Campaigner’s deep concerns over ‘declining standards’ across the UK media

MARY Whitehouse campaigned against social liberalism and the mainstream British media, both of which she accused of encouraging a more permissive society.

She was the founder and first president of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, through which she led a longstanding campaign against the BBC.

A hard-line social conservative, she was disparagingly termed a reactionary by her socially liberal opponents. Her motivation came from her traditional Christian beliefs, her aversion to the rapid social and political changes in British society of the 1960s and her work as a teacher of sex education.

She taught art at a school in Shropshire from 1960, taking responsibility for sex education. Shocked at the moral beliefs of her pupils, she became concerned about what she and many others perceived as declining moral standards in the British media. With Norah Buckland, the wife of a vicar, she launched the Clean Up TV Campaign in January 1964 with a manifesto appealing to the “women of Britain”.

The campaign’s first public meeting, on May 5, 1964, was held in Birmingham Town Hall. Richard

Whitehouse, one of her sons, recalled in 2008: “Coaches arrived from all over the country. Two thousand people poured in and suddenly there was my mother on a podium inspiring them to rapturous applause. Her hands were shaking. But she didn’t stop.”Although the academic Richard Hoggart regularly clashed with Whitehouse, he shared some of her opinions and was present on the platform with her at this meeting. The Times commented the following day: “Perhaps never before in the history of the Birmingham Town Hall has such a successful meeting been sponsored by such a flimsy organisation.” The following year she founded the National

Her motivation came from her traditional Christian beliefs, her aversion to the rapid social and political changes in British society of the 1960s

Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, using it as a platform to criticise the BBC for what she perceived as a lack of accountability, and excessive use of bad language and portrayals of sex and violence in its programmes. As a result, she was often treated as a figure of fun.

During the 1970s she broadened her activities, and was a leading figure in the Nationwide Festival of Light, a Christian campaign that gained mass support for a period.

She initiated a successful private prosecution against Gay News on the grounds of blasphemous libel, the first such case for more than 50 years. Another private prosecution was against the director of the play The Romans in Britain, which had been performed in London.

Whitehouse’s campaigns continue to divide opinion. Her critics have accused her of being a highly censorious figure, and her traditional moral convictions brought her into direct conflict with advocates of feminism and LGBT rights. Ironically, she died in a nursing home on November 23, 2001, 38 years to the day that Doctor Who was first broadcast.

Doctor Who: Revolution Of The Daleks is on BBC1 today at 6.45pm.