The most peculiar element of this Whitehouse Whitewash is the idea that, considering the quality of contemporary television, she may have been right to campaign. In reality she fought furiously against The Singing Detective while enjoying Dixon of Dock Green.

I had long and bitter personal experience of Mary Whitehouse in the 1970s – see my post “Whitewashing Whitehouse” on ‘Anticant’s Arena’. Far from being the demure, high-principled person she posed as, she was a totally unscrupulous operator and didn’t hesitate to tell and repeat vicious lies. I’m sure she was utterly sincere – bigots always are – and the sainted Lord Longford himself assured me, when I complained to him about her antics, that she was “a good Christian woman”. Which I don’t doubt for a moment …..

Great post. Many people are still under the impression that she was just a loveable, confused old lady, a bit behind the times. One of the most telling moments about Ms.Whitehouse ocured after Keith Josef’s controversial speech in 1974.

Joseph (tipped to be the next Conservative Party leader by many) made several references to the ‘quality of human stock’ being degraded, due in part to single parents. This explicit reference to eugenics was met by some 2000 letters, with supporters outnumbering critics 14 to one.

Ms Whitehouse later said that she was “tremendously grateful” to Joseph and that “the people of Britain have been like sheep without a shepherd. But now they have found one

I hated Whitehouse, but when I see such programmes as “Friends” on tv on Saturday mornings for young children to enjoy I wonder if she had a point. “Friends” is a good adult comedy based around promiscuous sex being a normal activity, so we feed this to our children and then are shocked that we have the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world. When did Joey or Ross ever mention a condom or HIV or Syphilis?

Just a moment Dave,

You say you “hate” Mrs Whitehouse and yet you complain about the mindless hyper-sexualisation of everything around us. Well I’m afraid you can’t have it both ways, It was your side who said that Lady Chatterly’s Lover, one of D. H Lawrence’s crappiest books was such a masterpeice of literature that it should go on open sale despite all its profanities and anal sex references. Didn’t your lot queue up to defend the pernicious, nasty smut of the ‘Last Exit to Brooklyn’ claiming it was as brilliant as George Eliot?

Remeber the ‘Oz’ porno comics. Well, it was your side who said it was a wonderful blow against ”censorship”

Just like it was your side who hatefully mocked the decent and courageous Mrs Whitehouse who defied all your fashionable jeers with the sort of courage that Britian used to be famous for. Well now you’ve got your ‘liberty’ and its as bad as Mrs Whitehouse said it would be.

So go on Dave admit it, she might have gone OTT a few times, but she was pretty much right. It was your side that was in the wrong and I think a lot of you know it. That’s probably why so many of you get’s so angry about her even now after the woman is lying in her grave.

I beg to differ, Chris.

I’m not fond of Lady Chattersley’s Lover, but I would loathe the idea of myself and others being prevented from reading it. It’s worth remembering that Ulysses, possibly the greatest novel of the past century, was also temporarily prohibited, and that those who did so presumably considered it to be ‘crappy’ as well.

Mary Whitehouse was not courageous, she was a petty and vindictive campaigner who attempted to bring private prosecutions against citizens for merely printing a poem and producing a play. She attacked works such as The Singing Detective and The Life Of Brian while commending Dixon of Dock Green and Neighbours as acceptable viewing. She influenced Ann Widdecombe, for goodness sake.

Certainly, it’s not her as an individual that I hate, it’s all that she did, all that she inspired and all that she represents.

Chris,

At the risk of sounding too well informed about this, it is the market liberalisation of your “side” which has brought about the explosion of smut since the 80s. The privatisation of BT created a whole new industry of sex chat lines. Pornographers were among the principal beneficiaries of Murdoch’s victory over the print unions. By 1992, Paul Raymond was, on some measures, Britain’s richest man, while his competitors have been able to buy football clubs and national newspapers. Thatcher’s signing up to the European Single Market meant we could no longer defend the safeguards of Jenkins’ Obscene Publications Act. The relatively tame cheesecake stuff of the 60s and 70s gave way to harder explicit images. The neutering of local government means almost every provincial town now has to accept a sex shop (I covered this as a reporter in Bath, where an unhappy licensing committee chairman told me they were relatively powerless). And every high street seems to have a lap dancing club staffed by young nurses paying off their tuition fees…um…all this is stuff I’ve been heard from friends, you understand.

Thank you Stephen,

You’re obviously well-informed, though if you think that I’m on the side of the free market fanatics then you’re mistaken. I don’t deny that the Tories have been just as committed to our national decline as the Left. And none of what you say surprises me because it has always been clear that Mrs Thatcher was not a conservative. She made the inhuman logic of the market the centre of her ideology, and this of course ignores morality, culture, patriotism or anything worth preserving. If the Tories had been conservatives they would have recognised that a lot of what Mrs Whitehouse had to say was important and they would have subjected the BBC to more than just accountants.

In fact, the Tories have worked for everything that any patriot would be against. You mention the Single European Act; now would any pro-British government have agreed to such a huge surrender of our national veto? Because I’m a patriot and therefore not a Thatcherite, I am deeply disturbed by our country’s slide into decadence. And if BT was re-nationalised tomorrow, I honestly wouldn’t care – that’s not where my heart is.

In a choice between taking ‘Last Exit to Brooklyn’ or a whole library of Jackie Collins, Jilly Cooper, Jeffery Archer and Barbara Cartland ‘novels’ away for an indefinite period to a desert island, more lasting and deeper stimulation can be derived from the former literary product.

Last Exit is far better than anything by George Eliot or Virginia Woolf, which isn’t to denigrate them, but simply to contextualise their qualities.

For Chris Wyremski – patriotism is a sentiment imported from the continent, British people have higher values than that because Britain means more than just a flag or an anthem. We defend our freedoms over and above our state or any particular system. They won’t teach that in any citizenship class.

Apologies for misjudging you Chris. Most conservatives don’t spot the contradiction between support for the free market and for family values – although, to be fair, I think Cameron is wrestling with it

Funny how its very rarely mentioned that brave plucky northener Mrs Whitehouse was good pals with another gallant crusader against the permissive 60s – Lady Jane Birdwood.

For more info on this much misunderstood figure see here

http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=80

Heh,

Peter Hitchens not only thinks that the Whitehouse programme was unfair to her, he’s also sure that Michael Nazir-Ali is ‘telling us how it really is’.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/mailonsunday/article-1023329/Why-does-Bishop-Nazir-Ali-tell-really-is.html

(To be fair, the last little segment on Blair made me chuckle).