Malcolm Greatbanks pioneered attempts to set up the first ever gay studies education course in 1973 in what was felt to be the more liberal environment of further education. But first some background information on the state of play regarding education on LGBT+ issues.

There were no educational courses existing at the time in either primary, secondary or tertiary institutions to challenge the still prevailing stereotypes that gay people were either sad, mad or just plain bad. Queer Studies courses and Queer Theory had not yet arrived nor were different family relationships taught in schools. School 'champions' to tackle anti-gay bullying and resources for teachers to ensure the inclusion of the experience of gay people in lessons were inconceivable. The portrayal of male homosexuality as a sin against god, man and nature or a pathological disorder that needed curing had largely been replaced, in the wake of limited law reform and pallid social tolerance, by fears of threats to stable family life and young people. The corruption of children and youth was to occupy the imagination of more conservative and reactionary elements in ‘straight’ society and homosexuality was often wrongly equated with pedophilia. Unlike the relatively economically stable and liberal sixties the turbulent and recessionist seventies encouraged hardened attitudes towards 'difference' especially immigrants, BAME people and more particularly homosexuals and lesbians.

To challenge prejudice and bigotry Malcolm Greatbank’s gay liberation stance took a less stridently militant but nevertheless equally radical approach using education as his weapon. His experience as a teacher of English as a foreign language at Kennington College had equipped him with the skills and experience necessary to organise other areas of education. The Gay Liberation Front had already experimented tentatively with setting up education groups elsewhere in the Capital but none had been successful in becoming an integral part of the state education system. Malcolm was asked to set up a gay studies course by the SLGLF Education sub group to counter the stereotypes and misinformed ideas, prejudices and bigotry of mainstream political oppression and to challenge widespread social misconceptions about gay people.

With a more radicalised background behind him and with little indication that the students’ union would follow NUS national policy to establish gay rights groups at further and higher education institutes Malcolm set about mobilising the SLGLF Education Group with a view to establishing a gay studies course. Using his small flat on Talma Road as the meeting point the first priority was to send out a detailed questionnaire to every Education Authority in the land. Of all the Authorities contacted only the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) replied with a statement that they had no policy of discrimination against homosexual teachers. Frank Adams and Gary de Vere, both SLGLF members*, suggested Malcolm should contact the nearest Adult Education institute with the view to setting up a gay studies course. Mr S C Burden, Principal of the Cowley Recreational Institute in Brixton, agreed to back the idea and with this in mind the ILEA was approached despite the fact that the authority had already indicated opposition to such a course.

Malcolm presented the case for a publicly funded educational course giving the facts about homosexuality to counter the ‘time honoured‘ practice of prejudice about homosexuals being passed down from generation to generation. Peter Lincoln, deputy head of the Community Education and Careers branch of the ILEA, was adamant that the course was a non-starter. Having convinced himself that gay people were not really oppressed he saw no need for such a course and, so he thought, the professionals to whom it was directed simply would not be interested. He spuriously compared a Gay Studies course to organisations like the Anti-Vivisection League and the Anti-Monarchist Society. As a special interest ‘sectarian’ group (presumably meaning ‘single interest') with a biased point of view the ILEA could not possibly support the project. He was more afraid that the course might bring youngsters into contact with ideas that might attract them to that way of life. He was not prejudiced personally but, given that heterosexuality was the norm, then it was quite clear that the Greater London Council, many politicians and certainly rate payers would object strongly to public funds being used to promote homosexuality.

Jess Phillips MP confronts anti-gay protesters outside Anderton Park Primary School

He was convinced that the climate of public opinion was not yet right to accept homosexuality and clearly wished to avert at all costs the possibility of using ILEA funds for such a questionable purpose. In other words, as Malcolm was quick to point out the contradiction in this stance, the attempt to dispel public prejudice and bigotry was not viable because the public were prejudiced and bigoted. So, at this meeting on 9 October 1973, Mr. Lincoln asserted that funding would not be made available and patronisingly assured all concerned that they should feel free to organise the gay studies course outside the ILEA system and that they should stop making a fuss as homosexuals and get on with their private lives behind closed doors.

