Archives for February 2009

We start this entry with a bit of shameless revelling in our own success because last night Panorama won an RTS award for Primark: On the Rack. The programme, which aired in June of last year, put to the test Primark's claims that it could deliver cheap, fast fashion without breaking ethical guidelines.

Posing as industry buyers our team found some of India's poorest people working long, gruelling hours on Primark clothes in slum workshops and refugee camps.

In presenting the prestigious Current Affairs Home Award, the RTS said of the programme it was "not only an engaging watch but... thorough and also went the extra mile to lay bare the whole chain from refugee camp to the High Street rail".

It should also be noted that Primark: On the Rack had to beat two other nominated programmes to scoop the prize, both of them BBC documentaries, and one of them another Panorama - Omagh: What the Police Were Never Told, John Ware's report on GCHQ intelligence surrounding the Omagh bombing.

Comments from Lord Mandelson in Monday's Panorama on how banks are treating small businesses in the economic downturn created a lot of news.

Shout 99 particularly picked up on how the Business secretary had said banks were leaving a number of businesses "high and dry" as they cut back on lending.

Business guru and Dragon's Den star Theo Paphitis was the programme reporter on Credit Where It's Due and gave Panorama some top tips for businesses which want to be successful.

Tuesday was the 10-year anniversary of the Macpherson report into the failure of the Metropolitan Police investigation to find and convict teenager Stephen Lawrence's killers.

Headed by Sir William Macpherson, the inquiry famously concluded that London's Metropolitan Police force was "institutionally racist".

On Wednesday Nicola Rollock wrote in The Guardian that stop and search statistics undermine police claims to have tackled institutional racism.

In October, amid a series of high profile race rows at the top of the Met, Panorama conducted a new investigation into police racism in
The Secret Policeman Returns.

It told a bleak story of officers and staff who feel sidelined and victimised, as well as disturbing allegations that those police officers who speak out over race feel punished not supported.

The Evening Standard reported on Wednesday that Gordon Brown had "fuelled the banking crisis by pressurising City watchdogs into light-touch regulation" and "not to question the business models of banks such as Northern Rock, HBOS and Bradford and Bingley".

We've been following the financial crisis since it began and In December Robert Peston reported for Panorama on what had been cataclysmic year for our banks and economy.

On Thursday, Lord Ashdown, Lord Patten, and others wrote a letter to the Times about the need to involve Hamas in peace negotiations.

Danny Finkelstein suggested that the letter made classic errors and in fact Hamas should be treated to a diplomacy of mixed isolation and tough resistance. The troubles in the region have been covered for years by Panorama, who were last there in January after the recent conflict.

On Friday, US President Barack Obama announced his budget for 2010. The budget, which aims to help lift the US out of financial turmoil, is worth a staggering $3.6tn. Over $600bn will go to healthcare reform. MyDD claims that this is America's return to fairness, while Pickled Politics calls it the biggest left wing budget in history.

Providing easier access to healthcare was one of Mr Obama's key election promises and in January, on the eve of his inauguration, Panorama took a close look at the challenge that this would present in What Now Mr President?

Margaret Thatcher's final days as prime minister, in the autumn of 1990, have often seemed to me like the stuff of the best political television drama.

Finally, the story of Britain's longest-serving prime minister's political assassination by cabinet colleagues amid plots and counter-plots, stalking horses and "treachery with a smile on its face" has made the small screen in the shape of "Margaret".

Hot on the heels of the BBC's dramatisation of Mrs Thatcher's early years as MP for Finchley and a fine online collection of Thatcher-related material from the BBC's archives, several bloggers have been all a flutter over the BBC's new-found love for Mrs Thatcher.

Panorama itself, of course, has long been fascinated with the former Member for Finchley. September 1975 saw David Dimbleby follow on her first tour of the United States since she was elected leader of the Conservative party. You can watch an abridged version here:

The film showed for perhaps the first time on television Mrs Thatcher's new statement of Conservative philosophy in such detail - allowing the tallest poppies in society to grow taller as she put it, cutting government expenditure and incentivising the poor to work harder.

This was a philosophy from which she was never really to waver throughout her time in office - the 30th anniversary of which falls later this year. Ultimately, a philosophy which was to shape the modern face of Britain.

On Friday, Amnesty International accused Hamas of using the recent war in Gaza to instigate a "campaign of abductions and deliberate killings" against those they accuse of "collaborating" with Israel.

The Guardian says the claim supports accounts given to the newspaper recently.

Earlier this year, Amnesty International accused Israel and Hamas of endangering civilian lives in the conflict in Gaza, and claimed that "human shields" were being used - a practice prohibited under the Geneva Conventions.

Panorama was in Gaza just weeks ago to witness firsthand the aftermath of the recent conflict.

A look at how Panorama has reported the twists and turns of the Middle East crisis over the past six decades is a prime illustration of just how complex the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is.

In other news, back in October we reported on the issue of who's watching who in Britain's surveillance society.

On Tuesday, Stella Rimington, the former MI5 head, said the UK government is using fear of terrorism as an excuse to take away liberties and create a police state.

