Edgware, Middlesex
11 October 1962
Dear Sir,
Regards the BBC Play Stamboul Train I wish to say I only wish there was more of them. I didn’t see any thing wrong or disgusting.
My son seen it 18 years old and my grandchild 12 years.
Believe me, sir, I wouldn’t like your job. You have some thing to put up with. You can’t please every one I don’t suppose.
If these people (Vicar included) didn’t like it they should put it off. I dare say they have the other channel to switch to. I get so mad at them so-called grown up people complaining. Let people watch what they want or turn it off.
A few more plays like that mentioned and Z Cars and of course Step-Toe another very good programme. I will be very pleased when that comes back.
Some of them had to have a crack at Z Cars pulling it to pieces. I like Z Cars and my family and 20 relations can give you the names if you require them the actors are first class every one perfect. We get a good laugh at the Scot and the sergeant behind the desk. Please don’t ever take notice of people I beg of you as we can’t wait till Z Cars comes on. Every thing is left in the house till our family sees Z Cars and the Sunday repeat. I never get tired of seeing Z Cars.
Hope I don’t bore you with my writing and my bad spelling.
I remain
Again
Yours sincerely
Mrs A.
Tenby
Boxing Day 1958
To: The Director General, The B.B.C., London
Dear Sir,
I cannot think what evil genius persuaded the B.B.C. to put on the Christmas night play ‘The Black Eye’. For a stark combination of inanity and immoral living I can imagine nothing worse. That the fortunes of a family and of an ‘angry young man’ can be restored by a drunken resort to chance is a representation that can speed up the decline of our country.
Certainly, the time is come where those who direct the great instrument of television in this country should have a greater sense of responsibility.
Another amazing thing to me is the way in which the liquor trade is outsmarting the B.B.C. For their advertisements on I.T.V. they presumably have to pay a fairly heavy charge: but the B.B.C. is gratuitously advertising the drink trade on a very great proportion of its programmes by making it, however unnecessarily, appear to be a sine qua non of social life.
Hundreds of boys, girls, young men and young women are getting into very serious trouble owing to drink. It is a contemptible thing that so important a national instrument as BBC Television should be aiding their downfall.
Yours faithfully,
(Rev.) D.T. (M.A.)
Postman’s Piece, The Wold, Claverley, Nr. Wolverhampton
1 January 1961
To: Sydney Newman, Head of Drama, BBC Television, London W12
Dear Mr Newman,
But for the Christmas celebrations I would have written earlier to say how pleased we were to read that your department had decided not to show any more ‘kitchen sink’ plays. To those of us, like myself, who have a deep loyalty to the B.B.C. because of what it has done in the past and what it could do again, for the nation, this decision brings considerable relief and satisfaction.
Please do not feel that we wish to turn our backs on the more difficult, unpleasant aspects of life, but what most people want to know is how to deal with them! To write and produce plays that do this with fun, insight and real imagination would present our young – and old! – playwrights with a challenge that would really challenge their creative ability.
People look to television as they would to a Senior member of the family circle.
With best wishes for your new plans,
Yours sincerely,
Mary Whitehouse
(Clean Up TV Campaign)
London Borough of Islington, Town Hall, Upper Street, London N1
14 November 1966
To: Sydney Newman Head of BBC Drama Television Centre
Dear Mr. Newman,
In yesterday’s issue of ‘The People’ there appeared on page 10 an article headed ‘A TV Shocker that will Shame Britain’ which refers to a play entitled ‘Cathy Comes [sic] Home’ due to be shown on BBC television on Wednesday next, the 16th instant.
This article contains a quotation attributed to you including the following remarks:-
‘One scene in an Islington tenement, took place in a kitchen
that contained the lavatory, ‘You can sit on it and do the cooking’ is one line from the play, and it is true’.
So far as I know it is Popham Cottages of which it is popularly said, ‘You can sit on the lavatory and do the cooking’ and if it is a fact that your play ‘Cathy Comes Home’ has been photographed in Popham Cottages, I should like you and your audiences to know that this Council has bought these dwellings to ensure that they are pulled down as soon as the Families (335 in all) can be rehoused in decent accommodation complying with present day standards. Meantime as any flat becomes vacant, it will not be relet.
Yours faithfully,
C.M.
Associate Town Clerk
Welwyn Garden City, Herts.
Wednesday
Dear Sir,
I wish to protest most strongly about tonight’s programme at 9.40 ‘Up the Junction’. It is pandering to the lowest taste and is positively vulgar. This is dangerous especially when decent minded people are fighting for a moral uplift amongst youngsters.
With venereal diseases on the increase this kind of programme should be scrapped and a better, cleaner way of life shown. One can always pick up dirt without the B.B.C. throwing it in one’s face – what a waste of a good medium for finer things.
R.C. (Mrs.)
London W10
3 November 1965
To: Director of Television Programmes, British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting House Portland Place, London W1
Dear Sir,
In today’s newspaper I have read to my horror that you intend to ‘cut’ tonight’s production of the television play ‘Up the Junction’.
