Original subtitles

A complex that hosted an unlikely Cold War matchup...

It was a real barn burner.

The fact that the Soviets could match them

is really quite impressive.

..a British mine caught up in a battle

between trade unions and the Iron Lady...

She was determined to use every weapon in her arsenal to crush them.

..a Gothic tower in Memphis,

plagued from its inception...

This is where they made a crucial mistake,

and it was one that would haunt the building for the rest of its life.

..and a sprawling jungle retreat in Malaysia,

once fit for royalty.

After an unexpected tragedy,

his creation would be shattered,

and there was no-one there to pick up the pieces.

In Vilnius, Lithuania's capital,

a derelict structure evokes memories

of a remarkable sporting moment.

We come across this plaza,

but it's kind of falling apart.

Looming over all of it is a grand building

with a very distinctive design,

almost like a spaceship that's come and landed here.

It's concrete,

it's brutalist in style.

It has all the feelings of a Soviet building.

Inside, it quickly becomes apparent that this is an arena.

In some ways, it recalls a little bit Lincoln Center in New York City,

the Great Concert Hall, or even the Sydney Opera House.

This is a building with real aspirations for greatness.

Built to showcase Soviet excellence,

an American billionaire ensured it would host

a unique Cold War showdown.

Landing deep behind enemy lines,

this group of Americans were treated as heroes.

The players must've thought

this was the strangest thing they'd ever seen.

July, 1988...

..thousands of Lithuanians gather outside the building,

filling the plaza.

But these weren't protesters,

they were basketball fans...

..desperate to get inside and catch a glimpse of NBA superstars

making a rare appearance behind the Iron Curtain.

Gintaras Krapikas was one of the lucky ones.

But how did an NBA team come to play in this arena

during the Cold War?

Its seeds were sown back in the 1920s,

when Lithuanian Americans imported basketball into the country.

Journalist Vidas Maciulis

has been covering the nation's favourite game for 60 years.

The sport caught on so quickly,

Lithuania was crowned European champions in 1937 and 1939...

..but these glory days were soon cut short.

In 1940, shortly after World War II had broken out,

the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania,

and the national team was absorbed

into the Soviet system.

By the mid-1960s,

Soviet communism reached its zenith.

The Soviets were ahead in spaceflight.

Their political system seemed to be gaining power

around the world.

Their sports teams were some of the best in the world.

The Soviet leaders really wanted to project this image of success

to the rest of the world and to their own citizens.

And they embarked on a series of ambitious projects

across its empire.

Here in Lithuania, construction began in 1965 on this,

the Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports.

It hosted a range of events and sports,

including the country's beloved basketball.

Sitting alongside Soviet leaders,

it wasn't always the most relaxed atmosphere.

In the 1980s, with the Cold War beginning to thaw,

the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev instituted a series of reforms

that promoted a new level of transparency and openness

across the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev chose to release the pressure where he could,

almost like letting some steam out of a boiler

that's close to exploding.

So he began to allow cultural exchanges.

In the United States, Ted Turner,

a media mogul and owner of the Atlanta Hawks,

was closely watching international affairs.

Turner was a real character, real entrepreneur.

With CNN, he invented the whole idea of 24-hour cable news,

and he had a real idealistic streak.

And he especially was focused on doing what he could

to sort of bridge this divide

between the West and the Soviet Union.

In 1988, the Atlanta Hawks set off to cross the Iron Curtain

and play a series of three exhibition matches

against the Soviet national team.

The second of the three matches would take place here.

Excitement spread throughout the basketball-crazed nation.

Although the arena only held 5,000,

over 1,000,000 people competed for tickets.

In fact, it's said that they went for the equivalent

of a month's wages on the black market.

So the authorities decided to also sell tickets

to the practice sessions.

And the citizens of Vilnius just packed the stands,

watching these players practice

in absolute silence.

It was as if they were in church.

The players must've thought

this was the strangest thing they'd ever seen. JIM LAUGHS

On the 27th of July, 1988,

the two teams stepped out onto this court

for the much-anticipated showdown.

It was a real barn burner.

This was a real hard-fought competition.

This Soviet team, these guys were not pushovers.

On the Atlanta Hawks team was All-Star Dominique Wilkins,

one of the greatest slam dunkers in NBA history.

But the Soviet team just kept coming back.

They were known for their extraordinary level

of physical conditioning.

After a nail-biting match,

the buzzer went, ending the game,

and the score was knotted at 92-92.

Now it was time for another shock for the American team.

The Soviets thought, "OK, that's fine.

"The game's a tie. Isn't that nice?"

