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Mary Whitehouse ( 13 June 1910 — 23 November 2001 ) was a British campaigner for the values of Morality and decency in which she believed, particularly in Broadcast Media , and ultimately derived from her Religious Beliefs . She was founder and first president of the National Viewers' And Listeners' Association . In 1980 she was honoured with a CBE . EARLY LIFE Mary Whitehouse was born Mary Hutcheson in Nuneaton , Warwickshire and was educated at a Grammar School in Chester , England . She went on to do teacher training at the county college, specialising in art. Her first teaching job was in Wednesfield in Staffordshire. She joined the Oxford Movement (later Moral Rearmament ) in the 1930s. At MRA meetings she met Ernest Whitehouse, and they married in 1940. While a teacher, also responsible for sex education, at Madeley school in Shropshire in the early 1960s, she became concerned at what she, and many others, perceived as declining moral standards in Britain, of the media, and especially of the BBC . CLEAN UP TV Mary Whitehouse began her campaigning in 1963 and among her first targets was Sir Hugh Carleton Greene ; she claimed the director-general of the BBC was "more than anybody else... responsible for the moral collapse in this country". Greene ignored her concerns and blocked her from participation in BBC programming. At her first public meeting in Birmingham in April 1964 over 2,000 people attended and the Clean Up TV Campaign was launched. The National Viewers' And Listeners' Association was formed in 1965 and she obtained a total of 500,000 signatures on her Clean Up TV petition, a record for the UK. Whitehouse caused particular difficulties for civil servants at No 10 Downing Street for the frequent letters sent to Harold Wilson , then prime minister, in particular for her belief that the Government had ultimate responsibility, through the Royal Charter, for BBC output, rather than the BBC's governors who she felt were failing in their duties. For some time Downing Street deliberately "lost" her letters to avoid having to respond to them. When Greene left the BBC in 1969, because of disagreements over the appointment of the Conservative Lord Hill as BBC chairman in 1967, Mrs Whitehouse was given some credit for his departure; other sources pointed more to a political struggle between the BBC and Wilson. PRIVATE PROSECUTIONS In addition to her campaigns regarding television Mrs Whitehouse brought a number of notable legal actions, including a private prosecution for Blasphemous Libel against '' Gay News '' in 1977 ( Whitehouse V. Lemon ). It was the first such prosecution since 1922 when the Old Bailey sentenced John W. Gott to nine months' hard labour for blasphemy. The private prosecution concerned the poem '' The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name '' by James Kirkup , a fellow of the Royal Society Of Literature . It resulted in the editor of '' Gay News '', Denis Lemon, being given a nine-month suspended jail sentence, and being told by the judge he had come close to serving it. Appeals to the House of Lords and the European Court were rejected. She also pursued a private prosecution against '' procedure. The case was the subject of a radio play The Third Soldier Holds His Thighs on BBC Radio Four by Mark Lawson in 2005. Whitehouse's account of the trial is recorded in her book '''A Most Dangerous Woman''' (ISBN 0-85648-540-3). From 1972 she campaigned for public decency and her efforts played a part in the passage of Protection Of Children Act 1978 , the Indecent Displays Act (1981), which concerned sex shops and in 1984 she mounted a decisive campaign in the UK about so-called " Video Nasties ", that led to the Video Recordings Act of that year. Later, her campaigns helped bring an end to Channel 4's " Red Triangle " series of films; claimed by Channel 4 to be intended to warn viewers of material liable to cause offence, the broadcasting of these films had also received criticism from non-supporters of Whitehouse. She also had a role in the 1990 extension of the Broadcasting Act and the establishment of the Broadcasting Standards Council which later became the Broadcasting Standards Commission. From 2004 this was subsumed into the Office Of Communications . BACKLASH Some of her opponents claimed that she had an ability to be offended by almost anything, pointing to her complaints about the use of the word "bloody", her concerns about the TV character s ambushed her, asking her what she thought of a new children's programme in which children were killed, a reference to '' Knightmare ''; she publicly professed her shock, but apologised once she had watched an episode (''Knightmare'' was still "sanitised" in some ways, however — the programme's popular onscreen animation of a walking skeleton in medieval armour, which would fall off piece by piece as the player's health deteriorated, was replaced in the final series by a picture of slices being removed from a pink cake!). Her favourite programmes were '' Dixon Of Dock Green '', '' Neighbours '', and coverage of snooker. Whitehouse became a target for mockery and caricature. One publisher of pornographic magazines named a magazine Whitehouse, apparently in an attempt to annoy her (this magazine's website is the source of occasional shock and confusion to those searching for the official White House website). British "noise" band Whitehouse also named themselves after her, in mocking tribute, she is the inspiration of Deep Purple's 1973 song ''Mary Long'' and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band 's ''Mrs Blackhouse'', in which the eponymous Blackhouse is depicted as a demonic, unholy creature. The British punk band The Adicts also wrote a song called ''Mary Whitehouse'', which includes the line "She don't like pornography/ when it's on the BBC", among others. She is, in addition, mentioned by name in the song '' Pigs (Three Different Ones) '' on the 1977 Pink Floyd album '' Animals '', depicted as a pig. There was also a BBC TV and Radio comedy series called '' The Mary Whitehouse Experience ''. She tried unsuccessfully to get her name removed from the title. Sometimes if the cast of a TV Programme were congratulated by Mary Whitehouse for producing '' Wholesome Entertainment '', they took it as an insult. This was the case with '' The Goodies '' in 1970. After the first season, the cast of The Goodies were worried that an endorsement from Mary Whitehouse would harm their image. They made it their goal to get a complaint from her. To achieve this, they introduced more Smut into their show, but with no response. They even went as far as to feature a caricature of her called "Desiree Carthorse" in one episode but even that got no response. In the end, a sequence of Tim Brooke Taylor dancing wearing just Leather Underpants triggered a complaint. BASE OF SUPPORT Mary Whitehouse had some support for her aims, particularly among conservatives and many Christians, and for much of the 1960s and 1970s she had more than 250 speaking engagements every year. She was, however, a despised figure among those who were opposed to her views and actions. Her popularity waned in the 1980s , through a combination of changing times and the frailty of her old age. RETIREMENT Whitehouse retired as president of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association in 1994; the Association was re-named Mediawatch-uk in 2001 and the current director is John Beyer. The organisation had about 150,000 supporters through corporate memberships at its peak; membership is now less than 40,000. ILLNESS AND DEATH In 1990, she claimed on BBC radio that Dennis Potter had been influenced by witnessing his mother engaged in adulterous sex. Potter's mother won substantial damages from the BBC and '' The Listener '', who were reportedly unimpressed by Whitehouse's claim to have had a blackout on air and subsequently to have had no recollection of her words. After this her appearances in the media become far less frequent and the ridicule of her increased substantially. In the 1990s her activity was reduced even futher by illness and then a fall which damaged her spine in 1997. Her husband died in July 2000. She died, aged 91, in a nursing home in Colchester, England on 23 November 2001 , on the 38th anniversary of the broadcast of the first episode of '' Doctor Who '', a show that she had criticised a number of times over the years. REFERENCES
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