‘Pornophobia’: Lord Porn and the fall of Britain’s domestic pornography trade

ABSTRACT

This article reflects on the 50th anniversary of the Longford Report. Published at a time when other countries had legalized or were planning to liberalize laws regarding the publication and distribution of pornographic materials, the report is often viewed as a failed attempt at policymaking. Drawing on extensive ethnohistorical research conducted over a six-year period, which includes engagement with archival documents, media reportage and the published report, I show how the Longford Report inadvertently had a significant impact on Britain’s hardcore pornography trade and suggest that the activities of moral entrepreneurs like Longford can have a lasting effect on how pornography is controlled.

KEYWORDS:

• Regulation
• moral panic
• British pornography
• politics
• obscenity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See The National Archives, UK, Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP2/5809, Virgo, Wallace Harold and others: corruption offences between 1 January 1964 and 24 October 1972.

2 The National Archives, UK, Records of the Boards of Customs, Excise, and Customs and Excise, and HM Revenue and Customs, CUST 49/5898, Export of pornography: correspondence with other European countries, 1970.

3 See Strub (2011, 168–178) for a discussion of how the introduction of a ‘new obscenity doctrine’ in 1973 briefly resulted in a ‘prosecution-friendly legal environment’ (2011, 169) in the USA.