:00:00. > :00:27.Now on BBC News, Witness, with Tanya Beckett.
:00:28. > :00:29.Hello, and welcome to Witness, with me Tanya Beckett,
:00:30. > :00:34.here at the British library in London.
:00:35. > :00:37.We've got another five witnesses who have given us a glimpse
:00:38. > :00:42.This month on the programme, the Bulgarian dissident stabbed
:00:43. > :00:46.with a poisoned umbrella in a London street.
:00:47. > :00:50.Thousands of children flee the Spanish Civil War.
:00:51. > :00:56.And a royal wedding causes uproar in Botswana.
:00:57. > :01:00.But first we go back 40 years to September 1976,
:01:01. > :01:04.when Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong died in Beijing,
:01:05. > :01:07.starting a period of national mourning and political upheaval.
:01:08. > :01:16.American Sydney Rittenberg was Mao's translator and knew him well.
:01:17. > :01:21.He was so idolised, and it was so impossible to criticise him.
:01:22. > :01:29.He finally convinced himself that China needed an emperor figure.
:01:30. > :01:34.I think Mao before coming to power and after coming to power were two
:01:35. > :01:40.quite different personalities, but he was enormously courteous.
:01:41. > :01:46.He could make you forget that you were in the presence
:01:47. > :01:55.He was a large man, and he had great personal dignity,
:01:56. > :02:06.Jinan was the nerve centre of the entire Communist movement.
:02:07. > :02:10.It was so rare in those days to have an American
:02:11. > :02:19.I was fascinated by the work they were doing, and I decided to
:02:20. > :02:21.stay and act as an English-language person for their radio programme.
:02:22. > :02:44.I would say even of great pride and joy to be there,
:02:45. > :02:46.to be part of that movement which people felt was
:02:47. > :02:55.There was one American movie every week.
:02:56. > :03:03.I used to go and interpret, and Mao's favourite films,
:03:04. > :03:13.were Laurel and Hardy, but they loved that!
:03:14. > :03:16.When Mao laughed, he laughed like a baby laughs.
:03:17. > :03:18.Like, every muscle in his face was laughing.
:03:19. > :03:23.I would go to the party headquarters and play Chinese gin rummy cards,
:03:24. > :03:26.they would all tease each other, cuff each other around and be very
:03:27. > :03:33.He would sit there, nobody would tease him or cuff him around.
:03:34. > :03:43.Maybe I felt that because I did argue with him on occasion.
:03:44. > :03:53.I think Mao never intended that people should die in the great
:03:54. > :04:00.famine in the great leap forward, but he didn't really make it stop.
:04:01. > :04:03.I think the official estimates in China run around 30 million
:04:04. > :04:18.I was suddenly arrested and held in solitary confinement
:04:19. > :04:31.When I heard in the prison that Mao had died, I thought this
:04:32. > :04:38.was the most terrible blow that the revolution could suffer.
:04:39. > :04:49.I think Mao was an extremely difficult character to analyse.
:04:50. > :04:52.He could do, and did do, good things for China that nobody
:04:53. > :04:56.He also did horrible things for China that nobody
:04:57. > :05:07.Sydney Rittenberg still writes and lectures on Chinese politics.
:05:08. > :05:11.In September 1978, London saw one of the most dramatic moments
:05:12. > :05:16.of Cold War espionage when Bulgarian dissident and journalist
:05:17. > :05:20.Georgi Markov was assassinated with a poisoned umbrella.
:05:21. > :05:28.I remember walking into the cubicle and Georgi Markov was
:05:29. > :05:40.He was hot, toxic, had a rapid pulse rate, and his temperature was up.
:05:41. > :05:47.The first thing he said, "I was warned three months ago
:05:48. > :05:50.that they're out to get me, and I've been poisoned by the KGB
:05:51. > :05:53.and I'm going to die, and there's nothing you can do about it."
:05:54. > :05:55.Markov was driving to work at the BBC.
:05:56. > :05:58.He parked, as usual, below the Waterloo Bridge.
:05:59. > :06:01.Markov came up the steps to the bus stop on the road above.
:06:02. > :06:10.As he reached the bus stop, suddenly something happened to Markov.
