Shoplifting Is On The Increase

From the collection of

East Anglian Film Archive at the University of East Anglia

The East Anglian Film Archive, the UK's first regional film archive, offers a unique record of the East of England's social and cultural history. As part of the University of East Anglia, we continue to lead moving image heritage research and inspire audience participation through community projects and events. Our collections represent a broad range of amateur and professional creativity, from 1896 to the present day.

Shoplifting Is On The Increase (About Anglia)

East Anglian Film Archive at the University of East Anglia
Chelmsford
1983-12-06
Sound

A report on measures to prevent shoplifting at an Essex department store.

Towards Christmas, shop staff attend a training session about shoplifting. Starting at Keddies department store in Chelmsford, Essex, we see how a store detective keeps an eye on people in the shop, and more costly items carry electronic tags which trigger alarms at the exits. Manager Mel Herritty explains that his main concern is the professional thief.

Peter Simpson, assistant chief constable of Essex Police, talks about their approach to shoplifting, so that they recognise people behaving out of character and genuine distress. A young man browsing past the Christmas windows of Boots is underwhelmed by the fine for his shoplifting offence, but explains why he won't do it again.

The reporter was Stephen Cole for this video, made to be shown in a news story on Anglia Television early evening news / magazine programme About Anglia.

Video filmed to be inserted during live broadcast of Anglia Television's early evening news / magazine programme About Anglia. The live studio presentation provided context for the video as part of a news story or magazine feature within the programme. About Anglia was not recorded during broadcast, so it is usually just the pre-recorded programme inserts which survive. In the 1980s Anglia Television was broadcasting to a wide area in the East of England including Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Suffolk and adjoining parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Rutland where there was some overlap with neighbouring ITV regions.

How We Shopped

From the high street to the information superhighway: shopping undergoes a makeover.

The 1980s heralded a sea change in the way we shopped - and what we shopped for. Reflecting the growing impact of new technologies, from the arrival of credit cards to the consumer electronics boom and ultimately the internet shopping age, this collection also journeys through the changing face of our high streets into the 1990s and beyond. This is the era of out-of-town supermarkets and supersized shopping malls muscling in on the traditional town centre trade. Many smaller villages faced the loss of local shops entirely, but they didn't give up without a fight. Alongside these existential threats, local news reports investigate such emerging issues as convenience food labelling, shoplifting and the campaign to 'Buy British' as domestic manufacturing continued its long and painful decline. Glimpses of long-lost chain stores, brands and products that once dominated everyday life across the UK may inspire more than a whiff of nostalgia. Yet this collection also tells a story of continuity: despite the all-powerful internet, we do still seem to want to come together to shop in the 'real world', not least at Christmas, and those seasonal shopping moments are here waiting to be unwrapped

33 videos in this collection

Shopping

Newcastle upon Tyne
1999-02-23