BBC Archive: The Gay Rights Movement in the UK

From BBC press release:

The BBC Archive has today released a new collection of material charting the emergence of the gay rights movement in the UK.

This collection, released through the BBC Archive website, brings together TV and radio programmes from news bulletins, documentaries and current affairs programmes, which chart the political and social change in attitudes to homosexuality over the past 50 years. The programmes in the collection feature noted gay rights campaigners including Sir Ian McKellen, Angela Mason of equality charity Stonewall, Peter Tatchell, founder of Outrage! and MEP and former EastEnders actor, Michael Cashman.

The launch of the collection coincides with the release of BBC research findings into the portrayal of lesbian, gay and bisexual people across the BBC's services.

Programmes include a press conference from 1957 about the Wolfenden Report, which first recommended the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and a Today interview on Radio 4 with MP Leo Abse, whose 1967 bill led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. Two editions from the ground-breaking documentary series Man Alive look at the lives of gay men and women in the late Sixties, while experts debate the pros and cons of the programmes in a follow-up panel discussion, Late Night Line Up.

Other programmes in the collection cover the struggle of coming out, the age of consent, civil partnerships and the protests against Section 28 – the controversial government bill that banned councils from being able to "promote homosexuality" through schools.

Also, see this very detailed report in one of these forms:

Portrayal of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual People on the BBC Complete Report (226 pages; PDF)

Summary Report: (37 pages; PDF)

Consultation Report (63 pages; PDF)

BBC , Bush Free Speech Legacy, The Satanic Verses at 20

The Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television' s last issue of 2008 (Volume 28, Issue 4) is devoted entirely to the BBC. This special issue is titled: BBC World Service, 1932-2007: Cultural Exchange and Public Diplomacy. In honor of the BBC celebrating its 75th year in broadcasting a conference was held in December 2007 at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London to reflect on three quarters of a century of overseas broadcasting from Britain. "Organised by the ARHC-funded Open University research project, 'Tuning In: Diasporic Contact Zones at BBC World Service', it brought together broadcasters, academics and policy-makers to engage in a series of debates about the World Service. The papers in this special issue...are drawn from that conference and will, it is hoped, add to the development of a critical mass that will ensure, in future, the history of international broadcasting receives the academic and public attention and understanding it deserves" (from the Introduction by Marie Gillepsie, Alban Webb, and Gerd Baumann).

Index on Censorship (Volume 37, Number 4, 2008) assesses the future of free speech in the United States in the wake of the Bush era: Eric Lichtblau on the White House's wiretapping program, Patrick Radden Keefe on executive power, Jameel Jaffer on the remaining secrets of the Bush administration, Rich Piltz on climate change, Geoffry Stone on war and speech, Zoriah Miller on image control, Lawrence Krauss on intelligent design, Christopher Finan on monitoring libraries and reading habits, and more.

In this same issue is a special section honoring the 20th anniversary of a free speech watershed, the publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Publisher Peter Mayer, Nadine Gordimer, Malise Ruthven, and others weigh in.

Both journals are available from the Penn Libraries page.