:06:11. > :06:14.He suddenly felt a sharp stabbing at the back of his right thigh,
:06:15. > :06:16.and he looked around, expecting the person behind him
:06:17. > :06:19.to apologise for prodding him with an umbrella.
:06:20. > :06:27.Instead of which, the man hailed a taxi.
:06:28. > :06:30.Mr Markov finished his shift and it wasn't until late that
:06:31. > :06:34.night at his home in Clapham that he developed a high fever.
:06:35. > :06:37.When I examined him systematically, the only thing I could find
:06:38. > :06:44.was on the back of his thigh he had perhaps a six centimetre diameter
:06:45. > :06:50.swollen area with about a one-to-two millimetres central puncture mark.
:06:51. > :06:53.I thought, I'd best phone Scotland Yard Special Branch
:06:54. > :06:56.because they're the sort of people who deal with defectors.
:06:57. > :06:58.His own room at the BBC Bulgarian service was used
:06:59. > :07:03.by anti-terrorist squad detectives investigating the murder.
:07:04. > :07:07.I thought, it can't be cyanide, that would kill you too quickly.
:07:08. > :07:10.It can't be thallium or arsenic, that's too slow.
:07:11. > :07:12.It had to be a toxin, and if it was a toxin,
:07:13. > :07:17.So I then went home and my wife said, "You should read
:07:18. > :07:27.She had just read a book called The House Of The Lurking Death,
:07:28. > :07:31.Now, I don't think that this was an intuitive diagnosis,
:07:32. > :07:34.it was just because of the book she'd read at the time,
:07:35. > :07:37.but of course the odd thing was that she was proven right,
:07:38. > :08:02.Georgi's heart had started giving out, and I just saw
:08:03. > :08:04.the heart machine, I saw it die away, and shortly
:08:05. > :08:09.I remember the pathologist taking a segment of site issue,
:08:10. > :08:13.As this was being handled, a very small metallic
:08:14. > :08:17.It rolled onto the table and they then looked at it under
:08:18. > :08:19.a microscope and realised it was actually a very round,
:08:20. > :08:21.circular, tiny little ball, about just under two millimetres
:08:22. > :08:24.in diameter, and that it had holes in it.
:08:25. > :08:26.And obviously something could have been contained in those holes.
:08:27. > :08:29.They decided almost straight away that this was going to be ricin.
:08:30. > :08:31.It is an ideal poison because it is incredibly toxic.
:08:32. > :08:34.It's strange that you encounter one patient so early on in one's
:08:35. > :08:36.career that actually changes your entire life.
:08:37. > :08:41.All I wanted to be was a forensic pathologist.
:08:42. > :08:45.I wanted to be someone who looked at dead bodies, looked
:08:46. > :08:50.at laboratory findings and decided why people died.
:08:51. > :08:52.And this was the first patient that I'm trying
:08:53. > :08:57.desperately to keep alive, and failing, and realising that,
:08:58. > :09:02.actually, I didn't want to find out why people died,
:09:03. > :09:08.The investigation into the killing of Georgi Markov is still open.
:09:09. > :09:14.Now to America, where in September 1971 a prison riot at Attica
:09:15. > :09:20.Correctional Facility ended in the deaths of 39 people
:09:21. > :09:23.after inmates took prison guards hostage in protest at what they saw
:09:24. > :09:30.Carlos Roesch was serving 35 years for robbery.
:09:31. > :09:45.This film contains offensive language and upsetting footage.
:09:46. > :09:52.I was sentenced to Attica for robbery in 1966.
:09:53. > :10:11.From the moment I got there, I was conscious of racial prejudice.
:10:12. > :10:23.They had no qualms about calling you 'not or'.
:10:24. > :10:33.We heard that a prisoner was killed by guards in another prison.
:10:34. > :10:38.Everybody felt like, if they did it to this guy...
:10:39. > :10:57.It wasn't planned, it was spontaneous.
:10:58. > :10:59.I came out of the shower and everything was different.
:11:00. > :11:05.I'm naked, I'm soaking wet, I'm looking around,
:11:06. > :11:11.People were crazy, and I got crazy with them.
:11:12. > :11:20.It was just total chaos, nobody in control.
:11:21. > :11:22.You can make out the Molotov cocktails sitting on the
:11:23. > :11:24.ramp between the two chairs in the barricade.
