THE controversial life of a campaigning anti-sleaze crusader has been examined in a new documentary.
Mary Whitehouse, who lived in Ardleigh, campaigned against social liberalism and the mainstream media which she believed led to moral decay in the British society.
Banned! The Mary Whitehouse Story is now available on Iplayer and looks back into her campaigning life between 1964 and 1994 using archive from University of Essex’s Special Collections.
The documentary follows Mary’s boycotts against films like Last Tango In Paris and reflects her contention that pornography was made mainly by men for men and would not lead to greater happiness for society.
For the past 18 months, curator Dr Sarah Demelo has worked alongside the BBC looking through archives from National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association which Mary led.
Campaigner Mary Whitehouse
Dr Demelo said: “We identified over 300 pieces of archival material which were scanned to be used in the documentary to illustrate the debate and testimonies of those interviewed, such as activist Peter Tatchell, filmmaker Ken Loach, writer and activist Beatrix Campbell and publisher David Sullivan, who founded the soft-core magazine Whitehouse, named after Mary herself.
“Contained within each of the boxes are pages of correspondence, media, photographs, piles of newspaper clippings each related to her individual campaigns, such as correspondence between her and the BBC for shows such as Doctor Who and the playing of Alice Cooper’s School’s Out on the radio, which she believed, would cause an increase in anarchy in UK schools.
Campaigner Mary Whitehouse
“The material in the NVALA Collection is contentious, often shocking in its subject matter, and illustrative of a woman who was relentless in her moral and religious campaigns.”
Dr Demelo explains the archives arrived in Essex in 1993 after some debate as to which university they would be best placed.
She added: “Whitehouse thought that the Archive would be best at Essex – close to where she lived and to where she had done so much of her campaigning in her later years before her retirement from the NVALA in 1994.”
- The second part of the documentary airs next Tuesday at 9pm on BBC2.
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