The Decline of Victorian Britain?
• ‘British twentieth-century history is the history
of the decay of the values and status systems
of the Victorian period’ (A.H. Halsey)
• Jose Harris: Britain of 1950s still close in many
ways to Britain of 1870s
• Values
• Religion
• Morality
• Shift from service, associations, community to
individualism
• Status …
• Class: decline of the aristocracy
• Age: deference
• Gender: patriarchy
• Cause and timing of shift?
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Long-term?
War and social change?
Affluence
The sixties: ‘permissive revolution’ (individuals
to determine their own morality)
• Last lecture focused on religion
• Here: i) youth and ii) sexuality/permissiveness
Youth in the 1950s
• Why is it that boys who wear brightly coloured
clothes are considered to be spivs … Why can’t
I wear ankle-length trousers of a drape jacket
without being called flash boy? This doesn’t
happen in America where people are less
Victorian and conservative. (1948)
• Everyone dressed up but nothing changed.
(John Lennon, 1970)
Permissive Revolution?
Enacting Permissiveness
• 1955: prosecutions for prostitution rise to 12,000 from 2,000 in
1945; same period prosecutions for homosexuality x 5
• 1957: Wolfenden Report on Homosexual Practises and Prostitution
• 1959: Street Offences Act
• 1960: Lady Chatterley Trial
• 1960: Betting and Gaming Act
• 1961: Introduction of the Contraceptive Pill
• 1965: Abolition Death Penalty
• 1967: Abortion Act
• 1967: Sexual Offences Act
• 1969: Divorce Act
Waning tide of permissiveness?
• 1967-76: convictions for homosexuality in public x 4
• 1968: rejection of Wootton Report on Drug Dependency
• Labour’s Home Secretary calls for ‘a halt in the tide of social
permissiveness’
• National Listeners’ and Viewers’ Association (Mary
Whitehouse)
• 1983: Margaret Thatcher calls for return to ‘Victorian
Values’
• 1988: Section 28 of Education Act outlaws promotion of
homosexuality
• AIDS/HIV
Measuring permissiveness
• 1971: 37% men and 60% women aged 20-2
marry
• 1979-87: 24% live together first
• 1961: 6% illegitimate births; 1985: 19%
• 1978: 11% marriages end by 5 years