afshin rattansi we're going underground here at the green felt tower in london arguably emblematic of a year of continuing post twenty zero eight crash collective economic punishment coming up on the show from grand fellow officer verity to yemen and venezuela from legendary journalist john pilger the oscar winning director barry jenkins we look at some of our favorite interviews of the and riots this christmas we speak to jeremy call been shot a lot johnson richard and the man who served seventy isn't an indefinite sentence about why the government just still not releasing thousands to have that time all the civil coming out today is going underground but first while teresa mayes commissioned inquiry into the ground. which killed at least seventy one people has already been met with skepticism by the local community it has media dominated by the effects of a financial crash nearly ten years ago and doggedly the powerful using identity politics to divide the working class barry jenkins who picked up an oscar this year for directing his film moonlight had faith in the usa saying donald trump will not be able to enforce division i don't think he will be able to if he is i think it will say more about the country and it does about trump but i refuse to believe that he will at a certain point a policy is a policy and i think of certain things are taken from on the working class economy taken from the entire working class black white mexican asian whatever so i don't think so i have faith again i'm a glass half full person but when it comes to those this side of the pond doggedly fighting for workers' solidarity they have merely come under personal attack from a british only god going to media that according to the shadow chancellor john mcdonnell understands full well what jeremy corbin once for the u.k. i understand it all right. just what we're doing in the hands of the song. of murder. and everything we do the same with the show that what they do is they don't actually say you know what we're doing very distraught distorted our views so much just switched off believe them. in the general election. ever have another general election where the boat. well i don't. say the poet told us he was only getting discerning audiences for a revival of a play about the working classes jim cartwright's the road in london hopefully playwrights who are writing about now and poets who are writing about now will speak with the same kind of anger. as jim cartwright spoke in this play thirty years ago i think that's why it's find in relevance with the audience is of london and of england it's because it speaks to the place speaks to. you know there was a fire in london in a block of flats called tower which i'm sure you've heard about we started to ask the question why don't we know about the people who were inside that tower how how they become so invisible this play is about people who are not seen something echoed by one new labor m.p. elected britain's june general election universal credit is being rolled out in my constituency in december and whoever has decided that clearly doesn't understand either universal credit or what happened then where in class communities over christmas you spend money. time you have nice food you get your family some gifts or whatever and to have universal credit row now and they are consigning many. important me. there's must've problems with this system so sometimes people the payments are in a real in a real so some have to go away in a week so that means this government is prepared for people with no money in january and february and i'm going to try and use up place to stop that happen and in fairness the conservative party had its annual conference this year and men just did appeared to make concessions to jeremy corbyn socialist politics which we covered after the general election where tourism a lost her majority in parliament we had our fish food bank in the country open in my local hospital and instead of the being a protest outside it saying this is wrong why are people being amidst this hospital with malnutrition related diseases they celebrated it apart their food their drinks and their should go to bana. you know that couldn't abandon insight in the fly fly into song with a you know i would highly fused salivates because this government is gonna come painted discrimination against the polish and say it's i spoke unspayed polo since committed suicide and side the job center and themselves universal credit one man must absolutely everything including his family he had no shoes on his feet the little activities that we've been doing all the way the government we hold him accountable it's because a group site black child and girl is spread all the time collated information about the deaths and destruction caused by this government it's not people like me who write for the paper write for the blog you challenge people all the time about these issues it's a broken side daypack who put their lives and their freedoms on the line to stand in front and sit in front of charms because they will not listen to peaceful protesters in a real large segment of population about twenty percent. and one of the main targets of this government. attacks on society of reveal spirity agenda. you know we're suffering. a massive are because of our rights remove all. the income that we need to live on. which has led to enormous a friend. and many deaths in the thousands but you know don't get downcast i mean it's horrible government doing horrible things but you know we strung together. and this is going to end we are going to get rid of this government. it's going to it's been seven years a really horrible seven years the united nations has found that they're guilty of grave and systemic human rights abuses against people they've created a human catastrophe those are the actual words. on the government's rations about was simply to deny it's happening but some like britain's parliamentary private secretary to the chancellor of the exchequer philip hammond rode back from saying things aren't happening these sanctions are quite a blunt instrument they're not really specifically they don't incentivizing people to work perhaps as well as they should be doing going to that was like a murder weapon well it's a crude phrase but it's essentially describes a situation where it's not being applied