Panorama Season 19

This year nearly 100,000 people will be casualties on our roads. There are ways to reduce accidents - but they all cost money. Would you be prepared to pay £250 extra to have a safer car? Or be willing to be stopped at random by a policeman for a breath test? Or be legally compelled to wear a seat belt? Tonight Panorama looks at the rising cost and suffering of road accidents, and asks what price are we prepared to pay to make our cars and roads safer?

Michael Charlton reports on the Docks Dispute and how far it is likely to spread, while Alan Watson chairs a debate about the new Industrial Relations Act. Alan Hart reports from Belfast on events in Northern Ireland since Bloody Friday.

Tonight, as the school year ends, Panorama reports on the problem of why some children leave school unable to read or write.

“What do the Chinese communists want? They want the world.” (Richard Nixon, 1960) But now it’s President Nixon who wants the Chinese, and today he's gone calling. Why? To win the peace in Asia or an election in America? What does his visit really mean?

On the eve of the Winter Olympics in Japan, the President of the Games Avery Brundage speaks out on the great 'shamateurism' conflict and Panorama investigates the role of amateurs in sport.

Two days ago, Britain was set on a new course when we signed the Treaty of Accession to the EEC. In Brussels this weekend, Panorama talked exclusively to the Prime Minister at this moment of personal triumph and asked him how he wants to shape and influence the Europe we are in the process of joining.

A report on the revolution that must hit our secondary schools if the 16-year-old school-leaving age is to mean more than an extra year's boredom and frustration for final year pupils.

If you worked in at UCS, or went on strike at the Post Office; if you waited for the sack at Rolls-Royce; if you can't understand decimals; if you used to read the Daily Sketch, or insured your car with the V & G; if you tried to follow the great debate, or missed out on your school milk - then this programme is about you. The rest of us lived through it all - Ibrox, Ulster, Europe, Etna, Rhodesia, Pakistan. Harold Wilson wrote a book - Ted Heath spoke French. Rudi Dutschke went home - Chay Blyth came home. Mao came in - Chiang went out. Arsenal the double - Trevino the treble. And Harvey Smith gave us the sign of the times.

In 1949, Gen Chiang Kai-shek fled mainland China for Taiwan. He still hasn't found the right time to return; and as President Nixon prepares to meet Chairman Mao, and world opinion in the UN moves against the Chinese Nationalists, Julian Pettifer reports from Taiwan.

On the eve of the Conservative Party Conference, Robin Day goes to Downing Street to talk to the prime minister, the Rt Hon Edward Heath MP, about his record in office and the major problems he now faces.

Tonight Nicholas Harman reports from the edge of the Dartmoor Park on the opening shots being fired in a public enquiry which starts next week in Exeter about plans to expand mining operations which could affect this part of the Devon countryside for the next 50 years; shots whose echoes can be heard in other National Parks, as mining companies are being given permission to prospect for valuable minerals.

The most important cause of death among the under-45s is accidental death. Need it be? Robert MacNeil examines the under-staffed and over-stretched accident and emergency facilities of the Health Service and asks: How safe is it to have an accident in Britain today?