Mary Whitehouse

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Mary Whitehouse CBE (13 June 1910 – 23 November 2001) was a British campaigner for of the values of morality and decency derived from her Christian religious beliefs. She focused her efforts on the broadcast media, which she regarded as highly influential, where she felt these values were particularly lacking. She also made notable interventions in theatrical productions of which she disapproved, becoming involved in litigation. She was the founder and first president of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association.

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[edit] Early life

Born Constance Mary Hutcheson in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, Mary Whitehouse won a scholarship to the City and County School, Chester. On leaving, she did two years of unpaid apprentice teaching at St John's School, Chester, and attended the Cheshire County Teacher Training College in Crewe, specialising in secondary school art teaching. Miss Hutcheson was involved with the Student Christian Movement before qualifying in 1932. She became an art teacher at Lichfield Road School, Wednesfield, Staffordshire, where she stayed for eight years.

She joined the Oxford Group, later known as Moral Re-Armament (MRA), in the 1930s. At MRA meetings, she met Ernest Whitehouse; they married in 1940 and remained married until Ernest's death in 2000. The couple had five sons, two of whom (twins) died in infancy.[1]

After raising her children and returning to teaching, she became responsible for sex education, at Madeley Modern School in Shropshire in the early 1960s. At this time, shocked at the response of her pupils to moral issues, she became concerned about what she and many others perceived as declining moral standards in the British media, especially in the BBC.

[edit] "Clean Up TV" campaigns

Mary Whitehouse began her campaigning in 1963. Among her first targets was Sir Hugh Greene, then director-general of the BBC, whom she claimed was "more than anybody else [...] responsible for the moral collapse in this country".[2] Greene ignored her concerns and blocked her from participation in BBC programming. Over 2,000 people attended the 'Clean Up TV Campaign's first public meeting in April 1964, which was held in Birmingham. The National Viewers' and Listeners' Association was formed in 1965; she obtained a total of 500,000 signatures on her 'Clean Up TV' petition to be sent to the Queen, then a record for the UK.

Through the letters she frequently sent to Harold Wilson, then Prime Minister, Whitehouse caused particular difficulties for civil servants at 10 Downing Street.[3] These letters expressed her belief that, through the Royal Charter, ultimate responsibility for BBC output lay with the Government, rather than with the BBC's governors whom she felt to be failing in their duties; the then BBC chairman did meet her. For some time Downing Street intentionally "lost" her letters to avoid having to respond to them.[3] When Greene left the BBC, in 1969, because of disagreements over the appointment of the Conservative Lord Hill as BBC chairman in 1967, Whitehouse was given some credit for his departure; other sources pointed more to a political struggle between the BBC and Wilson.[citation needed]

[edit] Opposition

Some of Whitehouse's opponents claimed that she had an ability to be offended by almost anything,[4] pointing to her complaints about the use of the word "bloody", her concerns about the TV character Alf Garnett, Doctor Who, and the violence in Tom and Jerry cartoons. Of Four Weddings and a Funeral, she famously said "I haven't seen it, of course, but I've heard that the opening three minutes contains a stream of four-letter obscenities",[citation needed] after which there were claims that she tended to take any sexualised activity on television or in the theatre as an affront.[citation needed] This was occasionally taken advantage of: the tabloids ambushed her, asking her what she thought of a new children's programme in which children were killed, a reference to Knightmare; she publicly professed her shock, but apologised once she had watched an episode.

She became a target for mockery and caricature. During the episode of Till Death Us Do Part entitled "Alf's Dilemma" Alf Garnett is seen reading her book 'Clean up TV' and agreeing with every word. One publisher of pornographic magazines named a magazine Whitehouse, in an apparent attempt to annoy her. British "electronic" band Whitehouse also named themselves after her, in mocking tribute. She is the inspiration of Deep Purple's 1973 song Mary Long and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band's Mrs Blackhouse, in which the eponymous Blackhouse is depicted as a demonic, unholy creature. The British punk band The Addicts wrote a song called "Mary Whitehouse", which includes the line "She don't like pornography when it's on the BBC" among others. The current events satirical comedy programme Not the Nine O'Clock News talked in reverential tones of a "certain personage" who had deigned to watch the programme that night, by all indications referring to the Queen until it was revealed they meant Mary Whitehouse. She's also mentioned by name in the song "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" on the 1977 Pink Floyd album Animals, described as an uptight "house-proud town mouse" who is "trying to keep our feelings off the street" and mocked with the recurring phrase "ha-ha, charade you are". In the Monty Python's Flying Circus election-night satire, John Cleese says "Mary Whitehouse has taken Umbrage—no surprise there."