Jack Straw, then Chair of ILEA's Further and Higher Education Sub Committee, who later held several ministerial posts in Tony Blair's Labour government including both Home and Foreign Secretary, rejected the gay studies course. He objected to suggested topics such as sexism and the family, the psychology of human relationships, the sociology of homosexuality in Britain, and opined: "Homosexual Evening classes are inappropriate". (1)

This obdurate thumbs down to the Gay Studies Course was given a slight twist of irony. Dr E Briault, the Chief Education Officer at ILEA, had prepared a report entitled: "An Education Service for the Whole Community" and the Education Committee engaged in a campaign to promote community education setting aside £100 000 for that purpose. Gay people, of course, were excluded from the community.

The gay studies group that Malcolm and others wished to set up was designed for general consumption but mainly aimed at adults in the legal profession, the medical profession, the police, social services, probation service and so on in an attempt to educate those who were most likely to come into contact with gay people and who were in the habit of ‘pontificating’ on the nature of homosexuality with little knowledge of what they were talking about. Clearly, unlike the John Warburton case(2), even at a Lambeth adult education institute without the issue of children being involved the ILEA bureaucrats and officials would still not countenance such a thing. In Malcolm’s own words:

"I think it started to go wrong when we said that we wanted to do it ourselves because we were the people involved. We were the people who had done the research and were directly affected by this. The idea of the ILEA being seen to be using public funds to pay social outcasts, homosexuals, to spread their filthy words was a definite no, no, in those days. It was a wilful misunderstanding on their part of our motives. They thought we were there simply to propagandize rather than to educate".

Malcolm’s troubles did not end there. At a later date when he was teaching at the Addison Institute his earlier experiences with the ILEA inspectors at County Hall reverberated once again in his attempts to set up another gay studies course. This time the Institute had formally agreed to the course and had even printed the prospectus which was about to be distributed. The ‘special studies’ courses were an attempt by the institute to broaden the prospectus into more experimental areas which included subjects as diverse as ‘Cinema of the Unconscious’ to a more general course on ‘Womens’ Liberation‘. With the expectation of an unproblematic start to the course the prospectus was suddenly withdrawn and the classes cancelled. It had been decided that Malcolm was not to be appointed because of his views on homosexuality and ‘other related matters’.

A decision was made in the following year to run the course after a great deal of lobbying from David Newman, the community education ofiicer at the Addison Institute, who argued against the opposition of the Principal and his colleagues. The prospectus had been considerably watered down to the exclusion of all that was innovative and exciting in the original programme. Barry Kenyon, a member of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, was appointed as tutor and with more respectable credentials the course went ahead. It is worth comparing the mutilated programme to the original gay liberation one. The original and initially accepted programme went thus for the 1974-75 year:

‘HOMOSEXUALITY: A look at the social, legal and emotional attitudes towards homosexuality. Psychology of sex role learning, psychology of human relationships, sociology of homosexuality, the politics of gay liberation, communal living as a possible future life-style. Speakers will include a sociologist, a psychologist and representatives from the Gay Liberation movement.’

Compare this with the version accepted for the l975-76 year:

‘HOMOSEXUALITY - CHANGING ATTITUDES: The course is open to any adult but is designed to be of particular interest to community and social workers, doctors and psychiatrists, the police, probation officers, teachers, the clergy - anyone in the course of his/her work comes into contact with homosexuality. The aim is to allow for a flexibility in course design so that the group which enrols can decide on the subjects to be examined. The pool of speakers for the course will contain professionals willing to speak about and discuss topics such as the legal position, religious aspects, psychological viewpoints, etc., relating to homosexuality, and will include practising homosexuals.’

However despite this safe, watered-down version of the original course, which excluded any mention of the politics of gay liberation or the possibility of alternative ways of living, and the deliberate rejection of Malcolm as a tutor it did not stop him from attending as fee-paying student. Most of those who attended were ‘straight’ and the course was a ‘moderate success’. Two of the six sessions were visited by ILEA inspectors sent to keep an eye on things. The amusing presumption made by Malcolm was that they sat in on the sessions to make sure no ‘hanky panky’ went on and they kept well away from the body of the students who attended. Perhaps they were afraid they might be propositioned by ‘practising homosexuals’. But this still was not the end of things.

