Having been in the unique position of working alongside Mary Whitehouse for 18 years, I am often asked what she was like. The truth is that she was really quite ordinary but obviously affected by the pressures and tensions of the campaign. Mary had a very keen sense of humour; she was kind, sensitive and good company and not a bit like the stereotype created by certain image makers. Julie Walters captures these qualities very well.

Mary enjoyed good television, which properly “educated, informed and entertained” and it is a pity that Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story does not reflect this. Mary certainly understood the power of television and its ability to shape personal attitudes and behaviour and set agendas for public debate and discussion. In the 1960s, during the tenure of Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, the BBC rapidly became a vehicle for launching the “permissive society” and gave publicity to its numerous attention-seeking advocates.

In the early years Mary attracted a huge following and the film shows well how the campaign took off and how Mary and Ernest had to make life-changing and courageous decisions. Her primary motivation was always bravely to safeguard the moral welfare of children so that they could be brought up by their parents free of the sometimes malign influence that television had become. She rapidly realised that it was not enough simply to complain about programmes that offended “good taste or decency”.

She devised a revolutionary scheme to establish an Independent Broadcasting Council to provide an official channel through which ordinary viewers and listeners could give voice to their very real concerns. The Government took several more years to establish the Broadcasting Standards Council.

The film has an authentic feel as it portrays life for the Whitehouse family in the 1960s. Thankfully, it does not focus only on the daily battles with the BBC and how this impacted on them, but also on the tough negotiating with the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and meeting Sir Charles Curran at Broadcasting House. This puts the campaign into a proper perspective.

In many ways the “Swinging Sixties” and the underlying liberal approach to everything have proved to be a disastrous social experiment. She would ask, “What have we done to the children?”

Today we read, almost daily, of fatal stabbings and shootings and of the sexual health crisis among the young. She would have no patience, and neither do I, with those who say nothing can be done about the easy access to corrupting pornographic and violent imagery on the internet. She would certainly demand effective regulation of computer games and downloading TV programmes and she would expect broadcasters to carry far more responsibility for what they transmit into our homes.

One thing is certain: Mary Whitehouse raised important questions about the role of the media in modern society. Integral it may now be, but the questions about standards are as important today as they were in the 1960s – and her legacy lives on in mediawatch-uk!

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