A letter to the Reading Evening Post which was published on 20th June 1969.

One of the few predictable things in public affairs is that sooner or later a campaign will be started by a clique of Socialist MPs to lower the age of consent. Sure enough, David Kerr, MP, has come forward as the champion of sexual liberty among the under sixteens.

One would have thought that with the whole country awash in a flood of semi-pornographic literature in the form of magazines and cheap paperback novelettes, adolescents need all the protection they can get in order to grow up with a sense of values designed to avoid the chaos in their private lives which the present national obsession with sex, unabated, will undoubtedly bring.

Of course this argument will make no impression on those MPs who, with the tacit support of the Government have forced through a whole series of permissive Acts on capital punishment, abortion, theatre censorship, and now divorce.

Nor can one expect any form of real opposition from the Conservatives, who stand, mute and uncomprehending, in the face of determined attempts to undermine the order and sanity of our society.

Still less can one expect resistance from the Anglican Church who appear to have no definite opinion about anything.

In the present state of moral anarchy, the opinions of MPs on moral issues are as important to the future happiness of our country as are their views on economics and immigration.  They should be made to realise that our country is not a plaything to be experimented upon in obedience to some wild social theory or prejudice.

It is to be hoped therefore that Dr Kerr’s constituents, especially those with daughters in their early teens, will be left in no doubt as to his views, in time for them to give a judgment at the next election.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 14th November 1968.

Theatre censorship should be reimposed. The recent removal of this censorship has simply allowed the literal portrayal of lewdness and violence for gain. Censorship is difficult, but a responsible society should ensure that indecency, obscenity, perversion and extreme violence are not allowed public display, whatever one suspects may happen in private.

Laxity in public standards of behaviour rapidly affects private behaviour, and vice versa.  As a young man who has lived in America I am constantly struck by the connection there between the coarseness of manners and extremes of sentimentality commonly exhibited in private affairs and the nastiness and violence so often displayed in public.  It is no accident that the nastiest of current offerings in the theatre and cinema are wholly American in origin.

Better standards exist here but they must be actively maintained, and they will not be maintained by pious hopes of public censure of the bad and approval of the good.  Provided broadcast material is not actually boring, there will always be a sufficient number of people whether from curiosity or prurience who will give it a hearing and gradually, but particularly through its impression on immature minds, the obscene and violent of today will be the norm of tomorrow and we shall have yet another set of avoidable social problems.

As remarked in your leader of Nov. 6th, politicians (and churchmen) are noticeably reluctant to discuss social changes, still less moral issues.  I believe that displays, as distinct from insinuations, of acts that are abhorrent to the vast majority of the population in private should not be allowed in public anywhere.  Furthermore, literal displays of those acts which the vast majority of the population would not themselves do in public might be defined as public indecency and not allowed.

Rules of this sort contribute to standards of behaviour, (i.e. morals) without which any society will fall apart, and they have already been broken by our uncensored theatres.  If there are those who honestly object to present moral standards they should argue the matter with those who would oppose them and not resort to the commercially profitable shock shows of nudity and vice.

Moral decay is not laughable, nor is it imaginary.  It can happen to any group of people, but its inevitability should never be accepted, in this country least of all.