evenly across the country that's the m.p.u. slammed one of britain's greatest film directors ken loach arguing that what happened it is palme d'or winning film identical blake just isn't happening here is the star of that film on the disappearance of david gork the government minister responsible for welfare reform not turning up to an emergency debate about welfare reform that they pushed this mantra that basically it's all about getting you back to work you know the six weeks wait for the money you know it's about getting back to work getting used to well you know when you get a job you have to wait six weeks for your pay and all that you know it always pushes there was no responsibility carrot and sticks yeah and they fail to see that this is lives that are talking about here in for him not to turn up fall for it to pay for a vote is a disgrace really i mean you know have the courage of your convictions and stand up and be counted but british governments have been doing things they should arguably know are wrong for a long time according to indian politician and former u.n. diplomat just the roar thirty five million indians died in totally unnecessary famines because of british policy the british had an active philosophy that they will not intervene in famines number one the free market principles had to apply number to mouth who's in logic said of the land couldn't support the population that was supposed to support the let people die and number three was a victorian principle though should not spend money that was not budgeted for so all these grounds the british approach was not to help and famines and where india . had traditionally had a culture of charity with the rulers aided people in times of drought and other kinds of agrarian distress what we saw with the british was a policy in which people were killed to sneer allowed to die and what is worse when the british could be exported green from the very places that people were starving in in order to fill the markets in london equally appalling when somebody tried to help they were prevented from doing so and i've recounted instances in which even a few kindly englishman were essentially threatened with deportation back home if they help the people who were dying of starvation. he'd been told famine four point three million people killed on the explicit on the day bases of explicit decisions made by winston churchill the wartime prime minister and approaching that scale of carnage this year was of course yemen suffering from british supports the saudi arabia the latest figures off the outbreak tell us that there are about eight hundred fifty thousand suspected cases of cholera and the death toll has crossed two thousand one hundred of these cases are little children. in addition the whole situation of nutrition is extremely wide and we have two million children who are suffering from acute malnutrition off these close to three hundred eighty five thousand children are suffering from severe malnutrition which puts them at a high risk of death almost seven million yemenis are facing severe food insecurity which simply means they don't know where their next meal will come from activists like medea benjamin of code pink did try and join the seventeen to stop the carnage we have been fighting very hard to stop us sales to saudi arabia because we think it goes against u.s. law as well to have one senator who says yes we should keep selling weapons to the saudis as atrocious and it's not only for what they're doing in yemen i think we should put into question not just the sale of weapons but the whole alliance that the u.s. the u.k. and the western again democracies i put in quotation marks because how can you consider yourself a democracy if you are arming the very country that is responsible for spreading the extremism that we supposedly are fighting against but nothing really changed when it came to british defectors support for killing in yemen just as nato nation mainstream media continue to be one sided on iran syria and the country with the most oil on earth venezuela is near liberal opposition would be openly championed by britain's state mandated b.b.c. during two of the seventeen who started the violence in this country tolerate. an opposition call for the violent overthrow of the government to cause the military to rise up a media corps called on so let's say the b.b.c. calling for a coup against the government in whitehall and the prime minister and ten downing street of course not yes there is violence on both sides but i would suggest that most of the violence comes from something that was never. gone away and that is monopolies that control seventy percent of the capital and economic power and venezuela wanting to get rid of a government that is not a socialist government it's a social democratic couple that is done some very interesting and quite. significant things for poor people who were regarded in the pasta as white south africans used to regard the majority in the country and as for the most pressing issue of twenty seventeen the environment it's very sad because it's horrible thing you know extreme measures and to have a president who doesn't believe in climate change and on the climate change is very frightening and people have to speak up and we have to take matters into our own hands and things of interest that provide us and. do whatever we can to. note that consumer boycotts are arguably the real way to affect change is one of the most revolutionary politicians in british history nigel for rudd you know as well we caught up with the ukip firebrand on a day like many we may see in twenty eighteen one when the u.k. government was arguably rowing back from the decisive vote against new liberalism that was the brics it referendum today's a great day for westminster it's a great day for the political class great david goldman sachs great day for most international business because effectively what the prime minister is saying is we're going to stay a full member effectively of the european union for a further two years and it's a massive two fingers up to the seventeen point four million poorly educated unwashed coaches that voted for bracks coming up after the break why could thousands of people in britain be unjustly imprisoned this christmas. levels reached record highs in u.k. jails we put justice on trial and