Mary Whitehouse was right - permissiveness comes with a price

Published on Tuesday 27 November 2001 00:00

SO FAREWELL then, Mary Whitehouse. My generation mocked you with your Dame Edna spectacles, and reacted as if you were some kind of Ayatollah, but now we know what you were - a decent old stick who went on a bit.

Mary Whitehouse was the antithesis of the Swinging Sixties. She was demonised as a kind of moral Queen Canute by those who enjoyed pushing out the stiff boundaries of what had previously been considered good taste. In reality, she was a kind of universal granny who warned us it would end in tears and exploited the notoriety which her National Listeners and Viewers Association brought her. In the week of her death it was the prophets of permissiveness who were looking silly.

In the same week, the Pope apologised for the cadre of molesters who have abused the priesthood and tarnished his church’s reputation in so many parts of the world, and a prince of pop, Jonathan King, trumpeted his defiance against his seven-year prison sentence for the systematic seduction and sexual abuse of hundreds of young boys.

Those who have been following the cataract of abuse cases involving priests in recent years, and the scandalous cover-ups which were the Church’s initial way of dealing with them, know that there was and is a problem. For the Pope to make this statement, acknowledges how serious it is. The King case follows the conviction of Gary Glitter and the revelation that a paedophile ring has been using internet technology to circulate images of child pornography.

The Sixties did away with censorship, with one sector of society telling another what is "normal", and with the hypocrisy that came with both. To Mrs Whitehouse it was the replacement of morality with immorality, but in retrospect we see it for what it was - the dawning of the age of amorality. No-one wanted to be their brother’s keeper - it was a tiresome business anyway. It was no longer your duty to be your brother’s keeper. In fact it was a denial of his civil liberties even to try.

The fun and freedom which the Swinging Sixties brought to us all came at a terrible price. One man’s freedom to surf the internet was another paedophile’s opportunity to wallow in pictures of naked children. When there are no boundaries, and no things which are forbidden, it all boils down to how far you can go - and there will always be those who want to go as far as they can. That was underlined this week, when the technical capability of cloning a human being went ahead in the face of worldwide disapproval.

Taking the I-M out of immorality and replacing it by A, is only part of the picture. The freedoms, civil liberties and rights which have flourished in Western societies since the Sixties have enhanced the lives of many people, but they have also enabled other people to pursue activities of a darker hue which would have been swiftly suppressed in previous centuries. But if amorality is the order of the day, then the moral basis of this censorship is wiped away.

Most of these Western societies were regulated by systems which drew on the Christian religion as a source for law and morality. Although the teaching of Jesus can be interpreted as a very liberal ethic, based on conscience, motive and situational ethics, in practice the Christian churches have practised a system akin to the Jewish Torah or the Muslim shariah - in which most aspects of life come under the moral system. Now the pretence of that is well and truly over. We do not need to await the last Kirk minister to be cremated with back issues of the Sunday Post, when son-of-the-manse Chancellors abolish the married person’s tax allowance.

If it were a question of replacing a moral system with individual ethics, perhaps the effect would not have been so drastic had it not been for one factor: the absence within the "amoral" system of a concept of human propensity for wrongdoing - sin, for short.

No matter how liberal and loving we believe the real Jesus to have been, there is no question that healing defective humans was his message. But if you rewrite the script so that the emphasis is on rights and freedoms for individuals and lay social wrongs at the door of "society", you have effectively rolled up the carpet. Now it’s disco dancing, all the way downhill.

When devout Muslims are looked down upon by liberal westerners for their "oppressive" ways, they understandably find it difficult to feel guilty. I am not suggesting that a dose of Mary and the mullahs would be good for us. But when it seems that everyone’s gone to the Moon, Mary at least kept her feet on the ground.