17.timed Assessment 3

A

C

Despite the successes, the forces of Liberalism and human freedom are now to some extent on the defensive. The “Permissive Society” – always a misleading description – has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the ‘civilised society’, a society based on the belief that different individuals will wish to make different decisions about their patterns of behaviour, and that, provided these do not restrict the freedom of others, they should be allowed to do so, within a framework of understanding and tolerance.

A permissive state is not necessarily the same as a permissive society. People may have had more freedom to do all kinds of things in the sixties ( and indeed they may have welcomed it) but they did not necessarily exercise that freedom. Individuals often expressed liberal attitudes on issues of personal morality but behaved in ways that were little different from their more morally buttoned up predecessors. Surveys consistently highlighted the continued power of moral conservatism across age ranges and class divisions throughout the decade.

01:00:00

Mark Donnelly, Sixties Britain, 2005

Speech by Roy Jenkins, 1969

B

Questions Sir, I believe, and I’m by no means the only one who does, that Mr. Roy Jenkins’s Obscene Publications Act introduced in 1959 was an unmitigated disaster. He was, throughout his time as an MP and particularly as Home Secretary, a “permissive” and his personal philosophy and social disasters littered the “permissive” years. In 1969, he tried to claim that Britain had become a better place in which to live over the last 10 years. I say that it was in this period that the moral state of our nation was weakened, and the outlook of our children made uncertain.

A letter by Mary Whitehouse to the Glasgow Herald, 1982

a) Explain how far the views of Source B differ from those in Source A in relation to Roy Jenkins’ attempt to bring about liberal change in the sixties. (12) b) Use Sources A, B, and C and your own knowledge. How far did the changes of the 1960s in Britain create a “permissive society”? (24)