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The chapter analyses the creation and definition of obscenity in the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and the ‘Hicklin Ruling’ of 1868. It considers the parliamentary debates which led up to the 1857 Act, and the polarized views of MPs on the subject. It also analyses the disagreements and anxieties surrounding the Hicklin Ruling, revealing the conflicts among nineteenth-century legislators, commentators, publishers, and writers on the question of literary censorship.

This chapter focuses on the period leading up to the passage of the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. It considers fears of the Americanization of British culture culminating in the purge of 1954, when the scale and intensity of anti-obscenity proceedings reached a peak for the period covered by this book. It also describes key moments of dispute around the publication of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

The most obvious reason why the Video Recordings Bill is undesirable is that the so-called ‘video nasties’ have already been deemed illegal under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) and disappeared. In its statutory role, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) will become a large quango accountable to no one but the Secretary of State. It is impossible not to see the Bill as part and parcel of a multi-fronted attack on civil liberties in Britain. Sir Bernard Braine has continuously tried to hijack the Bill on its passage through the Committee Stage. The chapter then deals with some of the wider knock-on effects of the Video Recordings Bill, such as its effects on film censorship and on television. It is mentioned that the Video Recordings Bill cannot be divorced from the wider ideological climate.

This chapter surveys the history of obscenity in English jurisprudence, from the invention of obscene libel as a crime in the eighteenth century through the 1857 Obscene Publications Act and its 1959 reform. It draws on Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler to argue that the invention of obscenity, and its subsequent definitions and redefinitions, reflect changes in media ecology and technology. It begins by examining the 1960 trial of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, before surveying the history of obscenity, and concluding with readings of the way the technologically mediated character of obscenity is reflected in both James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as Young Man and Ian McEwan’s Atonement.

This chapter illustrates the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) trying repeatedly to liberalise its guidelines relating to ‘R18’ videos, and being prevented from doing so by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw. The story of the ‘R18’ began in 1982. The differences between Section 2 and Section 3 proceedings under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) are explained. Bernard Williams' unwillingness to recommend that sex shops should be licensed had by 1987 been amply justified. The combined efforts of Customs and the Home Secretary brought to an end the trial liberalisation period. The Makin' Whoopee! was passed by the Video Appeals Committee (VAC). It ‘may offend or disgust but it is unlikely to deprave or corrupt that proportion of the public who are likely to view it’. Straw ultimately failed to bend the BBFC to his will makes the existence of those powers no less disturbing.

This chapter explores why the Video Recordings Act (VRA) looks set to be a permanent feature on the statute book. A draft Video Recordings Bill was notified to the EC on 10 September 2009. The British Video Association urged its members to continue submitting DVDs as normal to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport played the role of ‘intervener’ with the result that the Obscene Publications Act is abolished. ‘Harm’ is defined in the context of media legislation. It is argued in this chapter that the VRA should simply be abolished hook, line and sinker. As far as film and video censorship in contemporary Britain is concerned, the message from the political class continues to ring out loud and clear: there is no alternative.