Customs on TV 3: The Duty Men

 Fly-on-the-wall tv documentary shows are so commonplace today that it is hard to imagine what a big deal a series like The Duty Men was back in 1987 – made in the days of heavy film cameras and sound equipment in a much less open society. 

While the 1986 drama series, The Collectors had proven unsuccessful for the BBC, the Corporation had an ace up its sleeve. During the same time period, documentary maker Paul Hamann was collaborating with HM Customs and Excise on the 1987 BBC2 documentary series: The Duty Men.

Hamann had made over 40 documentaries for the BBC (as a producer for the BBC’s Open-Door Unit, he helped residents of Belfast’s Divis Flats in the Falls Road make a documentary about their poor housing conditions). His 1985 ‘Real Lives’ documentary about extremism in Northern Ireland was the subject of a special meeting of the BBC Board of Governors after an article by the Sunday Times resulted in Home Secretary Leon Brittan (who had not seen the film) demanding the BBC pull the documentary.

Even the BBC Northern Ireland controller said Hannam’s approach had been “impeccable”, but the  Governors tried to ban the film. In response, staff called a one-day protest strike, and the film was eventually shown in an edited version. 

Despite the controversy, Hamann received high level Government support for The Duty Men, which was seen as part of the new war on drugs. The project took over two years to film, and two episodes were held back until the repeat screening in 1988 due to ongoing court cases. 

“The Customs have traditionally been a closed and secretive institution,” said the Radio Times’ introductory article. “This is particularly true of the Investigation Division….The ID feared having a television crew on their tail was bound to increase the risk of ‘showing out’. That the Customs agreed to cooperate with the BBC owes much to the persistence of Paul Hamann.”

He first thought of the series while filming the arrest of a heroin dealer for the 1985 Real Lives documentary ‘Pushers’. Hamann won the backing of Home Office minister David Mellor, heading the anti-drug campaign “and of Mrs Thatcher, via her press secretary Bernard Ingham. The Customs also accepted that public understanding of their work would be of vital assistance.”

Hamann reported that although Customs was cautious they relaxed restrictions after the successful arrest of a drug courier in the first story. “The Customs themselves consulted the Attorney General over the propriety of filming criminals being arrested, while the BBC posted warning signs at Heathrow and Dover alerting passengers to their presence.”

Episode one, shown on Thursday 29th  October 1987, was called The Red Sammy. An HMCE Investigation Division team targeted a cocaine courier, bringing a bundle of cocaine into Heathrow, concealed in his red Samsonite suitcase, the ‘Red Sammy.”

The story continued on Friday 30th October in The Couriers, with the ID trailing the gang from Heathrow to Australia as they build their case against the network of drug importers. “In South London, 60 Officers prepare for a series of 'knocks' - dawn raids. Meanwhile, the man the Romeos have targeted as their main suspect flies unknowingly into their arms at Heathrow.”

Episode three, Friday 6th November 1987, was called Surveillance. Filmed in February 1986, it followed the investigation of a VAT fraud in which the only clues are 50 fake companies which had falsely claimed as much as E250,000 from Customs and Excise. In one of Britain’s coldest winters, officers spend frustrating days waiting for the suspect to show. “He’s been making £1000 a week…and he’s even too idle to go out at a proper time in the morning. We’ve been…in the freezing cold while he sits in his bloody bed.”

Episode Four on Thursday 13 November 1987 was The Red and the Green. It examined the daily routine in the red and green customs' channels of London Heathrow. Target flights from drug-growing areas usually produce results, but mostly officers have to rely on a mix of intuition, graft, luck and the 'revenue nose'.

“Tolerance towards the ordinary passenger tempted into 'the little bit extra' does not extend to those whose duty-free turns out to be cannabis. The insight into the 'Throne Room', where officers doing the nastiest job in customs wait for the 'stuffers' and 'swallowers', ensures that no one can ever look at those quiet customs people in the same way again.”

This episode included the arrest on 17 February 1986, of actress Judy Carne (of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In fame) for attempting to smuggle cocaine and cannabis in from New York. As Carne was already known to police for drugs offences it was probably not a very surprising detection, although the actress was devastated to be sentenced to three months in prison in April 1986. 

