Tag Archives: public decency

Margaret Thatcher Wanted Banning Sex Toys to Protect ‘Public Decency’

That’s correct, the late Margaret Thatcher wanted to banning sex toys when she was Prime Minster, to protect ‘public decency’.

According to documents from the National Archives released today, Thatcher met with anti-obscenity campaigner Mary Whitehouse, with the intention to use an anti-pornography law to ban the sex toys.

In a memo from then Home Secretary Leon Brittan, to Thatcher, he said there was a “strong case” to legislate to ban sex toys under the law.

“Some of the items in circulation are most objectionable, including some which can cause physical injury. 

There is a strong case for bringing sex aids fully within the scope of the ‘deprave and corrupt’ test in the 1959 [Obscene Publications] Act.

However, certain conceptual difficulties in extending an act designed only to deal with pornography would need to be overcome.”

The Anti-Pornography Act has been used in the past to ban Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960. It is also responsible for banning the DH Lawrence novel through defining “obscene” items as those which were “such as to tend to deprave and corrupt.”