One of the principal aims of this blog is to document LGBT history as it really was. This is essentially because some very important events have been either forgotten or dangerously distorted by our enemies.

‘How to Be a Lesbian in 35 Minutes’ – a short film documenting the experiences of young lesbians – is a perfect example of this.

It triggered an early day motion in Parliament, it was later used as ‘evidence’ to support the introduction of Section 28*, and it led to a gay youth worker facing serious charges of assault. Yet, despite it’s history, there seem to be no copies of this film still in existence.

The film was shown to a support group for young lesbians at the Blanche Neville school in Tottenham in London. During the day, the school catered for children with learning disabilities. In the evening, rooms were let out for use by local community groups. And the first drama began to unfold on the night of the film’s showing.

Kyriacos Spyrou, a gay youth worker for Haringey Council at that time, described the events in the Hall Carpenter Archive publication, ‘Walking After Midnight: Gay Men’s Life Stories‘.

He says that a woman from the Parents Rights Group – a local right-wing lobbying group with connections to the National Front – arrived and asked to be admitted. She was refused on the grounds that she was neither lesbian nor under twenty-five. However, Kyriacos also told her that a viewing could be arranged for her at a more appropriate time in the future.

She seemed to accept this suggestion and left without further incident. Then, a few days later, she rang and asked Kyriacos for his full name, claiming that he had punched and kicked her at the time of her visit. She subsequently took out a summons and claimed in court that she had been pregnant at the time of the alleged assault and had miscarried as a consequence.

Accompanied by the Reverend Rushworth Smith – a man who had gone on hunger strike in protest against Haringey Council’s Positive Images [of gays and lesbians] campaign – she was unable to produce any evidence of either pregnancy, miscarriage or the assault. Unsurprisingly, the case was thrown out of court, although the local Press made little effort to remedy the hurt already inflicted on Kyriacos. He continued to receive death threats and hate mail.

And, unbowed by the outcome of their vengeful fiasco, the Parents Rights Group simply told a different set of lies to some sympathetic Conservative MPs. In consequence, on 23rd April, 1987, Michael McNair-Wilson stood up in Parliament and proposed an early-day motion:

That this House expresses its abhorrence at the showing of a video entitled ‘How to be a Lesbian in 35 minutes’ shown at a Haringey Council community centre recently to an audience, including young people, and calls upon the Government to require local authorities to submit sexually explicit videos and literature to the Department of Education before such material can be shown to the public.

It wasn’t sexually explicit, but that didn’t stop him continuing on his rant with the claim that the video was, “shown recently at the Labour-controlled Haringey council community centre when disabled teenagers were present.”

Unsurprisingly, that bit was false too but it was all that was needed for Jill Knight – key advocate of Section 28* – to add her own vivid fabrications. On May 8th, 1987 she told Parliament that:

Recently the lesbian and gay development unit of Haringey council made a video called ‘How to become a lesbian in 35 minutes’. Under the aegis of the council, it was shown to mentally handicapped girls, of whom one was aged 18, one was aged 16 and the others were much younger.