30/01/2017 Inside Out West Midlands

Welcome to this week's Inside Out West Midlands,

from beautiful - if a little misty - Worcestershire.

Coming up, we have a report on the sinister side

of live music gigs.

This guy came up behind me and he started trying

to unzip my shorts.

He would not leave me alone.

Also tonight ? Land Rovers.

One of the Midlands' proudest creations,

but a prime target for thieves.

There is no code stamped on most of the parts.

There is a market, unfortunately, for stolen bits.

And how a location somewhere here in Worcestershire

could have played a key role in the event of a nuclear war.

These tunnels were earmarked to be the regional seat for

a new post-apocalyptic government.

I'm Ayo Akinwolere, this is Inside Out West Midlands.

Welcome to the show.

Tonight, we're in Malvern, and this is - look at at it -

this is Worcestershire.

Later, we'll be find out how a secret location in this county

could have played a major role in the Cold War.

But first...

Watching live music is one of life's great pleasures,

but whilst you're watching the band, who's watching you?

There's been growing reports of sexual assaults at live gigs,

so we sent Qasa Alom to investigate.

There's something going on at concerts that's literally

violating thousands of people.

It leaves them feeling isolated and alone.

For me, that's not how music should make you feel.

And this problem is putting a whole new generation of fans

off from live music.

Fans like Amy.

I was, like, 14 when I started going to gigs with just me and my friends.

And ever since then, it's just been, like,

getting groped and felt up.

Amy was barely in her teens when this started.

No wonder she's been put off.

This guy came up behind me and he started trying

to unzip my shorts and put his hand down my shorts, and he was

just grinding behind me and he wouldn't leave me alone.

Yeah, it was just disgusting.

Shockingly, this vile attack - and it is an attack -

happened in the middle of a crowd.

No-one even notices.

It's just so easy.

It makes me more angry than it makes me upset

because it's happened before, so you get over it

after a couple of times.

You just get used to it.

So what are you hoping that we can do out of this?

It is getting worse.

Girls are giving up and they just want to talk

about it - we want change.

Something needs to happen.

And if anything's going to change, this is where it needs to start.

We all know gigs are loud, sweaty and crowded ? it

comes with the territory.

And, sadly, these girls say so does being groped.

Well, a lot of friends of ours are being grabbed just

like that ? especially in university, I would say.

Yeah, I think it's bad.

We've almost become desensitized to it and think that, oh,

that's like normal behavior, but, really, we should change that.

Having spoken to people from all over the UK,

I'm finding out it's a national problem.

There's a support group called Girls Against that's created

an online movement to raise awareness about these attacks.

The response they've had from other victims is massive.

So far, more than a thousand girls and some guys have been in touch

So far, more than a thousand girls and some guys have with them,

all with similar cases of sexual harrassment at gigs.

In the 21st century, I am really surprised.

Why is this sort of thing still happening?

After all, we've had success at stamping out most sexual

harassment in the workplace.

And more is being done now to educate boys about consent.

So why do some guys still think it's OK to abuse women on a night out?

For a girl to be stood there, watching a band or watching an act

and somebody comes up dancing behind her and getting

a little bit too close without her permission, it's...

Yeah.

They can take certain liberties, kind of thing.

Just because they know they're not going to get caught.

Definitely been stood in close proximity to it happening in clubs

and I've not done nothing about it, so I guess in that way,

I'm kind of culpable, you know?

These guys think it's because neither the crowd nor

security are doing enough to stop any wrongdoing going on.

What do the music venues make of that?

I think harassment happens everywhere ? do

you know what I am saying?

Anybody who says that they aren't aware of this sort of thing

happening in a venue is lying.

This is Ben ? venue manager at the Zephyr Lounge in Leamington,

and someone who puts crowd safety as his number one priority.

If you guys are aware that this is going on in the crowds,

what are you actually doing to try and stop this happening?

We work with two great security firms and from the moment

the complaint is made, security take it seriously.

They deal with the individuals involved, they take it away

from everybody else so it can be a clear, grown-up conversation.

But for every good security company, like the one you've got,

there are also those that don't have the protocols in place.

In that something that needs to be looked at, quality control?

I think you've been very polite there ? there are some

companies that are terrible.

There are some companies that don't care about that experience enough.