And the Americans were saying,

"There's no ties in basketball."

Eventually, the Soviets relented,

and they agreed to extend the match into overtime.

At this point, NBA legend Dominique Wilkins

took the initiative.

The final score was Hawks 110, USSR 105.

The Hawks' victory was a highlight for this stadium...

..but soon after, the Palace became the focal point

for a rising independence movement.

Two years after this infamous match,

the Soviet house of cards came tumbling down.

PROTESTERS CHANT IN LITHUANIAN

After the fall of the Soviet Union,

Lithuania is broke.

And they don't have the money to support

their reconstructed national basketball team.

The 1992 Olympics were coming up,

and it was the first time in almost half a century

for Lithuania to play its favourite national sport

as an independent country.

Gintaras was one of the players

who answered the fledgling nation's call.

As well as playing for free,

the team desperately searched for sponsors

to help them fulfil their dreams

of representing Lithuania at the Olympics.

And this becomes kind of a cause celebre for many people in the US.

A lot of NBA players

thought very fondly of the Lithuanians and their team,

so they lobbied to raise money to help them compete.

The Grateful Dead of all bands

takes an interest in the plight of the Lithuanian team.

They contribute money for new uniforms

and hire a great designer to...to design this new kit.

At the Olympics, the Lithuanian team did really well.

They made it all the way to the semifinals.

It's only when they come up against the American dream team

that they're defeated.

In the end, they came away with a bronze.

This was a turning point for Lithuanian basketball players,

proving themselves on an international stage.

Arvydas Sabonis was one of the first Lithuanians to join the NBA.

First drafted in 1986,

the Soviets refused to let him leave for the US.

It wasn't until nearly a decade later

that he finally joined the league.

But players like Sabonis helped pave the way for the many Lithuanians,

including his son, to become NBA stars.

And although the Palace fell into disrepair and closed in 2004,

the match against the Atlanta Hawks is fondly remembered

as the high point of this stadium's history.

In the English village of Clipstone,

a towering structure stirs memories

of a fateful battle with a powerful leader.

We're in the centre of England,

near the city of Nottingham.

It feels quiet and rural.

On what looks like the village green

are two enormous metal monuments

reaching into the sky.

It feels quite odd that these vast structures

are marooned in the middle of a field.

Could this have once been part of a much larger operation?

There is more to this structure than meets the eye,

which goes deep underground.

Directly beneath the tower is a large circular pad,

possibly concealing something.

Exploring this place, you'd have no idea of the riches

that are buried beneath it

or the controversies that would surround them.

This structure symbolises one of the greatest social battles

in Britain's history.

It was a brutal fight between capitalism and socialism.

Margaret Thatcher versus the trade unions.

Many have never forgiven the Iron Lady.

Clipstone local Doug Broadfoot

remembers first hand the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

For nearly 30 years, he relied on this place for his livelihood.

These structures, to me,

it's a symbol of what this village was all about.

I left school on the Friday,

and then I...I started on the Monday.

This was the main place of employment for...for the village.

Apart from this, there was...there was nothing.

There was just one or two local shops.

When Doug first worked here,

this was part of an industry Britain couldn't function without.

Coal had powered the Industrial Revolution.

And Britain had hundreds of coal mines,

which were scattered across the land.

So much so that in the 19th century,

it was mining two-thirds of the world's coal.

This is the Clipstone Colliery.

When it opened in 1922,

it proved to be a coal mining powerhouse.

Entire communities sprung up around the mines,

and were reliant on them for their livelihoods.

It quickly became one of the most productive mines in Britain,

extracting more than 4,000 tonnes per day by the 1940s.

But this was also a period of profound change in the country.

In 1947, as part of the post-Second World War shake-up,

the coal industry was nationalised under the British government.

The first day of a new era.

Its new owner wouldn't always see eye to eye

with the powerful trade union,

which represented around 1,000,000 miners.

The National Union of Mineworkers, or NUM,

who had long represented miners across the country,

supported the nationalisation...

..but eventually the two sides would come to an almighty clash.

In the 1950s,

these two giant towers,

or headstocks, were installed.

At the time, they were the tallest in Europe,

and allowed access to deeper coal seams.

So, 24 hours a day, these shafts were running continuously.

It was 24/7 at the pits,

so they had to keep everything going.

An elevator could would take the men more than 900 metres underground.

The elevator could travel up to 27mph.

Just imagine hurtling at that speed for that long

down towards the centre of the Earth.

And this is where we used to come at the start of the shift

to go down the mine.

For the first 20, 30 metres,

you go nice and steady,

then you went straight to full speed.

You just had to keep swallowing now cos your ears would pop.

