The anti-sex, anti-fun godmother of the Nimbys who erased modern Britain

Who broke Britain? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series in which experts and writers debate the issues that concern them about modern Britain.

• You won’t know James Bevan, but you should know what he did to this country
• Boris Johnson has destroyed Britain. But this man left even deeper scars
• The die-hard socialist whose ruinous idea is why Liz Truss became prime minister
• Martin Lewis: the money-saving expert… who accidentally cost the British billions
• The American who ripped out Cadbury’s heart
• The shadowy maverick who pulled Labour’s strings… and sank Starmer
• Steven Bartlett: the glorified PR man who is making Britain worse

It’s safe to say that Mary Whitehouse would be disgusted by modern Britain. In the 25 years since the death of the self-appointed guardian of public morality and activist against filth and sin, almost every battle she fought has been entirely lost. If his deeply conservative religious views seemed outdated in the 1960s, today they appear positively historical, even sectarian.

The dirty magazines and dirty videos she fought against have given way to the endless pornography of the Internet. Gay rights, for her an abomination, are not only accepted but welcomed, with three-quarters of people supporting same-sex marriage. Sex toys, which she implored Margaret Thatcher to ban, can be bought in the supermarket. His campaigns to clean up television have perhaps failed the most – from Naked attraction has Euphoriathere has probably never been so much filth on our screens.

Yet there is a real case that his decades-long moral crusade broke Britain. Not because she got what she wanted – she didn’t. The permissive society was too powerful for her to turn back. His stance against blasphemy, foul language, and sodomy marked the death throes of hard-line social conservatism, rather than its revival. His only lasting political success was also the most laudable: passing laws against child pornography. Yet this is not his true legacy. It lies in the method she used to achieve her goals.

Mary Whitehouse may have had the morals of an early 20th century evangelical – anti-sex, anti-foul language, anti-fun – but she had the instincts that created modern politics. She was one of the first to recognize the power of grassroots campaigning and the idea that a vocal minority could, by whipping up the right kind of pressure, overwhelm a much more passive majority. Whitehouse was in many ways the godmother of a modern political culture of NIMBYism and pressure groups.

His campaigns showed how far a single person could go. What started as a simple letter to the BBC grew into a movement that lasted several decades. Clean Up TV, founded in 1964, and its successor, the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, became the prototypes of grassroots lobbying. While previous social movements had focused on changing legislation and applying electoral pressure, thus overlapping with the era of mass political party membership, Whitehouse’s censure campaigns applied a different kind of pressure.

She harangued her targets with letter campaigns and petitions. When the BBC ignored her, she turned to politicians, trying to use her influence to put pressure on broadcasters. His messages to Harold Wilson were so frequent and irritating that Downing Street staff reportedly conspired to lose them rather than respond. Later, she turned to an early form of legal struggle, filing blasphemy suits against Gay news and a private prosecution against the director of a play at the National Theater for a play she considered too explicit.

Whitehouse understood something essential in the changing world of the 1960s: the era of deference was over and institutions would yield to pressure. She also acknowledged that the political balance had changed. It was no longer a question of winning at the polls or outnumbering your opponents. Sometimes the loudest, most stubborn people won out.

Most of her time, she was part of a tiny minority. She might raise hundreds or thousands of complaint letters against TV shows, but those shows would have millions of satisfied viewers. Her organization had 150,000 members, whom she brought together to complain about offensive television shows and petition against other perceived indecencies. Although this figure fell to around 30,000 by the late 1970s, he remained active, extracting concessions from television executives. The figures at stake gave him additional weight and influence over MPs, even prime ministers. The mere threat of angering Mrs Whitehouse was enough to encourage self-censorship.

Although the permissive society prevailed, Whitehouse’s methods helped create a new political culture, the complainant culture. Others saw how a vocal and persistent minority could exert its political will and achieve victories against an uncoordinated and less motivated majority. It was a turning point in politics, which reinvigorated the small campaigns.

Across British politics, it is often lamented that the government seems incapable of getting things done. Almost every policy emanating from Westminster, even when it enjoys popular support and a large majority, seems to fail in a maze of consultations, concessions and trials. Throughout public life, the noise of a few thousand people, a letter-writing campaign, a petition, or simply the shaming of social media advertising is expected to yield a result.

Whitehouse’s tactics have become pervasive. The same minority pressure is exploited by NIMBYs, blocking and slowing everything from critical national infrastructure projects to much-needed housing construction. Recent moves to ban children from social media have been driven by the type of “concerned parents” campaign that Whitehouse pioneered. Today, almost every tragedy spawns some sort of advocacy group or lobby for a change in law or new regulation, one that gets carried away by emotion rather than genuine questioning of the consequences.

Mary Whitehouse did not convince the nation to abandon sex, swearing and return to God as she hoped. But she was the messenger of a different kind of vision: if you are among those who lose out because of a certain political or cultural change, you don’t have to accept it. Plus, you don’t have to beat him at the ballot box or worry about being outvoted. You just have to be loud enough, complicated enough, and do enough to embarrass your opponents into making concessions and making you leave.

What Whitehouse achieved was to bequeath a set of tools that could be adopted by any aggrieved group too small to win at the ballot box. UK Uncut’s exposure and shaming of business executives and Mumsnet’s use of parent power against internet pornography all echo the White House playbook. From animal rights groups to anti-ULEZ campaigns, many have used some of the same tactics, from legal challenges to public embarrassment to simply being a nuisance.

For Britain, the result is tortuous governance. Political victories are rarely won but are instead constantly contested. Government action is bogged down by constant challenges, while heartbreaking campaigns take precedence over sober political considerations. These battles are at the heart of Britain’s sense of getting nothing done: persistent campaigners can defeat consensus and the establishment often gives in. Whitehouse would be appalled by what’s happening on television these days, but perhaps even more shocked by those who adopted her methods and how they succeeded.