Mary Whitehouse and the permissive society

Aug 18, 2022 by

by Emily Bourne, Christian Concern:

The Propaganda of disbelief, doubt and dirt poured into millions of homes through the television.”[i]

Whilst you would be forgiven for thinking that this quote is referring to the content of many programmes being broadcast today, it is actually from a manifesto published in January 1964 by the Clean Up TV Campaign.

When this manifesto was published, few people would have heard of Mary Whitehouse – she was just one of several concerned citizens who had pledged to make a stand against the increase of violence, bad language and nudity on television programmes. But in the course of just a few months, she would become a household name. The Clean Up TV Campaign became the National Viewers and Listeners Association (NVALA) and, as its president, Mary Whitehouse was a constant presence on television and radio throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s as she sought to bring “a moralising voice in an age when those whose traditional function had been to deliver such improving messages – from politicians to churchmen – seemed reluctant to do so.”[ii]

It was after a speech at Birmingham Town Hall in May 1964 that Whitehouse emerged as the figurehead of the Clean Up TV Campaign, and later the NVALA. In a way which other speakers at the event had not been able to do, Whitehouse captured the attention of the crowds and galvanised them into action with this assessment of society at that time:

“We realise that we have abdicated our wider responsibilities in the tired years after the War. Young enough to realise the fun we’d missed, part of an affluent society coming to terms with so much, we failed to grasp at what was slipping unnoticed through our comfortable fingers – our children’s and our nation’s future. It is to do what we may to right this wrong that we have thrown overboard our anonymity to come out and fight!”[iii]

Unacceptable – culpable – silence

Whitehouse was undoubtedly motivated by her Christian faith and yet she was often critical of the Church for “its abdication in the face of the intellectual/humanistic control of the media” and the “unacceptable – culpable – silence of certain leaders and sections of the Church” on issues of morality.[iv]

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