:11:25. > :11:26.We'd seen some guards from the metal shop,
:11:27. > :11:34.We urgently demand immediate negotiations...
:11:35. > :11:38.Over a course of about two or three days, we tried to negotiate
:11:39. > :11:41.with the authorities, but it was all a game.
:11:42. > :11:53.It wasn't really a negotiation, it was like make-believe.
:11:54. > :12:11.We're on the roof of A-block, waiting for the assault to begin.
:12:12. > :12:14.The hostages are on the catwalks with knives at their throats.
:12:15. > :12:17.When they stormed the prison, they came in dropping
:12:18. > :12:52.I remember guys getting shot to pieces.
:12:53. > :12:58.I saw a guy, they took his head off, blood was pouring out
:12:59. > :13:04.I had nightmares like you wouldn't believe.
:13:05. > :13:26.It was a very defining moment in my life.
:13:27. > :13:33.It changed me, because I realised how precious life is.
:13:34. > :13:39.Carlos eventually left prison in 1995 and now lives in New York.
:13:40. > :13:43.Remember, you can watch Witness every month on the BBC News Channel,
:13:44. > :13:47.or you can catch up on all of our films along with more
:13:48. > :13:55.than 1000 radio programmes in our online archive.
:13:56. > :14:00.Now, we're going back to the 1930s and the Spanish Civil War.
:14:01. > :14:02.When thousands of children from the Basque country
:14:03. > :14:11.Emilio Martinez was just seven years old when he boarded a ship
:14:12. > :14:26.May 1937, 4000 children packed in there, escaping from the Spanish
:14:27. > :14:46.I remember as a child the Civil War, every day we would see airplanes
:14:47. > :14:54.flying over the hill just on their way to Bilbao,
:14:55. > :14:57.because we lived just outside Bilbao in a little village
:14:58. > :14:59.in the Basque country, and of course we were being bombed.
:15:00. > :15:02.When we were evacuated, my brother was 11, just 11,
:15:03. > :15:04.and I was just seven years and one week.
:15:05. > :15:07.We were taken to the boat by my father, and he just went off
:15:08. > :15:21.There simply wasn't the space - we were lying on the floor,
:15:22. > :15:24.rolling about being sick, we encountered a storm.
:15:25. > :15:42.When we arrived at Southampton, the quayside was quite full
:15:43. > :15:48.When we arrived at Southampton, the quayside was quite full of people
:15:49. > :15:53.greeting us. We were sent on double-decker buses from the boat to
:15:54. > :15:57.the camp just outside Southampton. The camp is being run almost
:15:58. > :16:01.entirely by voluntary workers helped by gifts from every corner of
:16:02. > :16:06.Britain. A Baker sending 50 loaves of bread each week and employees of
:16:07. > :16:14.the wash houses are working over the weekend to do the camp laundry free.
:16:15. > :16:23.They gave us an incredible degree of support. But Southampton was only a
:16:24. > :16:27.temporary measure. We were sent to different Spanish children's
:16:28. > :16:31.colonies or homes over the country, from one place to another to
:16:32. > :16:38.another, constantly on the move. I was quite bewildered by all this,
:16:39. > :16:47.sometimes you were separated from your friends and you didn't know
:16:48. > :16:55.why. The Civil War finished on April one, 1939, so gradually we were
:16:56. > :16:59.being repatriated. In the case of my brother and myself, the Red Cross
:17:00. > :17:05.had managed to contact my mother in Spain, and she assured them she
:17:06. > :17:12.couldn't have us back because my father was in prison, she had
:17:13. > :17:15.another five children, they were absolutely starving and destitute,
:17:16. > :17:27.so my brother and I remained in England. To try to make a life for
:17:28. > :17:32.ourselves. I was a teacher for 29 years, but basically I'm a craftsman
:17:33. > :17:43.by birth and I enjoy working, creating things. The experience of
:17:44. > :17:47.being a refugee totally affected me. The reception and the solidarity of
:17:48. > :17:56.the British people was fantastic. It has made me a more worthy human
:17:57. > :18:01.being, and I have always felt a sense of duty to society. It hasn't
:18:02. > :18:05.been easy, but it has been very fulfilling. I have had a wonderful
:18:06. > :18:10.life. Emiliano Martinez still lives in
:18:11. > :18:15.London. And now for our final film this month, we are going back to
:18:16. > :18:22.September 1948, when an African king in waiting lost his title for
