David Attenborough fought to put transgender people on TV 45 years ago, secret BBC memo reveals Attenborough urged BBC to hand over airwaves to marginalised groups in confidential memo

A confidential BBC memo written by Sir David Attenborough 45 years ago reveals that the naturalist urged the corporation to hand over the airwaves to minority groups including transgender people.

Attenborough, then Director of Programmes, urged the BBC to screen a series of shows made by marginalised groups whose voice had been “neglected by mainstream programmes.”

Open TV to ‘lunatic fringe’

In the internal memo, marked “Confidential” and dated December 7, 1972, the broadcaster insisted that this new form of television would not be “made exclusively by the lunatic fringe”.

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Inspired by “access or community programmes” running on US cable TV, Attenborough said these broadcasts would introduce attitudes that “do not derive from the assumptions of the university-educated elite who are commonly believed to dominate television production.”

Attenborough’s proposal received a cautious welcome and in 1973, BBC2 launched Open Door, a groundbreaking, late-night experiment in “access TV.”

Transex Liberation Group

One episode, rescued from the archives and made available online by BBC History, along with Attenborough’s letter, handed editorial control to the “Transex Liberation Group.”

The programme, featuring trans women, began: “Jokes about ‘the operation’ are all that most people know about transexualism. Tonight’s group discuss their situation in a more serious and comprehensive way, and draw attention to the many difficulties they endure”.

It is regarded as the first UK TV programme to depict the trans community sympathetically, rather than a “problem” to be solved.

Radical proposals

Another episode gave a voice to black teachers discussing racism in the schools system.

Attenborough’s radical proposals, to give ordinary people a television platform and encourage audience participation with “phone-ins”, became the foundation of “reality TV” decades later.

Diversity pioneer

The “100 Voices that made the BBC: People Nation and Empire” archive placed online reveals the corporation’s early efforts to create programmes for a diverse and multi-cultural audience.

It includes the reporting of the arrival of the Empire Windrush and the first programme for British Asians, called Make Yourself At Home.

Sensational outrage fear

In his memo, Attenborough said community programmes could “broaden the spectrum of viewers currently broadcast” and “throw up real originality in programme style.”

Possible topics for the new live programmes could be “New music, odd minority sports, solutions to traffic congestion, radical alternatives to prison, preventitive dentistry.”

But he warned: “They might be used as a means of causing sensational outrage for its own sake.”

Ahead of his time

Many of Attenborough’s ideas were enacted with the creation of Channel 4 a decade later – although his caution against sensationalism often went unheeded.

The full oral history collection 100 Voices that made the BBC: People Nation and Empire is available online.