speak to the u.k.'s jobs let richard bergen in a special investigation that's all coming up in part two of going on the ground. here's a. better than. ever heard of. the world bank. welcome back outside the site of one of the worst history while no one is likely to go to prison. could the same political decision killed those in the grand tragedy. prison officers in british prisons. special report now investigate prisoners who could be released from the. understaffed prison this christmas. imprisonment for public protection or. are a form of into sentence brought in by the labor government in two thousand and five they were designed to protect the public from serious offenders crimes did not merit a life sentence. began to be given out for less serious offenses resulting in more population. in crowded prisons by twenty twelve to being ruled by european court they breached human rights imprisonment for public protection sentences were abolished. in twenty. three thousand people serving the sentences according to. its austerity cuts brought on by the conservative government that are to blame to go overcrowding on the funding why isn't the government dealing with. when people could be potentially well people who have served their sentence for their friends and are saved to be let back out insanity should be mark out into society one of the real problems in reducing the number of people on the sentences and getting them out is that there's been under funding the education services and mental health services in prisons and their number of conditions people have to make it before they can be released for their sentence and and some people have had a long time in prison then they should have done because the education courses in need to do as a condition of finishing the sentence haven't been available because i've been placed on the course of a book or because the person missed sessions because the prisons have been so on the start that they weren't prison obviously to take them safely from the cell to get education because the conservative m.p. and member of the u.k. just a select committee disagreed that there was a crisis in u.k. prisons would you agree that there is a prison crisis right now and i don't think there is a prison crisis at the prison in my in my own constituency for example there was a violent incidence there but by and large as the inspections approved it is being run very well and it is a very calm place and i think that's what you'll find if you look across the prison system as a whole so i.p.p. senses have been abolished why the prisoners still sobbing their sentences in prisons where there are still some prisoners the law still serving that while the i.p.p. system is reveled but the key thing to concentrate on is the rehabilitation of prisoners and that comes down very much to their role in education and how the prison service can help them to move their lives on and i saw very good examples of this in germany and in denmark for example where the lines of prisons have been. transformed as a result of the courses they were running and the sort of activities the work if it is that they were involved in one is than is the cox and the lack of funding in the u.k. prisons mean that they don't actually have access to those courses we don't have the pastor now to cover those courses for the people who are currently serving this is still stuck in that limbo but we've changed the rules so that governors can have more authority over their own prisons which i think is a very good thing and the courses are being run and are being run effectively and there are there are a huge number of prisoners who are going through them and getting the benefits of them every day that we are talking about them i want to speak to someone who'd been a president for public protection sentence jamie turner robbed the post office with an unloaded gun he was sentenced to all brought and having a firearm with intent he received an i.p.p. just ten days after they were brought in i cleared my fence on the fourteenth of april two thousand and five if. i were to commit my friends before the fourth of the reports and i would have. is less. is more. you know less you know not. i'm not excusing all behavior that was deeply ashamed of myself and i even write the apology that i was society was good and you know sorry for any upset upset cause which i did and i needed to be punished and in some ways i probably want to be punished and i just want my issues out and i always take enough evidence at the time which i was taking them for depression and because i see anything that was said to clear my head body and even start to command these it's all good fences until the last when i was forty one forty two there's nothing else in my previous history that is that is violent this whole every village looked inside me when i got the sense i never really went into my background or you know they just on paper they thought well you've done this and they gave before you did this so like. you who would like you off when you went in and what was your experience your first day and. always have it don't and when you've got five years in front of you you think through these five years and. then i can go home and that. obviously that wasn't the case because the five year period turned up and i didn't go home i was told to conserve guns have another two years to five years are you going to see the parole board are always yeah yeah and they said well i know you've got this i.p.p. sentence that's right progress to every time i counted progress i was kind of expecting to go home with a five year period not to be given another two years more. and that college deflates your bet and then just send you into a law. because you must now you know when you get to the end bit and then you think now and then and they go and sag another bit and that's what happened basically. and you know i didn't deal with these pleas that will. ease it was i was too well he said what you just said then you were in twenty something he was abolished in twenty twelve it was yes actually when you're inside your head this is surely i'm coming out if you affect and you know i'm a good know what my thing was each month would be a version and mission of inside college in hard times come out and i'd always go and try to seek out where it was in the prison live always at the hope