Accountant pleads for more financial information

(Richard J here)

Ban This Filth! Letters from the Mary Whitehouse archive. On one hand, given the extraordinarily patronising way she was treated by the BBC, I can't help but feel a bit more sympathy towards her. On the other, given that you hint towards her links with Moral Rearmament, and their links with the right-wing shadow structures,  to refer to the whole topic of financing with the sentence below is something of a cop out:

 "[Clean Up TV] and [the National Viewers and Listeners Association]'s accounts are one realm of the archive to which access is forbidden, but 'the Lord will provide' does seem to have been the mantra of those organisations in terms of funding."

There's the glimmer of a very interesting topic here, but this book isn't it - shallow, and never quite sure of the tone it wants to take; cheap laughs, grudging respect, or something more interesting. (The involvement of Trunk Records in its inception suggests the former, as do the captions in the photos, but the text is surprisingly more ambivalent.)

Mary Whitehouse awaits a proper examination - oh for a British Rick Perlstein, that's what I say.

 

Comments

[Chris williams]

Interesting, given that, as Marin Barker proved in 'haunt of fears' the 'ban this filth' movement of the 1950s had the CPGB behind it.

[CMcM]

Thanks Chris: I didn't know that.

The Amazon review suggests Sam Aaronovitch was the key figure in the CPGB campaign.

I met Sam Aaronovitch once or twice. He really wasn't Mary Whitehouse. Does the book suggest any linear connection?

[Cian]

Kind of weird, given Sam's son now writes horror novels.

[Richard J]

Voodoo Histories wasn't that bad...

[Richard J]

More seriously, the book makes reference to Common Cause(in the context of referring to it and the British Italic Writing Society) - from context this seems to be some kind of borderline fascist right wing grouping, but I wonder if anyone knows anything about them - they're quite tricky to Google...

[dsquared]

Common Cause. Parent organisation of IRIS, the blacklist merchants.

[dsquared]

and not really "borderline fascist" as "really really enthusiastically anti-Communist", in as much as the two can be distinguished.

[jamie]

Hang on: wasn't there also a Common Cause which was the British version of Social Credit?

[Richard J]

And choosing to snigger at the reference to Air Marshal Theodore McEvoy politely declining an association with the NVALA owing to his association with the Italic Society rather than following up this rather tantalising link rather shows the limitation of the book...

[Phil]

Jamie - are you thinking of Common Wealth? Not sure they were distributist, though - more co-op / syndicalist.