Bruce Anderson: A life spent trying in vain to preserve the suburban idyll

'Mary Whitehouse's campaign fell victim to the contradictions of Thatcherism'

It was May 1979, and the late Mary Whitehouse was feeling cheerful. For 15 years, she had been fighting pornography and bad language on television; during all those years, there had been determined efforts to squash her. Abetted by their political allies, those who ran television dismissed Mrs Whitehouse as narrow, ignorant and none too bright. A bigot from the outer reaches of the suburban middle class who should never be allowed to express her views on any cultural topic. Hugh Greene, the first BBC director general with whom she came in conflict, refused to take her telephone calls.

Then Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 election. This was another lady whom the liberal élite had dismissed with scorn; she now had power. A lifelong Tory, Mary Whitehouse had often been disappointed in her own party's leaders. But here was a new premier who shared may of her own values, instincts and prejudices. Surely something would now be done.

The early indications were favourable. A meeting was quickly arranged. But the circumstances of that meeting should have overshadowed Mary Whitehouse's optimism. Downing Street officials asked her to keep quiet about it. There would be no photographers, no publicity. It was as if Mrs Thatcher's own office regarded Mary Whitehouse as more a source of embarrassment than of advice.

During the meeting Margaret Thatcher herself was effusive in tribute. So Mary Whitehouse came away believing that in future she would have influence. She was mistaken. After 1979, she was treated politely by the television hierarchs. But behind the courtesies, they paid as little attention to her views as Hugh Greene had. They may have heard her; they never listened.

There was further symbolic distancing. In 1980, Mary Whitehouse was given a CBE. An essentially modest woman, she was delighted. She should not have been. In view of her prominence, she ought to have been made a Dame. In her case, the CBE was only an also-ran gong. Then again, she was an also-ran. Mrs Whitehouse's campaign for better standards on television fell victim to the contradictions of Thatcherism. Margaret Thatcher was no prude. It is unlikely that she shared Mary Whitehouse's dislike of the "bad language'' on Till Death Us Do Part.

Equally, if her male colleagues were detected in sexual misadventures, Margaret Thatcher never moralised, and she knowingly employed at least one homosexual in her Cabinet and shadow Cabinet. When he was eventually sacked, sex played no part.

She was certainly capable of missing some of the nuances in contemporary discourse. There was her famous remark, à propos of Willie Whitelaw: "Every prime minister needs a Willie.'' But long before she said that, she committed a splendid double-entendre in the course of obliging Mr Whitelaw to give up a day's shooting: "I told Willie that he must stay in London tomorrow,'' she said, before making a journey, in her days as opposition leader. "I have to leave someone in charge. Jim [Callaghan] left Michael Foot in charge over Christmas, and Michael Foot couldn't run pussy.'' There was barely a breath before she continued: "But I'm told I mustn't say that, because it could mean something rather vulgar.''

Margaret Thatcher would have preferred it if pussy on television had meant the pets programme or catfood adds, and if the networks had merely served up wholesome family entertainment. But there was a problem. She also believed in economic freedom. Ultimately, this meant that she found herself forced down the route of commercial logic, which Harold Macmillan had first opened when he established independent television and which inevitably meant the end of the Reithian vision for the BBC.

John Reith, the BBC's first director general, was a gloomy, priggish egomaniac, who probably had curious sexual tastes of his own. But he also believed in cultural uplift. He saw television and radio as a means of disseminating education as well as high-quality entertainment. It was no ignoble goal, but it could only have worked in a deferential society in which the BBC was insulated from competition. Even by the late Fifties, those preconditions no longer applied. By 1979 they were political archaeology.

Margaret Thatcher disliked the BBC, but not because it had fallen short of Lord Reith's ambitions. She did not approve of the left-wing bias, nor did she see why Conservative voters should be required to subsidise this by paying a licence fee. Television reform was never high on her list of priorities, but from time to time she did insist that something had to be done.

Eventually it was, but it took us further than ever from a world in which Mary Whitehouse and John Reith could have felt happy. Mrs Thatcher commissioned a distinguished free-market economist, Alan Peacock, to produce a report on the future of television. She expected that he would recommend the abolition of the licence fee. Instead, he merely recommended the abolition of the beauty-contest system under which ITV companies secured a renewal of their franchise by committing themselves to a quota of high-standard public-service programmes, while intending to use their other time on the airways to maximise revenues.

As a result of the Peacock report, ITV was opened to the full rigours of commerciality. As a result of this, all the companies joyously dumbed down in order to make as much money as possible. This had immediate consequences for the BBC. The new generation of BBC executives lacked the cultural and intellectual self-confidence to insist they were entitled to the licence fee because they were making programmes that the public ought to watch. Instead, they felt obliged to compete with ITV by making programmes that the public wanted to watch.

As a result, day after day, channel after channel produces hour after hour of cretinised pap. This must be having a profoundly damaging affect on the moral and intellectual horizons of the television audience. In retrospect, Mary Whitehouse chose the wrong target. It might do our children much less harm to watch bestial sex conveyed in foul language than to have their brains steadily eroded by the sheer silliness and banality of the television schedule.

One day, there will be at least a partial reaction. Given the number of bookshops in this county, plus the interest in serious music and theatre, it is impossible to believe that there is not also a market for serious television. Someone will eventually meet that demand, and make money by doing so.

But this will not bring back the lost, innocent world of Mary Whitehouse; a world of tennis clubs, tea parties, the ladies organising the rota to do the flowers in church every week. It is easy to mock that world, yet anyone who examines conditions in the average British city today might also feel that it stood for a decency and indeed a civilisation that we have discarded at our peril. Mary Whitehouse defended causes that are still worthy of support.