Malcolm left his full-time job at Kennington College and applied to become a supply teacher. He was given his first post at a school in Lewisham but that only lasted a week. ILEA inspectors had seen his name on the school list and had telephoned the headmaster to tell him that Malcolm was a practising homosexual and a gay liberationist to boot. This was particularly tragic for the school because the pupils concerned had already had three changes of teacher and now they had been deprived of a teacher they got on well with and liked. Malcolm went on to get various bits of ‘evening work’ at adult education institutes. At the Kensington Institute the Principal demanded that he remove his Gay Liberation Front badge. Malcolm refused but nevertheless was allowed to carry on teaching. This was shortly followed by a letter from ILEA stating that they were permitting him to teach but only for a limited period subject to review. With the prospect of his contract not being renewed the outlook began to look gloomy. But as the turn of events would have it there was a vastly increased work load and Malcolm was asked by the institute to move from part-time to full-time employment.

Much later when Ken Livingstone became leader of the GLC (1981) he made a point of positively encouraging the fight for lesbian and gay rights. Even so Malcolm still felt obliged to ask him to make enquiries about the ‘grey list’ which operated as an index of teachers who were felt to be undesirable for one reason or another. Malcolm received a letter from Livingstone assuring him that he was not on the list and from that point onwards his fortunes turned towards better things. He held a ten year, full-time post at the Lambeth Institute as Head of a Department.

At a later date, from 1975 onwards, two ‘out’ gay teachers became embroiled in the double-talk and discursive gobbledegook of the ILEA. Peter Vetter and Peter Bradley, both members of the South London Gay Community Centre, got involved in a campaign to reinstate a colleague, John Warburton(2). Consider this statement from the ILEA already briefly alluded to:

"The Authority has no policy that excludes homosexuals from employment as teachers. Any such teacher in our service has therefore no need to fear for his position provided of course that there is no question of misconduct or risk to children".

The statement adopts an unquestioning acceptance of the myth that homosexuals are more prone to misconduct than others and that children are at greater risk from gay people than anyone else. Also the terms are so vague that a wide interpretation of their meaning was clearly possible. How is ‘misconduct’ or ‘risk to children’ to be judged’?

So... what is the position today regarding the teaching of LGBT+ subjects in educational institutions. From the 1990s onwards Queer studies and Queer Theory courses were established and are now an integral part of higher education. With the establishment of the Gay Teachers Group in 1974, which later became Schools Out, the position has improved considerably. Despite having to struggle against the negative portrayal of gay men in the dark days of the AIDS epidemic and Section 28 of the Local Government Act brought in by the Thatcher government a number of important changes have been brought about.

LGBT History Month, started in 2005 by School's Out and originally inspired by Black History Month, is now celebrated by hundreds of schools and other organisations. School's Out also provides a website with an extensive number of resources for teachers to ensure lessons include the 'LGBT+ experience'. Stonewall runs the 'School Champions' programme which involves LGBT inclusive training sessions for teachers in primary and secondary schools especially proactively identifying and tackling anti-LGBT bullying. Of crucial importance is the 2010 Equality Act and very recent updates stipulating that "all secondary schools are required to teach about sexual orientation and gender identity, and that primary schools will be required to teach about different families which can include LGBT+ ones".

However these measures have not guaranteed uninterrupted progress and set backs have occurred. Stonewall's school report of 2017 revealed that nearly half of LGBT pupils still face homophobic bullying while more than two in five trans young people have tried to take their lives. A number of schools have stopped teaching about LGBT+ related subjects altogether. Increasing pressure recently included parents demonstrating outside school gates against changes to the teaching of Relationships and Sex Education lessons on the grounds of religious beliefs and parental control. They also raised the objection that their children were too young to learn about these issues despite the fact that children learn their prejudices and bigotry at a very early age. It also raises the question of whether secular laws guaranteeing equal rights for all trump religious beliefs.

I leave the final word with Professor Sue Sanders who was chiefly instrumental in establishing the Gay Teachers' Group, School's Out and LGBT+ History Month:

"The concept behind it ('School Champions' programme) is "usualising" (normalising). We want to usualise LGBT+ people across the curriculum....".

It remains to be seen whether or not such a project will succeed given recent opposition to teaching different family relationships in primary schools from religious groups and the feverish opposition to transgender studies.

*SLGLF had no formal membership or subscription fees nor later did the South London Gay Community Centre. Weekly collections scarcely covered the cost of room hire and refreshments for SLGLF meetings. Reliance on weekly donations at the collective meetings and money made from small charges for the disco and beverages were the only sources of income and did not cover running costs of the centre.