Having greatly enjoyed the book, I found nothing to object to in it and fail to see why all the scenes included in the book should [not] be covered in their entirety in the television adaptation.
I would also be grateful if you would tell me on whose decision these cuts were made, when no objections have been made by the public, as the play has not been screened.
Yours faithfully,
D. J. P.
Aslockton, Notts.
27 February 1963
To: K. Adam, Esq., B.B.C., London
Dear Mr. Adam,
I am not sure which department of the B.B.C. I should write to, but it is always easier to write to somebody one knows rather than to an impersonal body like the B.B.C. hence my letter to you.
Is there no means of effectively protesting about the level of morals and language shown on some of the TV programmes? My wife and I and our two older mid-teenage children were watching your play ‘The Prisoner’ on Sunday evening. Though it was a grim play in that it appeared to be historically realistic, we considered that it would do the children no harm to watch it. At about 9.30 however, it suddenly descended without warning into the depths of filth and sordidness that I had not seen beaten on TV for some time. The children are not ignorant, and indeed, as the crew-yard of the next-door farm is immediately beside our house and is inhabited largely by pigs, they have only to glance from the windows to see nature in an expanse of mud and filth. By comparison with your play, the view from these windows was a model of purity and cleanliness.
If we want to see a dirty film we can always go to the cinema, but for the B.B.C. suddenly to project dirtiness into one’s drawing room without warning ought to be a criminal offence. Your play should have been prefaced by the remark ‘This play, in the middle, will suddenly descend into the depths of sordidness and sexual perversion’
Yours sincerely,
D. E. S.
Windlesh
am, Surrey
16 June 1966
For the personal attention of Hugh [sic] Wheldon B.B.C. London
Dear Mr Wheldon,
My wife and I consider ourselves to be quite broad-minded people and we are certainly not prudes. We consider that the moral standard of the plays shown on BBC Television today have deteriorated to such an extent that they are no longer suitable for viewing by teenaged children or, indeed, their parents. Last night we watched the Wednesday Night play, ‘Soiree at Bossom’s Hotel’. As usual, it was not only a play of poor standing, but one scene showed two coloured girls performing a most immoral ‘strip’ dance, which was, to say the least, quite revolting.
The B.B.C. used to be highly respected everywhere but I can assure you that your plays and Satirical programmes give you a very bad name, and I can speak with authority because I talk to people of all nationalities on my world wide travels, who have visited England.
Richard Dimbleby was highly respected all over the world and we certainly miss him and his influence. It would be a splendid achievement if you and your Corporation could emulate his fine example.
Sincerely,
(Capt.) M. C.
Bristol
7 February 1964
To: Kenneth Adam, Director of Programmes, BBC Television
Dear Mr Adam,
My wife and I not only endorse the neurotic, senseless overportrial [sic] of sex, plotlessness and general weirdness accusations which have been made against your Corporation’s plays, but we would like to point out that both you and your Producers and Playwrights are indirectly employed by the taxpayer.
The accent on sex to the slowing up of the story and in particular the shots when he trys [sic] to smash a chamber pot with his bare hands, when he asks his wife if he has ‘satisfied her’ – after getting up from the first sleep with her, and some of the language in the factory scenes were totally unnecessary.
You may query as to why we did not switch off and I would like to say we kept it on because we were fascinated in watching taxpayers money being wasted and wondered if you might decend [sic] to the play’s ultimate conclusion i.e. of going even beyond some of the sexual smut you did, in fact show, which would at least have given us the satisfaction of knowing that perhaps some of the people connected with the show might have ended up in Jail.
I only wish other people would similarly protest at the majority treatment given to the extreme minority of people who like pointless, smutty, neurotic and ‘Pinter’-like type of Drama.
Sincerely,
D. V. L.
Bristol
14 February 1964
To: Kenneth Adam, Director of Programmes, BBC Television
Dear Mr Adam,
Many thanks for your extremely short reply to my letter of complaint concerning weird, neurotic and rude plays. If you persist in defending ‘Trevor’ on such flimsy evidence (especially not having seen it) in the face of overwhelming evidence throughout the UK that most viewers deplored it, you will surely make yourself more of a laughing stock than your unfortunate remark in Bristol did, when you excused such type of TV Drama on the grounds that ‘they write like that today.’
Personally, throughout the country I don’t think even reviewers are other than in a majority against ‘Trevor’ and (if it’s not troubling you too much) I should like to have your comment on the Daily Sketch article attacking the play, which set out the very pompous remarks of the playwright Mr D Turner, who appears to think there is something very wrong with people complaining!!
I have now written to the author of the play along the lines of the first letter I addressed to you, and I have had replies from the two MPs mentioned which suggest that the matter of irresponsibility of yourself, producers and playwrights in the face of taxpayers wishes, will be taken further.
Sincerely
D.V.L.
Bristol
20 February 1964
To: Director of TV BBC cc. Robert Cooke M.P.
Dear Sir,
The ‘Festival’ Play last night once more demonstrated the BBC’s complete lack of appreciation of what the public wants.