Ironically, only the week before the show was broadcast, Judy was caught bringing a quarter of a gram of cocaine into Gatwick airport, concealed in two nasal inhalers hidden in a boot. She was fined £500 at Crawley Magistrates Court only days before on 11 November, providing the series with some unexpected publicity. As one of the customs officers commented, Judy Carne was , “not a well girl.”

Episode five, on 20 November 1987 was ‘Poteen’. In rural Ulster undercover Customs Officers from the Belfast Collection Investigation Unit observe Ballymena market from an unmarked van, as a “broken down old farmer” sells illegally distilled whiskey from the back of a van. 

Episode six, Friday 27 November 1987, Aunties Bag. At London Heathrow Airport sniffer dogs check a Pakistan Airlines plane and on the tarmac, Officers and dogs look for drug concealments in passengers' bags. Arrivals from Pakistan receive particular attention for concealments containing heroin. 'Auntie' and her nephew are stopped in the green channel and interrogated. The young man says, "It is Auntie's bag - she has the key".

Auntie is questioned through an interpreter. "It is not my case," she says, glaring at the officer and becoming increasingly belligerent. Her interrogator, though, gently persists...

In episode seven, 4 December 1987. The Chancers - follows the grind of the busy night shift at Dover Docks with tobacco, drugs and booze finds. In this chaos, and against overwhelming odds, there are some chance finds; tobacco, a drugs haul and an astonishing booze discovery. But even with the successes, as one officer explains, 'It's horrifying to sit and think at the end of a shift: what have I let through tonight? What have I personally let through?'

The first series was an immediate hit, with the theme music, ‘Watching You’ by Michael Kamen, released as a single. A tie-in BBC book by Hamann and Sunday Times journalist Peter Gillman quickly entered the top ten. The book covered not just the stories behind each episode but also the filming by Hamann’s team. During the VAT fraud episode, for instance, the BBC film crew were due to follow the Investigation Team as a caravan of unmarked cars followed the suspect. One of the BBC cars skidded on the ice as the caravan set off, and got left behind. The driver sped to catch up with the convoy  and soon overtook not just the HMCE cars but the suspect himself. “They then compounded their mistake by braking hard and allowing the column of cars to pass them. “ When they slipped in at the end of the convoy, the comments over the radio were impolite, but the suspect continued unaware of what had happened. 

The book also related some of the then-recent history of HM Customs and Excise. How the Thatcher Government cut thousands of HMCE jobs as part of its policy of downsizing the Civil Service at the same time that the importation of drugs rose dramatically. And how the cuts began to be reversed in 1984 when Thatcher bought into the war on drugs. 

In March 1988 The Duty Men won three awards at the BAFTA’s – Best Factual Series and two sound editor awards. And in June 1988, a repeat series was broadcast including the two episodes previously held up for legal reasons

The first episode on 7th Jun 1988, was East Enders, following ID officers tracking the East End's biggest tobacco-smuggling gang. After observation at south coast ports and undercover surveillance of East End haulage yard, the film climaxed with over 60 investigators and SPG back-up in a dawn raid. 

The final delayed episode shown on Sunday 25th Sep 1988, was Cutter.  “The BBC team spent two days and nights on board a bucking Customs cutter as it tracked a suspected cannabis smuggler through the Irish Sea in a force nine gale.” The crew of the Customs' cutter Seeker out in the western approaches, lies in wait for a target ship loaded with cannabis. Finally, the target is sighted and, as gales become a force nine storm, the target is tracked to a remote cove on the Welsh coast....

By the time this was broadcast, Paul Hamann had already made 14 Days In May, a Grierson award-winning documentary following Edward Earl Johnson in his last days on Death Row in Mississippi. Hamann went on to be Head of BBC Documentaries and History and then formed production company Wild Pictures, which supplied a variety of documentary films to TV for 15 years.

In the 21st Century, most of the regimes explored in The Duty Men were subsequently devolved to the Border Agency and the Serious Organised Crime Agency.