Sometimes, if the cast and crew of a TV programme were congratulated by Mary Whitehouse for producing "wholesome entertainment", they took it as an insult, as was the case of The Goodies in 1970. After the first season, the cast were worried that an endorsement from Whitehouse would harm their image. They made it their goal to get a complaint from her, and they introduced more smut into their show. In a second series episode of The Goodies "Gender Education" (aka, "Sex and Violence"), a Mary Whitehouse-like character called Desiree Carthorse features, played by Beryl Reid is cited as the head of the "Keep Filth off Television Campaign", and spends the episode attempting to put a stop to anything even vaguely resembling perversion on BBC television. ("What with ITV being so clean".) She enlists the services of the Goodies to produce on her behalf a BBC sex education film which she entitles "How To Make Babies By Doing Dirty Things", and is offended by the production despite its being absurdly chaste and adhering to her own script. It gained no response. In the end, a sequence in the 1980 episode "Saturday Night Grease" of Tim Brooke-Taylor dancing in underpants with a carrot motif triggered a complaint.[5]

From 1986 to 1988, a character based on Whitehouse was featured in the controversial children's comic Oink!. 'Mary Lighthouse' was the enemy of the comic's fictional 'editor', Uncle Pigg.[6]

The original Doctor Who novel "Time of Your Life" features a character clearly based[citation needed] on Mary Whitehouse going by the name of Miriam Walker. Ironically she and the sixth Doctor work together very well.

In 1990, Whitehouse claimed, on BBC radio, that Dennis Potter had been influenced by witnessing his mother engaged in adulterous sex. Potter's mother won substantial damages from the BBC and The Listener, who were reportedly unimpressed by Whitehouse's claim to have had a blackout on air and subsequently to have had no recollection of her words.[7] Her own favourite programmes were Dixon of Dock Green, Neighbours, and coverage of snooker.[5]

[edit] Private prosecutions

In addition to her campaigns regarding television, Whitehouse brought a number of notable legal actions, including a private prosecution for blasphemous libel against Gay News in 1977 (Whitehouse v. Lemon), the first such prosecution since 1922. The private prosecution concerned a poem, The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name by James Kirkup, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. It resulted in a nine-month suspended jail sentence for the editor of Gay News, Denis Lemon, who was told by the judge that he had come close to serving it. Appeals to the House of Lords and the European Court were rejected.

In 1982 she pursued a private prosecution against Michael Bogdanov, the director of a National Theatre production of Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain, which had a scene of simulated anal rape, under the Sexual Offences Act 1956, s13, which described the offence of "procuring an act of gross indecency". Because the Act was a general one, there was no defence, similar to that permitted in the Obscene Publications Act, for reasons of artistic merit. The defence argued that the Act did not apply to the theatre; the judge ruled that it did. Since Whitehouse had not herself seen the play, the prosecution evidence rested on the testimony of a single witness: Graham Ross-Cornes, her solicitor. It was established during cross-examination that Ross-Cornes had been sitting in the back row of the theatre, 90 feet from where the alleged offence took place. This meant that he was unable to repeat with the same authority that he had seen the actor's penis during the alleged offence. With the prosecution case in shreds, and after her leading barrister, Ian Kennedy QC, informed her that he was no longer able to pursue the case, Whitehouse withdrew from the prosecution and the proceedings were terminated by a nolle prosequi procedure on 18 March 1982.[8] The case was the subject of a radio play, Mark Lawson's The Third Soldier Holds His Thighs, on BBC Radio 4 in 2005. Whitehouse's account of the trial is recorded in A Most Dangerous Woman (ISBN 0-85648-540-3); she was of the opinion that a point had been made, and they had no wish to criminalise Bogdanov, the play's director.

