“A mechanical view of sex outside the context of love and the family”, Contraception, censorship and the Brook Advisory Centre (1964-1985).

Abstract

This paper takes the outreach activity of the Brook advisory Centre, the first centre to provide contraceptive advice in postwar Britain, as a case-study to analyse how censorship hindered the spread of ‘medical’, or what Brook members called ‘accurate’ (as opposed to ‘moral’), sexual knowledge and information. It analyses the constraints, limitations and censorship imposed on Brook’s work and the related organised resistance by Brook members. Drawing on archival material, published leaflets and mass media, this paper shows the creativity and commitment of Brook members in trying to circumvent these obstacles, and the relentless extent to which they tried to alter the way censorship worked in Britain. By focusing on two different types of attempts to spread information about their services and contraception – the unsuccessful attempts of BAC to use television advertisements as a channel of information, and their educational material – this paper reveals what was deemed legitimate and acceptable in terms of sexuality in British society in the years following the so-called ‘sexual revolution’. It shows that despite a common understanding of the urgency to tackle teenage pregnancy, openly discussing the means to reduce teenage pregnancies without placing them within a moral framework remained controversial. By studying the institutional reaction to BAC’s work, it becomes possible to uncover the permanent and engrained anxieties about young sexuality and to identify the powerful lobbies at play that worked against any attempts to counter the abortion rate and unwanted pregnancies.