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11 Contemp. Crises 3 (1987)

handle is hein.journals/crmlsc11 and id is 1 raw text is: Contemporary Crises 11: 3-23 (1987) © Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht - Printed in the Netherlands New voices from the ship of fools A critical commentary on the renaissance of 'permissiveness' as a political issue JOHN PRATT and RICHARD SPARKS Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Abstract. Conventional 'left' accounts of 'Thatcherism' have stressed the authoritarian nature of its political rhetoric. This paper suggests that convergences between the 'new' conservatism and more fundamentalist moral positions, meeting on the ground of obscenity and violence in the media, are a relatively recent development, associated with renewed strategic concentration on the question of law and order. Indeed, the libertarian right, in adhering to a utilitarian laissez-faire understanding of private pleasures, has presided over a positive proliferation of erotic and other gratifications. We argue that in the United Kingdom the authentic constituency of the 'moral right' is an increasingly socially marginal one, rendered progressively more so by the rapid development of technologies of communication and entertainment. During the winter of 1985-86 a cold, but in some ways familiar, wind began to blow again in British political life. 'Permissiveness' and its alleged partners and products - media violence, pornography, cultural corruption, connected to rising crime, street violence and a more general undermining of the social order - was restored to the political agenda. Indeed, from its effects in both raising these issues again and generating a series of responses to them in various aspects of public debate, it is a storm rather than a wind - with its epicentre situated firmly in the core of the Conservative Party. The chillest blast came perhaps from Party Chairman and well known right winger Nor- man Tebbitt. Delivering the annual Disraeli lecture at St Stephen's Club in London on November 13, 1985, Mr Tebbitt argued that the 'trigger' of today's outburst of crime and violence lay ... . . . in the era and attitudes of post-war funk which gave birth to the permis- sive society, which in turn, generates today's violent society ... ... thus was sown the wind, and we are now reaping the whirlwind (Daily Mail, 14 November 1985). And his speech has been echoed by a number of other prominent Conservative Party members. Lord Hailsham, the Lord Chancellor, speaking on December