It was yet another ‘weirdie’ type of play and one wonders how people can be expected to believe that such mentally deranged characters exist in such profusion.
Obscenity, bestiality, smut and sex appears to be the current BBC ‘bull market’, but I doubt, as a whole, if playwrights really have this neurotic kink. Obviously if the BBC create the chamber pot/mental home type of market, a few writers will bury their scruples and continue to churn them out.
I suggest to people who regard this great waste of taxpayers money as a public scandal, that they write to their MP, also the Director of Television B.B.E. [sic] Television Centre London W12.
By-the-way, the title of the play was ‘Say Nothing.’ It’s a pity the author didn’t.
D.V. L.
Postman’s Piece, The Wold, Claverley, Nr. Wolverhampton
4 February 1965
To: Charles Curran BBC Broadcasting House London W1
Dear Sir,
Thanks for your letter of 27th January. I feel, frankly, that your reply, though most courteous, underlines very much the wide gap which exists between those who produce programmes and those who view them!
Violence such as portrayed in Culloden – particularly the slashing of the face, the bayoneting of the child – was tremendously real (this was supposed to be one of its virtues according to the critics!)
Programmes of this kind bring violence right into the heart of the family circle and not only shock the sensitivities of people but also make it ever more commonplace.
Yours faithfully,
(Mrs.) Mary Whitehouse
Speldhurst, Kent
8 January 1966
My dear Huw [Wheldon],
I hesitate to take advantage of a friendship which goes back to the time when you were still at the L.S.E. but I don’t know anyone better to write to on the spiritual education of young people.
We are getting used to unsuitable plays on television but did you see the play called ‘The Bone Yard’ [written by Clive Exton] on BBC1 on 5th inst? It was about a Police Superintendent who ‘took off’ the voice of Christ from a Crucifix in a church yard in order to upset the mental balance of one of his own constables in order to give grounds for his dismissal from the force so that the Superintendent could seduce the constable’s wife! Apart from what most Christians would regard as blasphemy the plot itself was sufficiently objectionable but together it made my blood boil to think that some of my seventeen grandchildren and thousands of other teenagers would be lapping it up as ‘modern culture’.
One could hardly hope that [Director General Hugh] Greene would do anything to stop this sort of ‘muck’ (there is no other word for it) being broadcast to millions of young and ignorant people but you are so keen on the arts and culture I dare to hope you can use your influence in the position you now hold in the B.B.C.
I remain
Sincerely,
[Mr Illegible!!]
Westbridge, Surrey
5 January 1966
To: The Director of Television, British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting House, London W.1
Sir,
I am speaking for several viewers who saw the 9pm ‘The Wednesday Play’ called the Boneyard.
We were very shocked as must thousands of other viewers be very shocked by the profane manner in which the Cross was treated together with a most banale [sic] and false characterisation of a senior superior officer of the Police and the portrayal of a constable as a simpleton.
The whole play in which the title of Boneyard for the sacred place where our dear ones lie is in itself a definite insult to the dead and the living, is about the lowest thing that the B.B.C. have descended to and we, amongst thousands of others who must be shocked also, not to speak of the huge criminal class audience [!!!!] who must be very amused at the belittling of the Police by a supposedly responsible organisation, are pers
uaded that the degrading of morale is the subject of such a play.
The thousands of emigrants leaving England each week for Australia or New Zealand are wise because if the national standards are to be lowered as it would appear to be your object then God help us.
Yours truly,
J. G-G.
Liverpool 18
25 May 1966
To: The Governors B.B.C. London
Dear Sirs,
My wife and I have just seen the Wednesday Play ‘Toddler on the Run’. We are quite certain that tonight’s play emanated from a twisted mind. We fail to see any merit in it. We know that any number of our friends are switching off their sets after having seen but a small portion of what you, in your colossal ignorance, consider what is fit for our viewing. In our semi-public position, we come into contact with many, many people daily and without exception your image can only be described as evil. You represent a threat to the moral welfare of our children and apart from the news, we should be glad to vote for the abolition of this Country’s television services. We know we can always switch you off but we have hoped until now that we would have some return for the licence fee we pay. I know that many other people feel as we do. I only wish they would make their protest.
I accuse you of a complete lack of morality in the selection of your plays, of a total lack of understanding of what ordinary people wish to view.
Only a percentage of our young people, thank God, have become ‘Queers’ but these are the people you appear to have chosen as the true representatives of the culture of this age. How wrong can you be? Unfortunately, I have paid for my Television licence.
With no apologies, I remain
Completely dissatisfied
B. H.
Corby, Northants.
9 March 1966
Dear Mr. Adam,
On returning home last Wednesday evening my husband and I found our ‘teenage’ children watching an apparently harmless play dealing with a school war memorial. We joined them but very soon, with no warning, we found ourselves watching rape, gloatingly presented. We were very embarrassed and horrified to have such a scene in our sitting room.
I'm Sure I Speak For Many Others... Page 7