:18:23. > :18:27.marrying a white woman. He was due to become a chief in what is now
:18:28. > :18:33.Botswana when he met with Williams when studying in London. Her sister
:18:34. > :18:40.Muriel tells the tale. I never met an African until I went
:18:41. > :18:50.to this missionary conference. I went up to dinner to the table of
:18:51. > :18:54.Seretse Khama. He was the chief of the tribe, which is like a king. We
:18:55. > :18:58.became good friends and I used to go up every Saturday night. My sister
:18:59. > :19:02.Ruth did not have anything to do on Saturday night so I asked if she
:19:03. > :19:05.would like to come with it. We met through my sister, indirectly
:19:06. > :19:13.through the London missionary Society. They clicked from the word
:19:14. > :19:19.go. You get this attraction, it is impossible to describe but it is
:19:20. > :19:24.just there. We like the same type of music, jazz, Ella Fitzgerald. It was
:19:25. > :19:29.amazing how they had so much in common with such different
:19:30. > :19:34.backgrounds. In those days, the racial situation in London was not
:19:35. > :19:41.very good. White and black did not go out together, especially a white
:19:42. > :19:45.girl with a black man. We knew that we were going to upset our immediate
:19:46. > :19:51.families but at the same time we didn't want to be apart. I think she
:19:52. > :19:54.was very brave, but so was he. His father had died when he was very
:19:55. > :19:58.young and he was brought up by his uncle. He was very much against the
:19:59. > :20:03.marriage and he thought he would be letting the tribe down and you could
:20:04. > :20:11.not have a cheap with a white bride. They wanted to be married in the
:20:12. > :20:15.Anglican Church. Unfortunately, his uncle broke to the society to stop
:20:16. > :20:18.the wedding and they broke to the Bishop of London and he telephoned
:20:19. > :20:27.the vicar, warning of the marriage, just saying he wasn't to marry them.
:20:28. > :20:30.Said that was the Saturday. On Monday morning, Seretse went to a
:20:31. > :20:35.registry office, bought a special licence and on the Wednesday morning
:20:36. > :20:45.at 9am they arranged to get married. We were stubborn but other people
:20:46. > :20:47.were equally stubborn. It was discussed in parliament, Churchill
:20:48. > :20:51.said they were very brave couple, even though he didn't approve of the
:20:52. > :21:05.marriage. The British Government sent out a team to look under
:21:06. > :21:14.Seretse being bitchy. -- being the chief. They had a lot of protests
:21:15. > :21:20.from South Africa. They said, we don't approve of a coloured couple
:21:21. > :21:24.being in such a prominent position, said the British Government exiled
:21:25. > :21:27.Seretse, even though the committee that went down there couldn't find
:21:28. > :21:33.anything wrong with the marriage. Had we not had the aggregate would
:21:34. > :21:36.have been better but I think just the fact people were trying to
:21:37. > :21:40.separators, even after we married they were still trying to separate
:21:41. > :21:44.us, someone described it as trying to split the atom. It was news all
:21:45. > :21:48.over the world, I just couldn't believe it was me and my family, and
:21:49. > :21:53.with, and we were living through this. In six years, the British
:21:54. > :22:01.Government allowed Seretse to return to his homeland. At last, the ban is
:22:02. > :22:05.lifted. When Seretse was setting up the political party, he travelled
:22:06. > :22:12.all over Botswana. One of these times the car broke down so Ruth had
:22:13. > :22:17.had three months training in car maintenance, so she got out and fix
:22:18. > :22:21.the car. He said, I certainly married the right woman!
:22:22. > :22:25.Muriel William Sanderson died last year. Seretse Khama became
:22:26. > :22:33.Botswana's first elected president after independence in 1966. His and
:22:34. > :22:37.Ruth's son, Ian, is president today. That is all from Witness this month
:22:38. > :22:41.here at the British library but we will be back next month with another
:22:42. > :22:43.round-up of history. Thanks for joining me, and Bromley and the rest
:22:44. > :23:13.of the goodbye. That afternoon. We have had
:23:14. > :23:15.virtually every variety of autumn weather so far today. Certainly some
:23:16. > :23:16.heavy