Sometimes it was very cramped.

If you were at the front, you're like sardines.

Face was being pushed against the wire curtain at the front.

Down in the mines, workers were regularly dicing with death.

You could be killed by cave-ins, dangerous gases, fire,

and even a condition called black lung.

There was dangers lurking around every corner...

..so you had to be on your toes and alert.

You looked after each other down there.

Despite digging deeper to save their jobs,

by the 1980s, Doug and his colleagues

were increasingly in fear of the mine closing down.

Coal was being replaced by new energy sources,

such as nuclear, gas and oil.

By 1984, the number of British miners

had fallen from over 1,000,000 50 years earlier

to barely 200,000.

As the numbers of unemployed rose,

the miners union was gradually becoming more radical

in its outlook.

More and more pits were being closed,

setting the stage for an almighty war

between the miners and a new prime minister

famous for getting her own way.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister.

She planned to close inefficient mines

and begin to depend on cheaper imports.

She also believed that trade unions, like the NUM,

had too much power.

She became determined to break their influence.

At that time, I wasn't really involved in unions,

but I was starting to, you know, listen and take note.

I was at an age where I've got young family,

and I thought, "I'm gonna be on the scrapheap,"

cos most of the jobs round about here were...were mining.

And that's when it...I thought,

"There's gonna come a time

"when we're gonna have to stand up and be counted."

In March, 1984, Margaret Thatcher announced a new wave of pit closures,

with the loss of 20,000 jobs,

triggering a strike which quickly spread across the country.

Miners arrived at Clipstone to find picket lines of strikers

blocking them from going to work.

And I came down, and, uh, there were some pickets there.

And asked our support, and so I says, "Yeah,"

because we were fighting for the jobs.

It wasn't just our job, it was their jobs as well.

From then on, we didn't really look back.

Three-quarters of miners across the country

joined the strike...

..but at Clipstone, Doug himself was in the minority,

as most chose to continue working.

Thatcher seized on this by idolising the working miners,

describing them as heroes who simply wanted to go to work

rather than submit to the threats of the strikers.

Reports appear of those who have been intimidated

because they seek to go to their place of work,

to pursue their occupation,

and to support their families. CROWD APPLAUDS

As well as attempting to divide the miners,

Thatcher mobilised an army of police

to crush the national strike and break the pickets.

They set up roadblocks throughout Nottinghamshire

to prevent any suspected strikers from travelling.

Clipstone continued to operate under police protection,

and the entire village was locked down.

There was literally hundreds and thousands of police

in this area.

It was absolutely flooded with police

stopping the, uh, pickets coming in.

And this was happening all over the country as well.

Some criticise Thatcher for using the police

as a paramilitary wing of the state.

They weren't here to keep the law,

they were here to make sure that those who wanted to work

got into work and they kept producing coal.

Nothing else.

Scenes of violence played out on TV screens every night,

shocking the British public.

REPORTER:Nearly 300 were arrested

and more than 200 pickets and policemen injured.

But an ugly streak of violence

has disfigured our television screens night after night.

Many strikers felt the police were unnecessarily brutal,

with beatings and random arrests,

something Doug personally witnessed.

They got strikers sacked, arrested,

for doing absolutely nothing,

and some of them have never worked since.

Some of the miners,

their lives were ruined w-with injuries as well.

It happened here at Clipstone

where there were one or two...two of the lads got arrested,

and sorry, but they did absolutely nothing.

It was all trumped-up charges.

Policies introduced by Thatcher's government

also limited the amount of unemployment benefits

that strikers' families could receive.

REPORTER:The Leightons and other striking families

have clubbed together to make sure they have all they need.

The families of strikers like Doug

were forced to rely on the NUM's charity soup kitchens.

But the union's charity fund had almost run out.

More and more desperate miners

were starting to return to work.

The strike had lasted an entire year.

In the years after the strike,

the pace of closures was accelerated,

with many pit villages falling into deep poverty.

Clipstone survived this turbulent period

and continued operating,

but with a much smaller workforce,

before closing down in 2003.

Today, there are just a handful of coal mines in Britain,

employing less than 500 people.

But Clipstone is set to find new life

as an event centre and museum.

In Southwest Tennessee,

a skyscraper towers over a city

with a proud musical heritage.

Memphis is a bustling town on the Mississippi River,

and it's filled with country music and blues and jazz,

and it's a really vibrant, happening city.

More than anything, it is known as the birthplace of rock and roll.

Right in the heart of it all is this towering monolith.

It is an imposing structure.

It looks strong and sturdy.

Trying to piece together what this place was used for isn't easy.