Isabella Sankey, director of policy at human rights group Liberty, said she was "enormously heartened" by the comments, while the Pickled Politics blog say it's stating the obvious.

On Wednesday, it was "arise Sir Terry" for best-selling author Terry Pratchett after he was knighted by the Queen for services to literature. Made famous by his Discworld novels, which have sold more than 55 million books worldwide, Sir Terry is also known as a campaigner for Alzheimer's sufferers, having himself been diagnosed with an early onset form of the disease.

Back in August, Panorama reported on how Sir Terry was forced to pay for his own Alzheimer's drugs after being denied them on the NHS.

Also hitting the headlines is the case of Mark and Nicky Webster, who had three of their children forcibly adopted and were told by the Appeal Court this week that they will never get them back.

It's something the blogger NHS Blog Doctor picked up on, when writing about the difficult job of being a social worker.

Panorama has been following the case for a while and the programme came in for some criticism from Beatrix Campbell of The Guardian and in particular reporter John Sweeney.

More gloom in the housing market, as the Council of Mortgage Lenders released January figures for the number of mortgages lent. The numbers were met with warnings that there would be no sign of a meaningful recovery in the coming months.

The Times covered the story but said that some estate agents report interest from cash buyers who do not need mortgages.

Panorama interviewed Judge Stephen Gold last year for his advice on how to save your home from repossession.

Africa's great survivor Robert Mugabe turns 85 today.

Leader of Zimbabwe since 1980, Mr Mugabe is said to be planning a lavish champagne lunch for the official bash next weekend.

His birthdays are seldom quiet affairs it seems. Two years ago, 20,000 supporters crammed into a football stadium by way of celebration.

Nothing wrong in marking such a milestone of course, except perhaps if you're the leader of an impoverished nation where a huge majority of people are relying on food aid, a nation which is suffering a cholera epidemic and where inflation - well, hyper-inflation - is running at over 230m%.

So as his people suffer, Mr Mugabe continues to enjoy the high-life. The recent discovery that Mr Mugabe and his wife own a £4m bolthole in a luxury complex in Hong Kong probably won't surprise too many either.

It wasn't always like this though. In the 1970s Mr Mugabe was feted as a true African hero for leading a guerrilla campaign to help rid the then-Rhodesia of white minority rule.

Panorama's David Dimbleby caught up with him in Geneva in 1976 at a UK-brokered conference to determine future power-sharing in Rhodesia and found a man determined to bring about black majority rule and ultimately democracy to his country by any means.

This successful campaign in removing the last vestiges of white colonial rule from Zimbabwe provided Mr Mugabe with goodwill throughout much of Africa and great political capital.

Goodwill which has long-since disappeared on both the international and more local stage.

In those early years his leadership of Zimbabwe, alongside other guerrilla leaders like Joshua Nkomo, was a success and the new nation prospered.

Within a few years though, the dream was floundering amid allegations of corruption and anti-democratic practices. As Panorama covered the 1985 election campaign in Zimbabwe, Mr Mugabe was unapologetic in his desire to move away from democracy and create a one-party state - again by any means:

The outcome of that election was never in doubt. Nor the several that followed.

Mr Mugabe's grip on power has remained strong until very recently as he wrestled with the dual threat to his leadership - the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy and rise of democratic forces.

Ultimately, though the Mugabe story is a tragedy both for a man who started out with high ideals but more importantly for some of his impoverished people for whom this great survivor may have survived far too long.

Of the many troubled foreign relationships that the United States currently has in the world it's the one with Iran that is the most complex.

President Obama carries the weight of expectation on this issue.

Like Richard Nixon's overtures to China in the early 1970s and Ronald Reagan's visit to the then-Soviet Union in the late 1980s, Obama is seen as the man who can bring Iran in from the cold.

It is of course more complicated than just following through on his election campaign promise of "tough, direct diplomacy" with Tehran. Even his appointing of an envoy is a delicate operation.

The greater problem of course is Iran's willingness to engage with the White House. With the launch of Iran's first domestically made satellite the usual claims and counter claims have arisen. The West of course fears the launch is part of an ongoing nuclear missile testing programme.

The suspicion between the US and Iran began in earnest, 30 years ago this week, with the return from Parisian exile of Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's spiritual leader.

His return breathed life into a slow-burning muslim revolution, coming as it did just days after the US-backed Shah had fled the demonstrations and strikes which had paralysed the country.

Panorama was there to witness those first few tumultuous days after the Ayatollah's return.

His supporters turned out on the streets in their thousands and fought running battles with the Iranian army before the power vacuum was filled and the Islamic revolution complete. Panorama's Richard Lindley filed his report from the eye of the storm bringing the fervour of the revolution into shocked British homes:

Panorama though also paradoxically illustrated the lack of understanding of Islam in the West at this time later in this film - witness the questioning of a group of muslim women over their wearing of the veil:

A lack of understanding which seemed grounded in fear of the unknown. A fear that did then find a grounding following the capture of 52 American diplomats that began the hostage crisis of 1979-80.

That incident burned Iran into the US consciousness as an enemy - a fear and distrust that lingers today.

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