Where our frustration comes in is, if we are working so hard to do this

and spending money and time putting these policies in place,

why shouldn't everybody?

But should it be up to the venues alone?

At the Sugarmill in Stoke-on-Trent, manager Danni thinks the authority

that regulates security firms should be doing more.

The SIA training in the main tends to focus on the sort of issues

that affect security in nightclubs and pubs.

We add on to their training ourselves, but it'd be more useful

if they came to us completely aware of these things and able

to deal with them.

It'd save us a lot of time, for sure.

The Security Industry Authority regulates every

private security firm - they make sure each security guard

has the right licenses and is qualified to work.

I'm checking out everything the guards learn to

become "SIA approved".

Danni thinks this training could be better, but regulations

are pretty thorough, to be fair, with seven separate

"required qualifications" needed - covering everything from conflict

management to terrorism training.

An independent report found this SIA training has generally improved

standards in the industry, but what do the security

companies think?

The SIA training is like taking your driving test -

the real training comes afterwards.

So when a security guard comes to ourselves, what we do

is we take them out, get them shadowing

an experienced guard.

We do our own training here.

I will go in each class and give my own experience.

I've been in the business 23 years now.

A lot of these training centres need to be regulated a lot more

because a lot of people are just doing it for the money ? churning

over high volumes of staff.

So, acording to Jonathan, the SIA training is a good

foundation for entry level guards.

But here's the thing - the training holds only one vague

mention of sexual harrassment and offers security guards no

guidance on how to act if someone comes to them after being groped.

And this is where victims have a big problem.

There's no training given to guards on how to support people like Amy

after a sexual attack.

Some people have been told not to dress a certain way if they don't

want to be treated that way, others have been told it's

not their job, they don't have to deal with it.

Others have been told to forget about it or told,

yeah, we'll report it, and then do nothing about it.

We tried to take Amy's concerns to the SIA to see if they'd put

victim support training into the SIA licence.

They initially agreed to an interview, but then cancelled

and sent a statement.

Evidence we were hoping to show them, until they

cancelled our interview.

And if you need proof the system needs improvement, amazingly enough,

some of the bands say they're now having to step in to

protect their own fans.

Somehow, we ended up getting sent a really detailed account of someone

who'd been sexually assaulted at the show.

And we'd never realised that this happened at our shows

and it was a regular thing.

We were sat there, thinking, it is our responsibility to act on this.

To do something.

After then, on stage, I just started saying,

if you feel comfortable doing this, you have to leave immediately.

The Worcester band are one of the biggest indie

rock groups in the UK, with two smash-hit albums,

sold-out tours and now, a personal crusade to help their fans be

safe at gigs.

I spoke to my tour manager about what we can do about it,

and he was really helpful.

He was like, we have a security briefing every day, where they speak

to all the security, so we made that the focus

of the security briefing.

Because the girl had said that she'd gone to security that night,

explained what happened and they'd kind of said, there's

nothing we can do.

And that just wasn't really good enough.

So our tour manager, whenever he has a security briefing

with all the security, made sure they knew

exactly what to do.

So is this the bleak future ahead?

The stars themselves making sure their own gigs

are safe enough for fans?

It's great to see some of the bands starting to call it out now,

but you need much stronger action from the venues, from security,

from everybody to say, actually, this is unacceptable behavior

and if it happens, we will take action on it.

The Home Office say they're confident the SIA's licensing

criteria is robust ? but is that enough?

I think the Home Office are going to need to do more about this,

because when it's affecting so many young women who are going to gigs

and being treated like this and there's no proper action

to follow it up, you need to look at the training, the response,

the way the regulation system works to make sure there is strong enough

action to deal with this.

So the pressure is growing for the authorities to do more.

And with venues, fans and bands leading by example,

we're perhaps one step closer to reclaiming live

music for everyone.

If you've been affected by any of the issues in that film,

head over to bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Still to come on the show...

The story of the mystery tunnels somewhere here in Worcestershire.

The tunnels under the ground, which would have held a small,

small number of people, not members of the public,

not even politicians, mainly, but administrators who would just

about keep government going, they hoped, if a nuclear attack,

particularly on the capital, was to take place.

But first, Land Rovers.

Last year, we reported when the last-ever Defender rolled

off the production line at the famous factory in Solihull.