There are dentist chairs, old medical equipment,

signs for attorneys' offices, collection offices.

There's even a bathroom with leopard print wallpaper on the walls.

Once known as the Queen of Memphis,

this place attracted rock 'n' roll royalty.

A well-known music producer,

he had a company called Stars, Inc. on the 19th floor,

and he was the manager of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.

This was the biggest, the best, the most luxurious building

Memphis had ever seen.

It was designed as a monument to success,

but it was built on shaky foundations.

It always piqued my interest, it felt like a haunted house,

it felt like a 30-storey haunted house.

There are fire escapes rusting and tattered.

There's gaping open windows

with kind of old curtains streaming out of it.

It's a pretty epic building,

and it sits on what you would imagine would be prime real estate.

So it seems strange to see it left to rack and ruin.

Its founders set it up for failure

before the first brick had been laid.

This is where they made a crucial mistake,

and it was one that would haunt the building

for the rest of its life.

Like many locals,

Stuart Harris was drawn to the mystery

of this vast, cavernous structure.

He still remembers the day it was closed down.

The building was abandoned when I was nine years old...

..and I always wondered what was going on in there.

While it looks monolithic,

it's packed full of surprises.

So after decades of wondering what the inside looked like,

I had an opportunity to visit it.

And it was so mysterious,

and in some ways, not at all what I expected.

When it was built, this lobby was neo-Gothic.

It was very grand.

High ceilings, bronze rosettes, leaded glass.

No expense spared.

The concept was a city within a city,

an office block that had everything a worker might need,

all housed in one building.

It had a cigar stand, a newsstand,

a barber shop, beauty shop,

lawyers, dentists, doctors.

Everything you could possibly imagine.

Construction started in 1928,

costing the equivalent of over £34,000,000 in today's money.

Its owners were two wealthy Texans,

Ross S. Sterling...

..and Wyatt Hendrick.

They decided to merge their last names,

and the Sterick Building was born.

900 offices, accommodating 5,000 office workers,

spread across 29 floors.

It was born in the roaring 1920s,

a period of great prosperity in America.

Memphis is absolutely booming,

and it's the centre of the cotton trade.

Between 1880 and 1920,

over 70% of the cotton in America

was harvested within 200 miles of Memphis.

And that meant a lot of money and a lot of jobs

and a lot of new buildings.

This real estate boom was seized on by Sterling and Hendrick.

And being Texans, and Texans either go big or go home,

uh, decided they were gonna make a splash.

And they picked the busiest corner in Central Downtown,

the corner of Madison and 3rd Street,

which is now BB King.

Not only did they choose a prime location,

inside, no expense was spared.

One of the things they added were eight high-speed elevators.

These elevators were manned by eight ladies in dresses and bows,

who would greet visitors and act almost as a concierge

to take them to whatever floor they were visiting.

Rumour has it they moved so quickly

that it was causing people to get sick,

it was messing with their equilibrium.

They'd have to stop halfway just to not get sick.

The building was making waves,

and some new tenants just couldn't stand the wait.

There's a great story that people were so excited

to get into the building

that a...a doctor who rented one of the offices

would take a ladder up every day to her window

to get inside the office,

since the elevators weren't working yet

and the stairs weren't finished.

Now, we don't know if her patients also went up the ladder.

The press described the grand opening

as probably one of the greatest housewarmings in Memphis history.

By the '40s and '50s,

this building is absolutely at full occupancy.

Among these occupants

were some famous rock 'n' rollers.

Sterick was home to lots of local radio stations,

and it was also where Bob Neal, a famous early DJ,

had his offices and studios.

He had a company called Stars, Inc. on the 19th floor,

and he was the manager of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.

He set up the King's first live performance here in Memphis,

and put on local variety shows

where you could see these soon-to-be global superstars

for as little as 50 cents a ticket.

Uh, Bob helped Elvis found Elvis Presley Enterprises,

and is the managing company of Graceland,

Elvis's mansion in South Memphis.

But with Elvis clearly heading for the big time,

Neal, tired of life on the road,

decided not to renew his contract...

..and the now infamous Colonel Tom Parker took over.

Times were good,

and the owner of the Empire State Building bought the tower.

But urban depopulation that impacted cities across America

in the 1960s and '70s

was compounded in Memphis

by the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in 1968.

As more people began to leave the city and move to the suburbs

or take their offices elsewhere,

it really began this process of a death by 1,000 cuts.

In 1973, the Sterick Building was repossessed by the bank,

which led to an assessment of the original contract

signed by Sterling and Hendrick in 1926.

It revealed the property deal was far from conventional.

