In 1982, after nearly three decades of discussion about a fourth national broadcaster for the UK, Channel 4 came into existence.

I can only assume its timing was entirely accidental since it was not the best time for the launch of a TV station with a remit to provide programming to minority groups. This was three years into the reign of Margaret Thatcher, who’d courted the racist vote with a pre-election speech on Britain being swamped by ‘alien cultures’. The only minority group she was concerned about was the rich elite that her administration served.

It was bound to end in tears!

But it started well – particularly given the hostile environment into which it was born. In 1983 it launched One in Five, a weekly programme for the gay and lesbian communities. Unsurprisingly, Tory MPs were outraged and called for Channel 4 to be scrapped!

In 1985, My Beautiful Laundrette – a story centred on an inter-racial gay relationship – was commissioned. The film was originally planned for television broadcasting but was so well received at the Edinburgh Film Festival the producers decided to release it onto the cinema circuit instead. Various screenings were picketted by Asian groups claiming the movie was a slur on their community.

That same year Channel 4 also commissioned Breaking the Silence, a documentary on issues facing lesbian mothers in the UK.

In 1986, it broadcast In the Pink, a whole series of films by and about gays and lesbians. A booklet was produced to accompany the series, providing further information on the films shown as well as listing many, many others to illustrate just how extensive our film heritage is.

The booklet declared:

“Gay cinema hasn’t just happened since gay liberation, but gay self-affirmation has given us the impetus to sift through history and tease out what has previously been concealed. Gay cinema is a history of different film forms over different periods and from different countries. It is fragmentary, incohesive, unpredictable. It is sometimes only political in the defiant sense of carving out an identity, trying to find a way to express something that is variously considered taboo, criminal and deviant.”

It was another big and bold step in a hostile political environment.

And then, as if to rattle the cages even more, Channel 4 ran a midnight screening of Framed Youth: Revenge of the Teenage Perverts, a film produced by the Lesbian and Gay Youth Video Project. Tory MPs were now apoplectic and renewed their calls for the station to be shut down.

But it wasn’t shut down – presumably because it wasn’t reliant on government funding. Indeed it continued to provoke: in 1989 – a year after the Tories enacted the infamous Clause 28 – a new LGBT series, Out on Tuesday (subsequently renamed Out) was launched and ran until 1994.

The station continued to push the envelope on gay and lesbian issues into the 90’s with ‘controversial’ programmings such as Queer As Folk. Then it all seemed to go wrong.

Presumably commercial considerations pushed the channel more towards the mainstream (and the dross such as Big Brother and Celebrity Wife Swap). And maybe Channel 4 was a victim of its own pioneering work. Having challenged the marginalisation of gays and lesbians in television, maybe this left other channels feeling a bit more confident in including us in their schedules too.

I have to admit, I have no evidence to back this theory up, although I do feel Channel 4 was unequivocally our champion in the 80s.

Not that that will ever excuse them for screening rubbish like Celebrity Wife Swap nowadays!

 

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