that this month something's going to be in there the case is going to be you know i would be like war is over can i think. you know and obviously that didn't come you just get these little snippets of hope. you know i knew i had hope because i just thought. fantasist got me saying hey you know shorty someone's got to say the fairness in all this we have recently they're brought in for like seriously violent pm carnival of people sex offenders and now it's against people yeah but yourself attempted robbery but also even smaller crimes as well yeah yeah you have probably mommies want to know more there is a series and maybe and it's had. a lot of people with a lot less than a lot less than a you know i always knew that i was in that gar you know it's just a very spirited song in my life where you know it was a bit desperate and be ashamed of myself or said to science and as if it were to kill somebody basically. saying is this will be the thirty i think it's christmas is also christmas style is this what i've with you know i just want to get it over and done with and then move on to the new year so i'm always waiting for that new year to come in i just wish in your life why i say that's what you do you just wish your life away. you know you might boast of it but it's not really there's no law in there now to occupy your mind in that you know you just a menial tasks try not to get a door closed become a train or something say doors be open all the time but. nobody would end up in the clayton powell and i wish to have a law because there's no there's never enough in the cupboard to claim with. legitimacy you go in there when you. you know. the government is just with true squeezed it squeeze the life out of it and it was underfunded in the first place and that's why they're called the problems they're in there now and what did those extra years like honest teach you had while you were inside. it was just tough and it was it was just tough he's not just fills you full of anxiety and worry and think and you just thinking constantly when i get when i'm again i just going to happen this is going to happen for me you know you just never know because sometimes you just you think you know you're never going to get you just to stop thinking. you know it will feel when they have given up hope. we should understand . they have given up. prisoners levels of reach the highest in history but there were forty one thousand cases last year but recent figures from the prison reform trust showing that for every one thousand people serving in i.p.p. there were five hundred fifty incidents of self paul i want to speak to the bell from u.k. charity the mental health center about the effect these indefinite sentences have on the mental health of inmates being in prison itself is a risk factor for a mental health difficulty you can imagine why and not knowing your release date of course for what's going to happen to you in the future is just an added risk we also know from research we did a few years ago now where when imprisonment for public protection was was still in force as a sentence many of the people who were imprisoned under those sentences had quite serious histories of mental health difficulty so it's a population that's already vulnerable compounded by the fact that people don't necessarily have any sense of when they might leave and what the future might hold for them and we need to be sure that anyone who is on imprisonment probably protection is able to get access to programs that will help them to change regardless of whether they've got mental health difficulty or not those that have made some adjustments to make appropriate and safe for them but we just need to ensure that the somebody is working towards a release and working towards rehabilitation in the most effective way possible but it isn't just the sentences that are affected it's pawn in hartley was given a minimum taria of two years and eleven months for robbery but thirteen years on he's still in sight and his family have no idea when he's getting out. not knowing when they're going to be released you know on the ninth or in your life sentence and. if there is an even after being really there was a time when your life when you have a sensation itself there's times where he wants to end his life that doesn't seem want and ends well. you know my what anyone says or goals no one is actually doing anything to help their on paper they just are forgotten about and that's how a lot of people want them to be forgotten that i don't because the government brought how. that was and implements a proper way they do not think the sentence. deport people for minor crimes on their ninety nine year license. we truly do believe this christmas you would have been here even the man who brought it in agrees that it was a mistake yet. the dave you've not got anyone that's not p.p. that's at nine o'clock the role law costs and these people of have been forgotten about nine hundred people on them it's been given the sentence and they gave it some one thousand so you can imagine what the prison system was like is just for we dogs and violences and dog a dog weld you've got over my skull. and if you tell that mask off then you vulnerable you can't move on the boat. how damaging is that do you think you guys especially know. it's hard and that's what we fight for the ip because of our anger as you might as well just sentence a death penalty at least and if you give him the death penalty the know when this in and so that and that's what it's all of our it's just the not knowing and that's where the mental torture can say for the fun way on for this knowledge to sentence him to some. this year tens of thousands of inmates. will be spending their christmas in prisons all get be a breaking point on the stall. an overcrowded. drug and cell paul continue to write all the thousands of prisoners who. could go free. and show and for this season from here in the shadow of the. one of the poorest communities in one of the richest places on earth. with. their reflections and predictions. but until then we'll be playing your favorite episodes from this season but don't forget. media. going underground by christmas and a happy and peaceful. sleep . dropping bombs brings peace to the chicken hawks the battle. to tell you that let me. tell you. that we along with all the. when i.