So incredibly, they didn't buy the land

where their skyscraper would be.

They simply leased it for 99 years.

The lease would be up in 2025,

and stipulated the building

was to be handed back to the landowners in good condition.

If anyone wanted to make improvements to this building,

why would they wanna do that when, in 2025,

all of the improvements, every dime they spent on the building,

would go entirely back to the family that owned the land?

No-one was willing to make that investment.

But Stuart is part of an ownership group

that has managed to break the curse of the 99-year lease.

In 2023, we were able to come to an agreement with all parties

to, uh, dissolve the entire lease structure

and create a fee simple structure of ownership,

so that lease is no longer standing.

Plans are underway to convert the tower into an apartment block,

combined with hotels and restaurants.

We really hope that it's gonna be a catalytic project

that really radiates activity from here around the neighbourhood,

and really affects the core of Downtown Memphis.

On the outskirts of Kuala Terengganu in Eastern Malaysia,

the bustling urban sprawl quickly gives way to nature.

You don't have to stray too far from the city

before things start getting very remote.

I'm talking hot, dense jungle.

In a small clearing, set back from a winding river,

you come across a curious collection of wooden buildings.

Seven different structures, set on stilts,

are connected by walkways.

The construction looks old-fashioned,

but the fact that it's made of timber

makes it really hard to date it.

In this tropical climate,

nature is rapidly reclaiming what once belonged to the jungle.

So some of the planks have rotted away,

the structure's starting to collapse...

..and it's just really hard to tell what it was used for.

Have when you enter the building,

there are surprising signs of modernity.

You look around and you see beautifully tiled bathrooms,

a fridge, even an air-conditioning unit.

It's also filled with the remnants

of what looks to be perhaps some textile industry.

This was much more than just a home,

this was one man's dream to safeguard his nation's heritage.

But when tragedy struck,

his vision was shattered.

Syed Mohd Hanafiah is a carpenter

who helped construct this complex with Tengku Ismail,

the man behind a bold and unusual vision.

He may have been a man of the people,

but he came from royalty.

Tengku actually means prince, which is what he was.

He was a prince of the local Terengganu royal family.

While his great-grandfather, Sultan Zainal Abidin III,

had ruled over the entire Terengganu province,

Ismail was far removed from direct line to the throne.

Tengku Ismail was born in the 1950s.

And being the second cousin to the ruling sultan,

you know, he was in no danger of becoming king,

but he still grew up with all the trappings

of being in an aristocratic family.

That included living in his great-grandfather's royal palace.

There, he fell in love

with the traditional Malay architecture and culture,

including songket, a cloth sewn in silk or cotton,

then highlighted with gold or silver thread

to create a silky metallic fabric.

In 1970, that passion took him to the Osaka Expo in Japan,

where he not only represented Malaysia,

but he also displayed the songket cloth for the world.

While in Japan, he took the opportunity to visit the Nijo-jo Palace,

built in 1603.

It was a transformative moment.

He was so impressed by what he saw

and the way that these wooden structures were preserved,

that he decided he would do the same thing

for his own cultural heritage.

So, he decided to salvage traditional Terengganu homes

and unify them into one structure

to imitate an 18th-century royal palace,

just like the one he grew up in.

The ambitious project was called Pura Tanjung Sabtu,

which is a combination of the local village name

and the word for palace.

In 1992, he began scouring Terengganu

for these traditional wooden houses.

Uh, these very old houses are put together

with no nails, no screws.

It's just been all cut and built by very skilled workers.

So what he has to do is take them all apart,

transport them to his space,

and then put them all together.

So, the carpenters have to be extremely skilled

at cutting the different wooden pieces

so they slide together and fit snugly

without seam or lock.

Part of Ismail's project

was attempting to revive his beloved songket.

On the ground floor, he had an entire area, uh,

dedicated to the manufacture and display of the fabric.

When completed in 1996,

it opened as his personal residence,

but also a museum and hotel.

And in 2007, his efforts appeared to have paid off.

He was nominated for the Aga Khan Architecture Award.

The awards celebrate design excellence

in societies with predominantly Muslim populations.

Tengku Ismail described it as one of the happiest moments of his life.

Finally, it seemed as if everything was coming together.

In June 2011, the Prince travelled to London

for a popular international weaving exhibition.

Held at the School of Traditional Arts

and supported by King Charles III's charitable foundation,

his songket collection was a central feature.

But tragically, the prince died of a heart attack

before he left London,

and his beloved palace has since fallen into disrepair.

There was some talk of turning it into a heritage site

that tourists could visit.

But until someone's willing to fund that enterprise,

it will continue to decompose.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media