These vehicles have always been real collectors' items.

Let's face it, that makes them very attractive to thieves.

So, Glen Campbell has been finding out who's taking them

and what's happening to them.

They are an iconic British vehicle.

A workhorse for the army and for farmers and also a whole generation

of families and hobbyists.

It is the Land Rover.

Some of these Land Rovers are worth north of ?50,000.

The problem is, to organised gangs of car thieves,

the Land Rover has become a top target.

We have a couple of Facebook pages to give people

information about the club.

Always somebody coming on there ? please help me,

my Land Rover has been stolen.

So, I would say it is probably once a week.

The last Land Rover Defender rolled off the Solihull production

line in January 2016.

Since then, this car has become one of the most stolen

vehicles in England.

The NFU mutual insurance company saw a surge in theft claims

when production stopped.

When you buy a Land Rover, you're not buying a car.

You're buying a hobby.

It is the heart and soul that people put into these vehicles.

It is not just a car that people drive.

It is a car that people love and cherish.

Sometimes it is a car that is passed down through the family.

The impact for these people, when they have had it stolen,

it is like losing your dog.

It is not nice.

This Land Rover was the pride and joy of Leicestershire Police

until the thieves took it apart overnight.

It was parked outside a local police station.

But all these stolen Land Rovers have got

to be going somewhere, so what exactly

is happening to them?

Police say that high-end vehicles like these Range Rovers

are being stolen to order and shipped abroad,

mostly to Africa.

Older, more vintage models are equally as desirable

to the thieves because Land Rovers were designed to be simple

to fix out in the field, so they can be easily stripped down

into parts, parts which are now more valuable because they are

no longer being made.

Because they stopped making them, the spare parts

are few and far between.

However, unfortunately, with a box of spanners

and an hour, you can have one in bits, completely.

There is no code stamped on most of the parts,

so they appear on eBay and there is a market,

unfortunately, for stolen bits.

John Rush is a Land Rover mechanic who was hit

by the thieves last year.

As someone who knows Land Rovers inside out,

I have set him a little challenge.

Just how easy is it for the criminals to strip a Land Rover?

Well, we have come up with a little experiment.

We're calling it Gone In 60 Minutes.

The plan is to unbolt parts of the Land Rover until we end up

with as big a pile of bits and as little Land Rover

as we can finish with.

OK, fellas, that is 23 minutes.

With the clock ticking and multiple cameras running,

we will check back in with John in a while.

Nathan Ricketts is a detective on the national car squad

and he knows all the latest tricks and tactics that hard

crime gangs are using.

Have you ever come across cases where organised car thieves

are putting tracking devices on commuters' cars at railway

stations, where they follow them home to steal the vehicle?

Is that is what is happening?

In my experience, I have come across and organised crime groups

who were particularly selecting the high-end cars.

They would see them in a car park or parked up at the railway

stations or supermarkets.

They would drive into them, basically pretending

they had an accident, leave a note on the windscreen

to say, I am really sorry, I have clipped your car,

cost a bit of damage, my friend runs a paint shop,

he will repeat it for you.

I really don't want to claim off my insurance.

So you think, OK, brilliant, someone is willing to face up to it,

their responsibility, they do a great job at repairing

the little scratch on the bumper

or a small dent, but they also clone a third key and put the tracking

device into the vehicle.

Car crime is now a high-tech business.

This garage is full of top-end Range Rovers.

The manufacturers fit all these cars with at least one tracker

for the benefit of the owners.

But the car gangs have a trick up their sleeve.

They are now using one of these, a magic wand, to sniff

the tracker and disable it.

I will just turn that up.

So they will know that there is something in the vehicle.

A tracker?

A tracker.

Now, when people steal a car, they will block the signal.

So they will block any signal coming out of the car,

take it to somewhere safe, take it to a side road

or in a unit somewhere, and when they feel safe,

they will switch this unit on and try and find

the tracking unit.

As soon as they find it, they'll disconnect it.

Being one step ahead of the thieves is the only way to catch them,

and the latest gadget does just that.

It is a tiny, highly intelligent tracker that cannot be sniffed

out by the magic wand.

What is the product you have come up with?

What is the secret tracker?

Well, and that is the point.

I would love to be able to show you the device.

