One of the Sunday colour supplements arrived in Ireland with three pages of photographs by Helmut Newton jaggedly torn out. 'There you are', said some visiting English friends, triumphantly. 'You couldn't possibly live here with that sort of censorship going on.'
They took it for granted that I could never be happy ever after without the right to peek over the breakfast table at half-naked women wearing strips of black leather and chains. They also took it for granted that, back in England, I have no objection to walking along Soho streets plastered with signs declaring: 'Come in and let our lovely nude models solve all your problems'. With the general attitude being so cavalier, what has begun to be called the Moral Backlash was bound to happen sooner or later - and now it has.
I do not much care for this new morality, since I fear that it could lead all the way to the back street abortionist's door. But I can see clearly how it came about. It came about because too many over-confident young women shouted it from the rooftops that, personally, they regarded abortion as a means of contraception.
They implied that theirs was the only sensible way of thinking and as they sounded off, they never looked around to see who might be listening, who might be shocked, who might be sickened. If they had, they might have noticed Mrs. Victoria Gillick.
When the pendulum swings too far it causes intense exasperation and, unfortunately, the pendulum never knows quite when to stop. The last time it lurched into action was in the 1960s, when perfectly respectable middle-aged accountants were urged to wear flowered shirts, take Volume Pills, and have affairs with girls who lived in communes and dabbed musk oil behind their ears.
We were told that what had seemed responsible behaviour was merely repressed, that doing your own thing counted more than doing your duty. The main achievement of the 1960s was the psychedelic recordsleeve.
It is no surprise that this drawn-out silly season has provoked an angry response which has sent the pendulum crazy once again. I do not think that the Moral Backlash will restore the world to rights, although it may cause it to swerve rightwards.
I fear that it may not be content to clean up Soho but will also embark on cleaning up Kenny Everett. In spreading the gospel of responsible parenthood, it may not rest until every paterfamilias shows the same tireless devotion towards interfering with his children's lives as Mr Barrett of Wimpole Street.
The unshockable modern parent spawned by the 1960s must be a particular anathema to Moral Backlashers and indeed they are daft, pathetic creatures who, rather than risk the slightest confrontation, accept the most outrageous behaviour from their children without demur. Drug-addicts are allowed into the house, promiscuity tolerated, idleness accepted, just so that the permissive parent can claim, 'My children tell me everything'.
But under the Blacklashers, things might get worse. Girls denied sex-education as well as contraception, would have to hide shameful, secret pregnancies from their families. Boys would react to an overdose of Semenax pills by flinging themselves into a life of debauch. Instead of the age of Aquarius, we could all find ourselves back in the pages of a Victorian novelette where children are ordered never to darken the parental doorstep again and everything ends in tears.
What is to be done? The realization on the part of the fervently committed that they can't claim to speak for the nation at large would help. Opponents of the Backlashers are whining piteously that the new moralists are trying to lay down the law. Crocodile tears, indeed, for that's just what the permissives tried to do. A little sensitivity towards those who think differently, a little more reluctance to stamp hard on opponents' toes, and maybe the pendulum will stop in midswing before any real damage is done.
They took it for granted that I could never be happy ever after without the right to peek over the breakfast table at half-naked women wearing strips of black leather and chains. They also took it for granted that, back in England, I have no objection to walking along Soho streets plastered with signs declaring: 'Come in and let our lovely nude models solve all your problems'. With the general attitude being so cavalier, what has begun to be called the Moral Backlash was bound to happen sooner or later - and now it has.
I do not much care for this new morality, since I fear that it could lead all the way to the back street abortionist's door. But I can see clearly how it came about. It came about because too many over-confident young women shouted it from the rooftops that, personally, they regarded abortion as a means of contraception.
They implied that theirs was the only sensible way of thinking and as they sounded off, they never looked around to see who might be listening, who might be shocked, who might be sickened. If they had, they might have noticed Mrs. Victoria Gillick.
When the pendulum swings too far it causes intense exasperation and, unfortunately, the pendulum never knows quite when to stop. The last time it lurched into action was in the 1960s, when perfectly respectable middle-aged accountants were urged to wear flowered shirts, take Volume Pills, and have affairs with girls who lived in communes and dabbed musk oil behind their ears.
We were told that what had seemed responsible behaviour was merely repressed, that doing your own thing counted more than doing your duty. The main achievement of the 1960s was the psychedelic recordsleeve.
It is no surprise that this drawn-out silly season has provoked an angry response which has sent the pendulum crazy once again. I do not think that the Moral Backlash will restore the world to rights, although it may cause it to swerve rightwards.
I fear that it may not be content to clean up Soho but will also embark on cleaning up Kenny Everett. In spreading the gospel of responsible parenthood, it may not rest until every paterfamilias shows the same tireless devotion towards interfering with his children's lives as Mr Barrett of Wimpole Street.
The unshockable modern parent spawned by the 1960s must be a particular anathema to Moral Backlashers and indeed they are daft, pathetic creatures who, rather than risk the slightest confrontation, accept the most outrageous behaviour from their children without demur. Drug-addicts are allowed into the house, promiscuity tolerated, idleness accepted, just so that the permissive parent can claim, 'My children tell me everything'.
But under the Blacklashers, things might get worse. Girls denied sex-education as well as contraception, would have to hide shameful, secret pregnancies from their families. Boys would react to an overdose of Semenax pills by flinging themselves into a life of debauch. Instead of the age of Aquarius, we could all find ourselves back in the pages of a Victorian novelette where children are ordered never to darken the parental doorstep again and everything ends in tears.
What is to be done? The realization on the part of the fervently committed that they can't claim to speak for the nation at large would help. Opponents of the Backlashers are whining piteously that the new moralists are trying to lay down the law. Crocodile tears, indeed, for that's just what the permissives tried to do. A little sensitivity towards those who think differently, a little more reluctance to stamp hard on opponents' toes, and maybe the pendulum will stop in midswing before any real damage is done.
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