Mary Whitehouse

Former Shropshire teacher Mary Whitehouse, who famously campaigned against the explosion of sex and violence on our television screens, has earned posthumous praise from one of her fiercest critics.

Dame Joan Bakewell, who frequently crossed swords with Mrs Whitehouse during the early days of television in the 1960s, today confessed that on many areas, she has been proved right.

Mrs Whitehouse, who used to live in Claverley, was a teacher at Madeley Modern School – now the Abraham Darby Academy – for four years in the 1960s.

She saw television as a vehicle promoting “permissive society”, bringing violence, sex and foul language into the living rooms of Britain, and became the nation’s self-appointed mo- ral watchdog.

Writing in the Radio Times, Dame Joan, 77, said: “The liberal mood back in the 1960s was that sex was pleasurable and wholesome, and shouldn’t be seen as dirty and wicked.

Money

“Of course, that meant the risk of making the wrong choice. But we all hoped girls would grow to handle the new freedoms wisely.

Dame Joan Bakewell

“Then everything came to be about money: So now sex is about money, too.

“Why else sexualise the clothes of little girls, run TV channels of naked wives, have sex magazines edging out the serious stuff on newsagents’ shelves? It’s money that has corrupted us, and women are being used – and are even collaborating. I never thought I would hear myself say as much, but I’m with Mary Whitehouse on this one!”

Dame Joan angered Mrs Whitehouse in the 1960s when she fronted the pioneering Late Night Line-Up show which tackled previously taboo topics such as sex, abortion, divorce and homosexuality.

It prompted Mrs Whitehouse, who died in 2001, to set up the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, now known as Mediawatch, to front a “clean-up our TV” campaign.

She once described the former BBC Director General Sir Hugh Carleton Greene as “the devil incarnate”, and was equally outspoken about commercial broadcasters when she felt they were de-sensitising violence and gratuitous sex.

By Carl Jones