Her supporters claimed that her efforts played a part in the passage of the Protection of Children Act 1978 and the Indecent Displays Act 1981, which concerned sex shops. In 1984, she mounted a decisive campaign in the UK about "video nasties", which led to the Video Recordings Act of that year. Additionally, her supporters claimed that the Whitehouse campaigns helped end Channel 4's "red triangle" series of films; claimed by Channel 4 to be intended to warn viewers of material liable to cause offence, the broadcasting of these films had also received criticism from non-supporters of Whitehouse. She also had a role in the 1990 extension of the Broadcasting Act and the establishment of the Broadcasting Standards Council, which later became the Broadcasting Standards Commission (in 2004, this was subsumed into the Office of Communications).

[edit] Support base

Her support came from conservatives, many Christians and those who held the view that television directly influenced antisocial behaviour.[citation needed] For much of the 1960s and 1970s, she had more than 250 speaking engagements every year. Among her staunchest allies was the (Catholic) Labour peer Lord Longford, a campaigner against pornography. She was a leading figure in the Nationwide Festival of Light of 1971, protesting against the commercial exploitation of sex and violence in Britain, and advocating the teaching of Christ as the key to recovering moral stability in the nation.[citation needed]

During the 1980s, Mary Whitehouse found an ally in the Conservative government, particularly in Margaret Thatcher. Senior television executives commented that at this time her views were not disregarded lightly, particularly if she had the ear of the Prime Minister.[9] It has been claimed though, that the market orientation of the Thatcher government actually prejudiced that government against Whitehouse in private.[10]

She was appointed CBE in 1980 for her public service.

[edit] Retirement

Whitehouse retired as president of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association in 1994; the Association was re-named mediawatch-uk in 2001. The organisation had about 150,000 supporters through corporate memberships at its peak;[citation needed] members now number fewer than 40,000.[citation needed] In 1997, she damaged her spine in a fall, which severely curbed her campaigning activities.[citation needed]

[edit] Death

She died, aged 91, in a nursing home in Colchester, Essex on 23 November 2001. Despite earlier clashes, Michael Grade said of her: "She was very witty, she was a great debater, she was very courageous and she had a very sincere view, but it was out of touch entirely with the real world."[9] The comedian Bernard Manning also commented, "She'll be sadly missed, I imagine, but not by me."[11]

[edit] Legacy

Writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, the philosopher Mary Warnock comments, "Even if her campaigning did not succeed in ‘cleaning up TV’, still less in making it more fit to watch in other ways, she was of serious intent, and was an influence for good at a crucial stage in the development both of the BBC and of ITV. She was not, as the BBC seemed officially to proclaim, a mere figure of fun".[12]

[edit] "Mary Whitehouse" on television

There were two notable television comedy creations which may have been based on Whitehouse.

Mrs Whitehouse and her contemporary fellow-campaigner the Dowager Lady Birdwood both wore "swept-up" spectacles, which made them look rather grim and humourless.[citation needed] This was seized upon by Barry Humphries for his popular alter ego Dame Edna Everage, to portray a fussy middle-aged woman with outspoken views who always seemed to know best, although Dame Edna's general appearance seemed to owe rather more to Elton John.[citation needed] Though the character had long been in Humphries' repertoire during his career in Australia and later, after he had arrived at Private Eye magazine, this characterisation really took the public's fancy.[citation needed] After the emergence of Dame Edna, Mrs Whitehouse rapidly dropped the swept-up spectacles and reverted to conventional frames.[citation needed]

Caroline Aherne came to prominence in her early twenties for her character "Mrs Merton", who was an elderly lady whose dress and the views she expressed were much in line with those attributed to Mary Whitehouse.[13]

The Mary Whitehouse Experience was a comedy series which appeared on BBC television from 1990 to 1991. The creators named it after Mrs Whitehouse, and at one point the BBC feared that Whitehouse would pursue legal action against the show for using her name.[14]

