Yesterday's Witness (1969)

In 1903 the aeroplane raised itself off the ground for the first time and stayed aloft for twelve glorious seconds. A new age had begun. In tonight's film pioneer aviators recall their first experiences of powered flight. "The only way to learn to fly was to go and teach yourself.... Most of us did our first flight involuntarily. One looked over the side and found the ground had gone. Well, there you were, you were in the air and you'd got to do something about it!"

March 24, 1969, midnight

"The old days were the days for filming. I think there was more humanity in our old films. I think it was because we didn't know so much about it. When you know too much about a thing you're apt to put more mechanical effort into your work-you forget all the humanities." George Pearson, who celebrated his ninety-fourth birthday this month, was one of Britain's leading film directors in the great days of silent pictures. In tonight's film he movingly recalls some of his early years: seeing moving pictures for the first time more than seventy years ago; making some of his first films during the first world war; turning Betty Balfour into a star in the early 1920s..... The programme includes excerpts from some of Pearson's films: CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE WORKHOUSE (1914) NOTHING ELSE MATTERS (1920) SQUIBS WINS THE CALCUTTA SWEEP (1922) REVEILLE (1924)

March 31, 1969, midnight

There's no doubt about it-they were fighters. They used to fight sometimes over a lock, sometimes over a bridge, and sometimes they'd have a fight just to see which was the best man ... I was drunk for two days after that, and the only way I got sober was to drink seven pints. It was really a good Christmas that was! The pains and pleasures of trading on Britain's narrow canals recalled in tonight's film by: Chocolate Charlie Atkins

April 14, 1969, midnight

Fifty years ago there wasn'a single family planning clinic in this country. Birth Control was described as ' two dirty words.' Then Dr. Marie Stopes wrote Married Love and Wise Parenthood, and sparked off a social revolution. The advocates of birth control who founded and staffed the first clinics fought a fierce battle against the ignorance and prejudice of the times. In tonight's film some of these pioneers recall that fight to help free women from the fear of unwanted pregnancies.

April 21, 1969, midnight

Wireless before the days of broadcasting At the end of the last century the atmosphere began to be torn apart by man-made electrical disturbances. Wireless telegraphy had arrived. During the next twenty years or so those first crude Morse signals developed into broadcasting as we know it today. In tonight's film the early years are recalled by some of the people who helped ' break the silence 'home experimenters, schoolboys, ships' wireless operators, pre-BBC broadcasters, engineers ... ' We were regarded by the general public as magicians, something supernatural, and I think we rather revelled in that-it amused us,' says R. D. Bangay who joined the Marconi Company in 1903.

April 28, 1969, midnight

Some of the artists, cameramen, and others who made or showed or appeared in British films fifty, sixty, seventy years ago-long before the talkies-recall their work as we see it. "Off I'd go on my bicycle and get some old skirts or something, and then we'd do a film, and it was all over by lunchtime ... It was an awful business really. But still we enjoyed it. We got to where films are now, when you think of it. We're pioneers aren't we-we people?" says May Clarke, who is seen in the programme in the part of a nursemaid in Cecil Hepworth's 1905 classic Rescued by Rover.

May 5, 1969, midnight

'What one doesn't realise today is the extraordinarily heavy rate of casualties. The young pilot always went through the stage of hoping that if he was lucky he'd get through his first month ... or two months ... or three months-without being shot down. That was where the danger occurred: raw pilots coming out fresh from England, not knowing what they were doing, hardly knowing their aeroplanes, and being thrust into battle.....' At one period during the 1914-18 war the average life of a pilot flying over the front lines was only three weeks. Tonight's film features the personal reminiscences of two ace pilots who had the luck and skill to survive: Cecil Lewis and Duncan Grinnell-Milne

May 12, 1969, midnight

Conscription was introduced in Britain in 1916. For political or religious reasons thousands of men refused to fight... The popular image of conscientious objectors at the time was of men lacking courage and with no sense of patriotism. Actually they suffered humiliation and even torture for their beliefs, regularly impressing policemen, soldiers, and prison warders with their humour and integrity. "I felt very strongly that I would much rather be shot than shoot anyone else"

May 19, 1969, midnight

In 1916 the archaic British penal system was menaced by a new sort of critic in the cells. Prisons were never to be the same again. "Funny isn't it-you've got ten years for killing somebody, and I've got ten years because I won't kill anybody" Looking at it from now, I would say we demonstrated that it is impossible to break the spirit of men who are really convinced. And we have written conscientious objection permanently into the law of England

May 26, 1969, midnight