Liberal Society

• Liberal values


  Tolerating or embracing greater individual freedom with regard to sexuality, family structures, religious belief and fashion
• Society in transition = liberal values
• Liberal society


  A society that embraces liberal values
• How and why did British society become more liberal 1951-79?


  1. Impact of 2 world wars

  2. Increase in affluence, leisure time & consumer choice

  3. Rising living standards & spending power

  4. Growing influence of media (especially TV) and fall in church attendance

  5. Continued lessening of deference towards authority and ideas about class challenged

  6. Established ideas about morality challenged (sexuality, marriage, abortion, divorce)
• Liberal values regarding sex and sexuality did not suddenly emerge 1 January 1960!
• Marie Stopes' Married Love (1918)


  Argued that women, as well as men, should enjoy sex within marriage
• Impact of the Second World War on attitudes to sex

  Undermined traditional values – women having affairs while husband away, living for today etc.
• Mass Observation reports suggest that women who had wartime affairs saw them as the product of difficult circumstances and were happy to return to stable relationships after the war
• Divorce rate started to increase after the war


  Attitudes to sex became more open
• Only 1/10 people in 1949 had any form of sex education
• High cases of venereal disease in the 1950's suggest people were not as sexually repressed as believed
• Actual revolution was that in the 1960's/70's people were a lot more willing to talk about sex
• Alfred Kinsey - Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female (1953)


  Did much to undermine the moral condemnation of sex before marriage
• 1959 Obscene Publications Act recognised greater openness to sexual images, in 'high art' but not in film (until 1977)
• Beliefs about the 1960's


  • Marked the end of 'Victorianism' and the rise of a more 'permissive' society
  • The more liberal values were actually only held by a small minority of the population, most people continued to be traditional, reserved and cautious in their views and actions
• Musicals such as Hair and Oh Calcutta had frequent nudity
• Surveys in 1965 and 1970 found most young people's attitudes to sex before marriage, homosexuality, infidelity and contraception were more or less the same as in 1950
• Profumo Affair in 1963


  Involving the Minster of War Profumo and the call girl Christine Keller
• Penguin Books published Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960, the government then prosecuted them under the Obscene Publications Act
• The jury found in favour of Penguin books, saying the book had literary merit to allow it to be published
• After the trial people started to push the boundaries more, the wording of the Obscene Publication Act was vague so prosecuting a publisher or seller would be difficult and costly, leading to a growth in the pornography industry
• Censorship still existed on the big screen, but by the 1960's there was an increasing widening of what was acceptable with films such as Alfie in the 1960's and a Clockwork Orange in the 1970's
• In 1968 the government passed the Theatre Act which abolished censorship in theatres
• In 1968 in the musical Hair a large part of the cast appeared in stage totally naked for 30 seconds
• 1972 – Dr Alex Comforts = The Joy of Sex – bestseller. This book was based on the belief that sex should be for pleasure. It was also explicitly illustrated
• Sexual Behaviour of Young People 1965 + Sex and Marriage in England 1971 suggested that the idea of the sexual revolution in Britain was greatly exaggerated
• Wolfenden Report 1957


  1. Govt under pressure from the church and moral campaigners

  2. Said there had been a decline in morality since the war and that this had weakened family life

  3. Suggested tougher prostitution laws but homosexual activity between consenting adults 21+ in private should be decriminalised

  4. Government chose not to act
• Sexual Offences Act 1967


  1. For a long time homosexuals had been portrayed as predatory, there was a great deal of fear and hatred toward homosexuals

  2. In the 1950's over 1,000 men were in prison for being homosexual

  3. 1958 The Homosexual Law Reform Society was founded, it sent a letter to the Times newspaper to reform the laws on homosexuality

  4. Eventually passed in 1967, decriminalised homosexual activity between consenting adults 21+ in private
• After the Sexual Offences Act the police actually increasingly targeted homosexuals and between 1967-76 there was X3 prosecutions for incidents of public indecency
• There were very few openly gay celebrities, "Camp" characters could be seen increasingly on TV such as in Are You Being Served? Or Larry Grayson, but none of these people admitted to being homosexual
• Abortion Act 1967


  1. Attempts had been made to try and change the law before but a lot of opposition from especially the Catholic Church

  2. A survey in 1965 said 70% of people favoured reform

  3. Legalised abortion up to 28 weeks if two doctors confirmed it was necessary

  4. The Act when discussed in parliament didn't really address the morality of abortion, instead M.P's focused on the deaths and injuries caused by back street abortion clinics
• In the 1950's over 1,000 men were in prison for being homosexual
• The Homosexual Law Reform Society was founded


  1958
• The Homosexual Law Reform Society sent a letter to the Times newspaper to reform the laws on homosexuality. It was signed by several respected people including ex P.M Attlee, Historian A.J.P Taylor
• Several attempts to get the law on homosexuality changed. Eventually passed in 1967
• The Sexual Offences Act decriminalised homosexual activity between consenting adults 21+ in private
• There were very few openly gay celebrities. "Camp" characters could be seen increasingly on TV such as in Are You Being Served? Or Larry Grayson, but none of these people admitted to being homosexual
• Attempts had been made to try and change the law on abortion before but a lot of opposition from especially the Catholic Church
• A survey in 1965 said 70% of people favoured reform of the abortion law
• The Abortion Act 1967 legalised abortion up to 28 weeks if two doctors confirmed it was necessary