Ban This Filth!: Letters From the Mary Whitehouse Archive
Language: English
Pages: 416
ISBN: B008WPQL26
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In 1964, Mary Whitehouse launched a campaign to fight what she called the 'propaganda of disbelief, doubt and dirt' being poured into homes through the nation's radio and television sets. Whitehouse, senior mistress at a Shropshire secondary school, became the unlikely figurehead of a mass movement for censorship: the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, now Mediawatch-uk.
For almost forty years, she kept up the fight against the programme makers, politicians, pop stars and playwrights who she felt were dragging British culture into a sewer of blasphemy and obscenity. From Doctor Who ('Teatime brutality for tots') to Dennis Potter (whose mother sued her for libel and won) to the Beatles - whose Magical Mystery Tour escaped her intervention by the skin of its psychedelic teeth - the list of Mary Whitehouse's targets will read to some like a nostalgic roll of honour.
Caricatured while she lived as a figure of middle-brow reaction, Mary Whitehouse was held in contempt by the country's intellectual elite. But were some of the dangers she warned of more real than they imagined?
Ben Thompson's selection of material from her extraordinary archive shows Mary Whitehouse's legacy in a startling new light. From her exquisitely testy exchanges with successive BBC Directors General, to the anguished screeds penned by her television and radio vigilantes, these letters reveal a complex and combative individual, whose anxieties about culture and morality are often eerily relevant to the age of the internet.
'A fantastic read . . . I can't recommend it highly enough.' Lauren Laverne, BBC Radio 6 Music
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viewing time’ (NB the expression ‘family viewing time’ was one largely of Mary’s own creation) – wasn’t bad enough, there was also EastEnders to contend with. NVALA monitoring report on EastEnders, autumn 1985 A typical ‘East Enders’ story line is that of Nick Cotton, who has a criminal record. He steals the keys of the Doctor’s surgery, makes a wax impression, with new keys enters surgery, rifles medical records, takes duplicates of Kathy Beale’s which shows she had an abortion at 14. He
Independent Television Authority 13th December, 1968 Dear Lord Aylestone, A number of people have spoken to me about the behaviour of Mick Jagger on the ‘Frost on Saturday’ programme last week. They were affronted, not only by the obscenity of his actions – I am told that he used his microphone as a phallic symbol – but also by the references to Jesus Christ in a song in such a setting. If my information is correct, may I put it to you that this programme must have offended against the
WARHOL programme may well not be taken into account because we had suggested to our members that they should write! I could better understand if we had issued some particular format which people were invited to sign. This we have never done and never would do. In fact, we did no more than many national newspapers did – tell our members to express their views. As far as advertisements are concerned, I would ask you to understand how deeply frustrated and angry people feel about certain aspects of
multitude of one-act plays by classic authors, Chekhov, Strindberg, Shaw, which are good theatre and could well be used in this Wednesday play period if they have not got a new one of a sufficiently high standard. Yours sincerely, Louise F.W. Eickhoff, M.D., D.P.M. The reply from Martin Esslin – a leading academic authority on absurdist drama – is a collector’s item of well-informed disdain, especially in its final paragraph. It is an interesting reflection of the gender hierarchy of the BBC
Psychiatrist. The possibility of particular films – potentially more ‘corruptive’ even than Kes – becoming a part of television’s repertoire was always going to be Mary Whitehouse’s primary concern in her dealings with the medium of cinema. Because she lacked the personal contacts in the film industry that she had spent years cultivating in TV, she had to take her information in this area where she could get it. Letter to Brian Young, director general of the IBA 10 September, 1975