Mary Whitehouse: Nothing Like a Dame

A sinner repenting always makes a good story, so 70something former 60s swinger Joan Bakewell hit a few headlines when she wrote an article for Radio Times headed; "I Agree With Mary Whitehouse".
The Daily Express was predictably pleased "that Joan Bakewell, the pin-up of trendy 60s liberalism, admits sex and vulgarity has harmed society."
As was the Daily Mail, where Sandra Parsons bemoaned how kiddies watching MTV this half-term might see "footage of the pop star Rihanna, in teeny shorts, provocatively pushing her bottom towards a man's crotch as she sang her hit Rude Boy, with its catchy chorus: 'Come here rude boy boy, can you get it up, come here rude boy boy, is you big enough?'"
The Mail helpfully illustrated this tidal wave of filth by printing a still from the video showing Rhianna with her tits out.
Problem is that's not really what Dame Joan meant.
In a documentary she has made for BBC Radio 4, The Mary Whitehouse Effect, Bakewell argues that Whitehouse was a "cultural vandal” and “dogmatically against ­tolerance”.
Indeed, her words in Radio Times were so twisted by the press that Bakewell had to clarify what she meant in an article for The Daily Telegraph; "Sorry, Mrs Whitehouse – I still disagree."
Bakewell stresses that she still believes that the sexual revolution was a very good thing. "And far from seeing the Sixties as a mistake, we should celebrate them as something that desperately needed to happen. The Fifties were dull, repressed, even cruel. I remain thankful for the swathe of new laws – against censorship, legalising homosexuality, abortion, easier divorce – that led to the tolerant society we have today. Mrs Whitehouse wanted homosexuals "cured": the idea was disgusting then and it remains so today.
"Mostly, it was sex that upset her, and the Sixties celebrated sex. The revival of the musical Hair exemplifies it all: a group of hippies throwing off the restraints of their parents' generation with innocent glee. Once the fun had run its course, it left a society of men and women enjoying sex, treating each other as equals, able, thanks to the Pill, to avoid unwanted pregnancies. All this was – and remains – good."
Joan Bakewell thinks Mary Whitehouse was right about one thing - and one thing only. "For me, what has actually corrupted us is money – and this is where I think Mrs Whitehouse was right (which is a sentence I never imagined myself writing). The conspicuous consumption of exchanging sex for money is now in our faces. In every newsagent's, young children see at eye level images of women seeking male approval through their distorted bodies; clothing chains think it proper to sell ludicrous bikinis to little girls who won't have breasts for another four years.
"Yet there is still resistance in some quarters to explicit sex education for children. No wonder young girls get mixed messages and grow up to make bad decisions. Sex as glamour – good. Sex as normal behaviour – dodgy."