Abstract

The history of film censorship in the United Kingdom has been well covered at national level, and several authoritative accounts published. However less attention has been paid to the bodies who still have the final say, the local licensing authorities, and there has been little analysis of their own records. This study looks at primary sources in two councils that were active censors during the 1950s and 1960s. It shows how councils such as Manchester were at the forefront of the move towards more liberal censorship of films in those decades, and were ahead of the British Board of Film Censors in their approach to film in areas such as educational films, depiction of nudity and "adult" story-lines and language. Other councils like Sale, just to the south of Manchester, attempted to 'hold back the tide' of X-films and the BBFC had to steer a course between these opposing tendencies as well as taking account of public and political opinion.As well as shedding new light on the local licensing process at the time, the study reveals some discrepancies in a standard reference. This research was originally carried out in 2002 for an Open University project and thus pre-dates the Licensing Act 2003.

Highlights

  • 'no cinematograph film ... which has not been passed for ... exhibition by the BBFC shall be exhibited without the express consent of the council'

  • This study investigates how local authority film committees were constituted and the sort of 3 people who served on them; the kindof decisions they made and the basis for them; their reasons for continuing to censor some films rather than accepting the verdict of the BBFC, and the relationships between these Local Authorities (LA), the BBFC and the cinema industry

  • The written sources were the archives of 5 Manchester City Council, the Manchester Police Museum, the Trafford Local Studies Unit and the British Board of Film Classification

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Summary

Scope of this study

This study investigates how local authority film committees were constituted and the sort of 3 people who served on them; the kindof decisions they made and the basis for them; their reasons for continuing to censor some films rather than accepting the verdict of the BBFC, and the relationships between these Local Authorities (LA), the BBFC and the cinema industry. It draws conclusions on the extent to which the continuing exercise of local censorship influenced the BBFC’s policies in the 1950s and 60s in particular

Sources and methods
Censorship viewing arrangements
Political censorship
Fear of libel
Manchester in the latter half of the Sixties
The Town Hall censors
Was it Futile?
Limitations and suggestions for further research
Conclusions

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