The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> <strong>Death</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong> <strong>Britain</strong> —<br />
had been in 1945, and even in 1959 it was lower than in 1947 and 1948, and<br />
was still showing only a modest upward trend. <strong>The</strong>se data suggest that premarital<br />
sexual activity was in decline down to the mid-1950s, followed by a<br />
mild upward trend in the next four years. Far from there being a sexual revolution<br />
in the 1950s, this was a decade in which single women reduced sexual<br />
intercourse prior to marriage. <strong>The</strong>re may have been a sexual revolution<br />
amongst the bohemian and art school set, but it did not surface across society,<br />
which, on the contrary, marched in the opposite sexual and demographic<br />
direction.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is much survey, autobiographical and oral evidence for the 1940s<br />
and 1950s to support this interpretation. Mass-Observation’s so-called ‘little<br />
Kinsey’ report <strong>of</strong> 1949 seemed to show deeply conservative attitudes. It questioned<br />
2,052 people chosen at random on the streets in a cross-section <strong>of</strong><br />
British cities. Some 44 per cent <strong>of</strong> the sample felt that ‘standards <strong>of</strong> sexual<br />
morality’ were ‘declining’, and only 17 per cent thought they were improving.<br />
On extra-marital relations, it found very decidedly conservative views.<br />
Overall, 63 per cent disapproved <strong>of</strong> extra-marital relations (compared with a<br />
much lower 24 per cent on the largely middle-class national M-O panel). In<br />
other words, in 1949 there was above-average opposition amongst churchgoers<br />
to extra-marital sex. Mass-Observation’s conclusion <strong>of</strong> its data was:<br />
‘<strong>The</strong>re is certainly no easy or widespread acceptance <strong>of</strong> sex relations outside<br />
marriage in the population as a whole.’ 116 Ge<strong>of</strong>frey Gorer’s 1951 inquiry<br />
seemed to show much more firmly conservative attitudes, especially amongst<br />
churchgoers. Out <strong>of</strong> his panel <strong>of</strong> 5,000 people, he found 52 per cent opposed<br />
to pre-marital sexual experience and 63 per cent opposed to young women<br />
having pre-marital sex. He noted ‘the high valuation put on virginity’. Gorer<br />
came away with the impression <strong>of</strong> conservative sexual views and activities <strong>of</strong><br />
the English people and concluded ‘I very much doubt whether the study <strong>of</strong><br />
any other urban population [in the rest <strong>of</strong> the world] would produce comparable<br />
figures <strong>of</strong> chastity and fidelity’. 117 This case is reinforced by Kate<br />
Fisher’s work, which underlines one <strong>of</strong> the key points made in this book<br />
about women’s ignorance concerning sex (see pages 135, 183–4). She notes<br />
that what sexual information there was in the first six decades <strong>of</strong> the<br />
twentieth century was surrounded with euphemism and oblique reference –<br />
what one <strong>of</strong> her respondents described as ‘a curiously sexless world’ <strong>of</strong> the<br />
1950s, instilling a sense <strong>of</strong> anxiety and incomprehension amongst women. 118<br />
And this extended to knowledge <strong>of</strong> birth control, and distinctly hampered<br />
its use, leaving chastity much more widespread as a method <strong>of</strong> birth control<br />
than previously thought. And this sexual ignorance was highly gendered,<br />
with sexual information overwhelmingly a man’s domain. 119 Women, Fisher<br />
states, asserted their ignorance as a means <strong>of</strong> reinforcing their virtue.<br />
Only a very small number <strong>of</strong> precocious young women were open to sexual<br />
experimentation in the 1950s, notably at Oxford and Cambridge universities.<br />
Joan Bakewell, who in 1951 went to Cambridge from a ‘respectable’<br />
224