Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-15T21:49:59.039Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Licensing at the Front Line

London and Blackpool

from Part II - The Heyday of Christian Vigilance 1945–1965

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2019

Callum G. Brown
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
Get access

Summary

The licensing operation of London County Council was the largest in Britain. Its Public Control Department was a vast licensing bureaucracy that worked with both efficiency and frequent legal recourse to enforce the letter of the law on sexual culture. The evidence shows how closely allied it was to the Public Morality Council, each organisation sharing information on both the current interpretation of the law and on incidents spotted on stage, screen or billboard. London faced cultural changes, especially in relation to 1950s’ revue bars, skiffle music and jukeboxes. But the chapter then goes on to compare London to Blackpool, where a distinctive sexual culture peaked between the 1930s and 1960s in which there was widespread exposure amongst holidaymakers to both sexual and semi-criminal ‘booth’ culture on the foreshore. The chapter argues that the influence of Soho pales beside Blackpool and its 7 million annual visitors, including large numbers from London. Moreover, it shows how licensing control was highly effective in London, but woefully lax in Blackpool, making the latter the location where widespread semi-nudity was first rehearsed in British culture.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Battle for Christian Britain
Sex, Humanists and Secularisation, 1945–1980
, pp. 63 - 93
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×