The sight in 1971 of a teacher pleasuring herself in the sex education film Growing Up sparked public outrage. The Archbishop of Canterbury declared the 23-minute colour film “anti-Christian”, Lord Longford said it was pornography, and Margaret Thatcher, the education secretary, declined to attend the viewing in the Palace of Westminster, during which the Division bell sounded mid-film. No one moved, and a voice was heard to cry “there’s a division in the Lords”, to which the immediate riposte came “there’s a cleavage in the Commons”. Another disgusted critic, Elaine Kellett-Bowman, the Conservative MP for Lancaster, walked out of the screening, declaring, “I would shoot that man.”
“That man,” the film’s director, Dr Martin Cole, was a British sexologist quite unabashed by the controversy. Growing