The clash with the BBC was dramatised in a 90-minute film Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, written by Amanda Coe, writer of As If, with Julie Walters portraying Whitehouse, Alun Armstrong her husband Ernest, and Hugh Bonneville playing Greene. The Wall to Wall production was screened. [15]on 28 May 2008 on BBC2. This also showed a comic scene of dramatic license in which Whitehouse and others called the group 'Clean Up National TV' until her husband pointed out what the initials spelt out - they then changed it to 'Clean Up TV'. This drama - in comparison to the widespread vilification of Whitehouse in preceding eras - painted a fairly sympathetic portrait of her, while Hugh Greene was portrayed in a rather more caricatured fashion. Two alternative reviews: Emma Cowing in The Scotsman [16] (28 May 2008) and AA.Gill in The Sunday Times (1 June 2008)[17]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Dictionary of National Biography
  2. ^ Dennis Barker "Mary Whitehouse: Self-appointed campaigner against the permissive society on television", The Guardian, Saturday 24 November, 2001.
  3. ^ a b Alan Travis Bound and Gagged: A Secret History of Censorship in Britain, 2000, Profile Books, p231-2.
  4. ^ Radio Times TV Comedy Guide Mark Lewisohn, BBC Books, 8 Oct 1998
  5. ^ a b [1] Mary Whitehouse drama heads for BBC Ben Dowell Friday July 21, 2006
  6. ^ [2]
  7. ^ Watching the detective Mark Lawson, Friday October 31, 2003
  8. ^ BBC "On This Day", March 18th
  9. ^ a b Whitehouse "kept TV on its toes" BBC obituary Friday, 23 November, 2001
  10. ^ Bruce Anderson "A life spent trying in vain to preserve the suburban idyll", The Independent, 26 November 2001, as reproduced on the 'Find Aricles' wensite. Retrieved on 7 March 2008.
  11. ^ Campaigner Mary Whitehouse dies, aged 91 John Ezard, The Guardian, Saturday November 24, 2001
  12. ^ Article on Mary Whitehouse, Mary Warnock, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  13. ^ Housewife superscourge: We did not deserve Mary Whitehouse. Leader, The Guardian, Saturday November 24, 2001
  14. ^ SOTCAA article on The Mary Whitehouse Experience
  15. ^ Oatts, Joanne (April 18 2007). BBC confirms 'Mary Whitehouse' drama. DigitalSpy. Retrieved on 2007-04-18.
  16. ^ Emma Cowing, The Scotsman, 28/5/2008 "Maybe Mary Whitehouse was right all along?"
  17. ^ Mary Whitehouse is the real monster The Sunday Times 1 June 2008

[edit] Bibliography

  • Ramsey Campbell (1987) Turn Off: The Whitehouse Way (an account of a public appearance by Mary Whitehouse) in Ramsey Campbell, Probably, PS Publishing, ISBN 1-902880-40-4
  • Max Caulfield (1976) Mary Whitehouse, Mowbray, ISBN 0-264-66190-7
  • Geoffrey Robertson (1999) The Justice Game, Random House UK. (A memoir of a prominent barrister who, among other historic trials, defended several of Whitehouse's targets in her private prosecutions).
  • Michael Tracey & David Morrison (1979) Whitehouse, Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-23790-0
  • Mary Whitehouse (1967) Cleaning-up TV: From Protest to Participation, Blandford, ISBN B0000CNC3I
  • Mary Whitehouse (1971) Who Does She Think She is?, New English Library, ISBN 0-450-00993-9
  • Mary Whitehouse (1977) Whatever Happened to Sex?, Wayland, ISBN 0-85340-460-7 (pbk: Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0-340-22906-3)
  • Mary Whitehouse (1982) Most Dangerous Woman?, Lion Hudson, ISBN 0-85648-408-3
  • Mary Whitehouse (1985) Mightier Than the Sword, Kingsway Publications, ISBN 0-86065-382-X
  • Mary Whitehouse (1993) Quite Contrary: An Autobiography, Sidgwick & Jackson, ISBN 0-283-06202-9

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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