We don't do that.

It could be anything on the car.

It is not one particular unit.

It is well hidden.

We do not talk about it.

It could be in the headlights, it could be anywhere.

I wouldn't be showing you any specification for it.

We do not want the thieves to get the upper hand on us.

And Neil's intelligent tracker is getting results.

It can run for months and send a signal from inside

the shipping container.

Here, police are recovering Land Rovers at Southampton docks,

just about to be shipped abroad.

And then here they are again.

Dozens more being recovered, this time in Uganda.

To steal the whole car, they will take bits of the car.

I mean, there are shots on the internet of a Land

Rover taken to bits.

Why do they take them to bits?

It reduces the risk.

If you take a whole car and try and sell it or move it,

that still is that vehicle.

It can be identified.

If you take it apart, it reduces the fact that it is a vehicle.

It could look like scrap, it could look like a few car parts,

it reduces what it is.

And, of course, it is a stolen vehicle.

With stolen Land Rover parts vanishing so quickly,

police need to catch the criminals in the act.

And that is exactly what happened to these three Land Rover thieves.

A call from a neighbour led to a quick police

reaction, and last October,

this trio were handed prison sentences totalling

6.5 years in all.

I believe it was quite a slick operation.

These vehicles, in my mind, were going to be taken

either to another country

or stripped down for parts and sent out to another country for money.

Back in John's barn, how was his attempt at stripping

a Land Rover in under one hour going?

Was it a case of gone in 60 minutes?

Now you see it, now you don't.

Time!

That is a Land Rover stripped in 60 minutes.

Are you surprised that you did at this quick?

I am quite surprised.

Yes.

I don't think I would want to do it as a business, though.

No. Now, put it back together.

Thank you! That would take longer.

So I'm here in beautiful Malvern, in Worcestershire.

It's a great place for walking and also relaxing, and it was this

tranquillity that made it the perfect base for a top-secret

research unit during World War II.

It might seem hard to believe, but this small town was home

to a team of crack scientists who developed crucial radar

technology and played a vital role in winning World War II.

But that is not the only link to clandestine military operations

that Worcestershire has.

Rebecca Wood has been finding out about a network of underground

top-secret tunnels earmarked for war-time roles.

The Cold War.

For decades, the world lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Had the unthinkable happened, and Britain been bombed,

society would have had to be rebuilt from the ruins.

And hidden under this quiet Worcestershire hillside was a secret

government bunker that would've been central to our struggle to survive.

What we're looking at here, the tunnels under the ground

which would have held a small, small number of people,

not members of the public, not even politicians,

mainly, but administrators who were just about keep

mainly, but administrators who would just about keep

government going, they hoped.

If a nuclear attack, particularly on the capital, was to take place.

This was one of 11 regional civil defence headquarters set

up by the Government.

If the UK came under attack, people chosen to report for duty

at Drakelow would have had to deal with the devastation aboveground.

They would have been safe, but there was a price.

They signed the Official Secrets Act, so they could not tell

They signed the Official Secrets Act, so they could not their

families where they were going.

So they would give them a last hug and last kiss goodbye and then

disappear off in the full knowledge that they are probably going to die

a horrible death and you're going to be working down here,

and come out to a world that no-one would recognise.

In 1945, the world had witnessed the horror unleashed

on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A new era of fear descended as the Second World War ended

and two superpowers emerged.

America and the Soviet Union amassed enough nuclear weapons

to wipe out civilisation.

If either side had actually pushed the button, civilisation as we knew

it would have come to an end.

These tunnels were earmarked to be the regional seat

a new post-apocalyptic government.

The British public had of course witnessed,

at the end of the Second World War, the impact of nuclear weapons.

What they were not aware of, to a full extent,

was the escalation and strength of nuclear weaponry in the post-war

period, the development of the H-bomb and the development

of intercontinental ballistic missiles far more powerful

than what were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When you hear the attack warning, you and your family must

take cover at once.

In the 1970s, the Government made public information films like this

in case of nuclear attack.

If you're caught in the open, lie down.

They offered simple though, in hindsight, maybe questionable

advice about what to do with the bomb dropped,

and would only be shown if the threat became imminent.

Then, cover the wood with bags or boxes filled

with some heavy material, like sand, earth...

They even told you how to build a basic nuclear shelter.

