The BEST episodes of Panorama season 1981

#1 - 05/10/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 35 - Aired 10/5/1981

#2 - 22/06/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 22 - Aired 6/22/1981

#3 - The PLO - The Road to Respectability

Season 1981 - Episode 23 - Aired 6/29/1981

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation, responsible for some of the world's worst acts of terrorism, has found a new respectability. Less than a decade after the slaying of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, while they are still mounting rocket and guerrilla attacks on Israel, European foreign ministers now acknowledge that the PLO must be involved in the Middle East peace process-a move which a few years ago would have been deemed unthinkable. Tonight John Stapleton examines how, through a well financed and highly organised diplomatic and propaganda offensive. the PLO has achieved its new status.

#4 - 13/07/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 25 - Aired 7/13/1981

#5 - 20/07/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 26 - Aired 7/20/1981

#6 - 27/07/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 27 - Aired 7/27/1981

#7 - The Islamic Bomb

Season 1981 - Episode 28 - Aired 8/10/1981

After the Israeli raid on Iraq's nuclear reactor, Pakistan alone is developing the Islamic worlds first nuclear weapon. With millions of pounds from Libya's Colonel Gaddafi, the Pakistanis are using Western technology to build the 'Islamic Bomb'. Tonight Panorama takes its prize-winning investigation into the project a stage further. Reporter Philip Tibenham and producer Christopher Olgiati , who won the 1981 Royal Television Society Award for Investigative Journalism, report on the latest moves in the Pakistan project. How near are the Pakistanis to their first explosion?

#8 - 17/08/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 29 - Aired 8/17/1981

#9 - 24/08/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 30 - Aired 8/24/1981

#10 - The Class of 81

Season 1981 - Episode 31 - Aired 9/7/1981

For-the past 12 months Panorama has been following the fortunes of the 250 school leavers at Craig-bank Secondary School in Glasgow. John Stapleton follows what hap pened to them In their preparation and search for a job during the worst recession since the 1930s. Headmaster. Norman Macleod sums up their prospects: ' We've bien. preparing them for what is sometimes laughingly cal-led the world of work, and here, at the brink, when they are about to. leave school, they find this world of work is further away than it ever was.'

#11 - 14/09/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 32 - Aired 9/14/1981

#12 - Labour: Which Direction Will the Party Go?

Season 1981 - Episode 34 - Aired 9/28/1981

Labour's choice of a deputy leader is the culmination of a momentous struggle for the party's future.

#13 - South Africa: To the Last Drop of Blood

Season 1981 - Episode 21 - Aired 6/15/1981

Peter Taylor reports from within South Africa on the black opposition - an opposition which is becoming increasingly frustrated and violent. The thousands of Soweto youths who left the country after the riots in the black township five years ago are now returning secretly, fully trained, with arms and explosives. Every week the list of sabotage and machine-gun attacks grows rapidly. The white South African government is now facing an increasingly successful, but as yet unreported, guerrilla war. For the first time the people who are at war inside South Africa talk to Panorama. Do they have any chance of defeating the most powerful military machine in Africa? What will be the political consequences of a war which both whites and blacks swear they will fight ' to the last drop of blood '.

#14 - 12/10/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 36 - Aired 10/12/1981

#15 - KGB -Russia's Secret Service in the West

Season 1981 - Episode 37 - Aired 10/19/1981

Soviet Intelligence has a huge presence in every Western country; some four out of every ten Russian diplomats are KGB officers. They wage war by clandestine means. Their methods - disinformation, sexual entrapment, blackmail and the use of' illegals', old-fashioned spies. Tom Mangold investigates how serious is its threat, and how effective its contribution to ultimate Soviet ambitions.

#16 - 26/10/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 38 - Aired 10/26/1981

#17 - 09/11/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 40 - Aired 11/9/1981

#18 - 16/11/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 41 - Aired 11/16/1981

#19 - Libya: Trading in Terror

Season 1981 - Episode 42 - Aired 11/23/1981

In Britain, Libyan hit squads murder Colonel Gaddafi's exiled opponents. All over the world the Libyans back terrorist groups - including the IRA. Now Panorama reveals the key men behind Libya's world-wide terror campaigns - ex-CIA officers who trade expertise for cash. Former CIA man Kevin Mulcahy , once part of the scheme, admits that American mercenaries are training terrorists in secret desert camps, while American businessmen sell the Libyans everything from plastic explosives to poison. In this special edition of Panorama, Jeremy Paxman reports on the lucrative trade in terror that Western governments are seemingly powerless to stop.

#20 - Trade Unions and the Law

Season 1981 - Episode 43 - Aired 11/30/1981

Panorama tonight examines the Government's controversial proposals to limit the power of trade unions. The Rt Hon Norman Tebbit , mp, Secretary of State for Employment, explains why he believes new laws are necessary. Trade union leaders and employers debate whether changes in legislation will bring chaos or calm to industrial relations.

#21 - 07/12/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 44 - Aired 12/7/1981

#22 - Experimenting with Life

Season 1981 - Episode 45 - Aired 12/24/1981

Next year there'll be a boom in test tube babies. Laboratory fertilisation is becoming commonplace, and human embryos are now being frozen for future use. Margaret Jay examines the implications of this brand new world. How should we define the rules under which scientists help create life?

#23 - 21/12/1981

Season 1981 - Episode 46 - Aired 12/21/1981

#24 - Has the Lady Turned?

Season 1981 - Episode 10 - Aired 3/9/1981

After two years in pursuit of a radical economic experiment, has the Government now decided to change course? The capitulation to the miners, the massive injections of cash into British Steel and British Leyland, all suggest that the former rhetoric of the Government is at odds with its present actions. David Dimbleby looks at the difficulties this Government has faced, the unexpected pressures it encountered, and the reasons why some plans may now be abandoned.

#25 - The Provo's Last Card

Season 1981 - Episode 33 - Aired 9/21/1981

Panorama's Peter Taylor reports from the Maze prison during the hunger strike campaign and addresses the political and military consequences.