... This documentary pieces together the story of Beresford's last mission.