A report by James Mossman.
Democracy in Germany is only twenty-three years old. How firmly rooted is it? What are the challenges which are now facing it?
Written and directed by James Mossman.

For twenty-three years West Germany has been the most unobtrusive of the major European powers. While her middle class, supported with few qualifications by her working class, has been re-creating and expanding German industrial wealth, her politicians have done their best to avoid international limelight. They have tried to be good Europeans, good allies to the United States and, above all, respectable democrats. At least on the surface.
But now, after years of 'don't rock the boat' consensus, Germany has hit the world headlines again with violent demonstrations by her young university students and small but steady gains at local elections by the highly conservative National Democrats.
To the left-wing students the democratic process which Germany has been operating since the war seems to be a sham because it has given effective unbroken power to a right of centre establishment. Even the Social Democrats, to whom the students owed their original allegiance, got tired of being in the political wilderness and joined the Christian Democrats in a national coalition. This, to the students. was the final betrayal of democracy. They began to take to the streets, claiming in doing so to be the only true opposition in the country.
(James Mossman)