But not everyone would have been relying on doors

and sandbags to keep them safe.

Some people designated as essential by the authorities had to live

with the knowledge that if the four-minute morning did

sound, they would have to come and live down

here for who knows how long.

Everything the hundreds of military and government staff would need

to survive once the doors were sealed was here.

Clean, filtered air and water, generators for power,

food and communications equipment.

They had thought of everything.

How long would people have been able to live down here?

During the Cold War, it would have been between 2-3 months,

which was enough time for them to actually get plans in place

to run the area outside when they left the bunker.

Originally built as a secret factory for World War II aircraft parts,

the tunnels were taken over as a Cold War bunker

by the Ministry of Defence in 1961.

This film, made 30 years later, shows how it would

have looked back then.

So, through here, during the Cold War,

were the male dormitories.

We have kind of turned it into a galley area so that people

can see some artefacts.

But, back then, there would have been bunk beds in here,

so we can just see...

Oh, gosh!

So there we have some stuff donated to us by the British Army.

But how would you sleep down here had World War III

actually broken out, not knowing what was really

happening to the world outside?

This is the wartime broadcasting service.

This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons.

Communications have been severely disrupted...

For those suffering inside, there was a lifeline.

Broadcasts like these would let people know

that they had not been abandoned.

Meanwhile, stay tuned to this wavelength, stay calm

and stay in your home.

Every regional government headquarters had a BBC studio

to broadcast essential information to survivors.

Simon was a BBC engineer who would be expected to go

into one of the studios.

It was his job to get the day-to-day survival information out.

Advice will be given to you on the radio,

so keep listening.

Where are we going to get the food from?

Where are we going to get milk from?

Is milk going to be contaminated?

Is the water safe to drink?

Those sort of things.

That is only...

That is what would have been happening, you know.

What about the hospital?

I've got health care.

Somebody is having a baby, what are we going to do?

All those sorts of things.

That is the essential information that would have been broadcast.

But how would they know what to say?

Throughout the Midlands, there were smaller bunkers

like this one in Staffordshire, gathering vital information.

And these are the aboveground post-instruments.

These measured the bomb blast and the levels

of radioactive fallout in the air.

But it was underground that the real work of

the Royal Observer Corps happened.

There we are. Welcome.

So, this is where you would have been stationed.

This is where we would have been in the event of a nuclear attack.

This would have been the home for three of us

for up to a fortnight.

In here, you would have been taking readings,

and then what would have happened to the information you got?

How would you have got that out?

We have our post teletalk, which is that these there.

That is our direct communications to group headquarters.

That is where all the readings and any other relevant information

that we gathered was passed.

It all fed into the secret underground network and would have

been used by the Government to help civilians.

But, despite careful planning and millions of pounds spent

preparing the country for a nuclear attack, realistically,

would we have been ready if the missiles hit?

The breakdown in civilisation and communication would have been

so colossal, so comprehensive, it seems unlikely that

a World War II set of tunnels, taken over and used to try to defend

ourselves against what was late 20th-century nuclear

weaponry...

It would have been a rather forlorn hope.

Thankfully, we never found out.

And by the early 1990s, the Cold War had come to an end.

Bunkers were decommissioned and sold off by the MOD.

Drakelow Tunnels are now privately owned, and a group

of volunteers want to share the subterranean secrets.

You have big plans for them, haven't you?

Yes.

We are looking at turning the regional government

headquarter area into a museum.

We would like to show the different ages of the bunker.

So, from World War II, all the way through the Cold War, to the 1990s.

We think it will be a great place for people to learn

the history of our recent wars.

Drakelow's defensive role ended along with the Cold War.

But as threats to our national security still exist,

so do some secret bunkers.

They do have other bunkers.

They have some in Corsham, down in Wiltshire, that basically

no-one really knows much about.

Corsham is the type of place that you would drive down

and if you park your car at the side of the road, the MOD police

would come down and move you off quite quickly.

And maybe one day, those bunkers will give up their secrets, too.

What a wonderful film.

Before we go, don't forget, if you have missed anything,

head over to the iPlayer.

And we are also on Twitter - @bbciowm.

Or email me at [email protected].

That is your lot for tonight.

We will see you at the same time next week.

Have a good one, bye-bye.