Media History

On this day 100 years ago, the BBC transmitted its first radio programme.[1] ‘Designed to represent the nation to the nation, the world to the nation, and the nation to the world’, the BBC had grandiose aims from its inception.[2]

Funded by a license fee, the BBC was able to avoid ‘the damaging limitations of commercial advertising and direct dependence on state revenue’.[3] It was therefore well positioned to fulfil its mission to ‘inform, educate, and entertain’ the public through impartial broadcasting.[4]

Vital to the success of the BBC was that its listeners and viewers considered its claim to represent the nation to be legitimate. The British public had to feel seen and heard by the company; after all it was their money that was funding the service.

Some believe that the BBC has been successful in such a task over its 100 year history. According to media historian Jean Seaton the BBC ‘has enriched democracy’.[5] ‘In serving audiences, irrespective of class, wealth, age […] as equal citizens’, Seaton argues that the BBC has acted as a representative for those otherwise lacking influence and, on their behalf, ensured the powerful were held to account.[6]

However, despite its seemingly positive implications for democracy, in recent years the BBC has been under increasing scrutiny.

For example, in 2020 the BBC faced claims that staff were irresponsibly posting their own personal views on issues such as Brexit on media platforms such as Twitter, breaking the corporation’s impartiality rules.

This led to the belief that BBC content was being shaped by particular political perspectives, obscuring the opinions of those who disagreed.

The legitimacy of the BBC’s representative claims has therefore been challenged. This begs the question: does the BBC still fulfil its aim to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ the public? And has it indeed “enriched democracy”?

In the early years of the BBC, discussion of politics was a rare occurrence. However, this began to change during the 1950s. This decade marked a period of transformation in British political culture, with traditional forms of interaction between representatives and the represented, such as town hall meetings, being displaced by mediatized communication.

Faced with competition from the newly established Independent Television Authority (ITA), during the 1950s and 1960s, the BBC broadcasted innovative programmes that more openly held political representatives to account, and even facilitated mediated interaction between politicians and the electorate.[7] This reflected what Martin Conway has identified as the move away from ‘formal democracy’ to a more pluralistic, participatory notion of democracy.[8]

However, with this more critical political coverage came questions regarding the legitimacy of the BBC as a representative of the British people. A prominent example of this can be seen in the public’s response to the BBC’s coverage of the Falklands War in 1982.

The tabloids published readers’ letters through which we see the public grappling with what they perceived as the BBC’s democratic duty. Many expressed feeling let down by the BBC’s coverage of the Falklands, due to it not being considered as representative of their beliefs.

For example, Mrs Norma Edwards told the Daily Express that she was ‘one of many people who rang the BBC to voice [her] complaints’ regarding their Panorama programme on the crisis. Edwards’ grievance was with the ‘so-called “fair” and “balanced” view’ of the BBC, which she considered to be inappropriate during this ‘worrying time’.[9]

A similar sentiment can also be seen in the Mail, who published an article questioning ‘whatever happened to the BBC voice of Britain?’.[10] Immediately, we see how the role of the BBC was understood as a representative of popular opinion. Thus, when its reporting was considered to be not ‘in the least bit representative’, it follows that the BBC had failed to fulfil its democratic duty.

The hypocrisy of the BBC, according to the Mail, of taking pride ‘in being the “voice of Britain”’, but to proceed to ignore ‘the opinion polls and everyday experience’ of the people was ‘a political decision of the gravest and most far-reaching kind’.[11]

Ultimately, the BBC was presented by the tabloids as undermining democracy as it had failed to place the voice of the people at the centre of its coverage. It therefore could not be considered as a legitimate representative. However, the obvious problem with this perspective is that it implies “the nation” can be conceived as homogenous, therefore not making room for the complex, pluralistic nature of society.

The crux of the issue here, and indeed in criticism of the BBC today, comes down to the question of what it means to be impartial. As Jim Waterson, media editor for The Guardian has noted, ‘who exactly gets to define what impartiality means? Which topics […] no longer require dissenting voices in the eyes of the BBC’?

Due to the idea of ‘due impartiality’, the BBC has been able to confidently ignore climate crisis deniers. Yet questions as to ‘whether staff can supportive active anti-racism campaigns or transgender rights’, remain under contention.

When discussing democracy, I prefer to avoid speaking of either success or crisis. Rather, I believe that it is better to speak of change.  

What is evident is that since 1922, when the BBC first began broadcasting, people’s understanding of democracy has certainly changed to become a more constant part of our lifeworld. Representation is therefore also considered as a more continuous process of claim making.[13] The current debates regarding the legitimacy of the BBC provide a lens through which we can better understand wider societal and political discussions regarding definitions of democracy today.

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Jamie Jenkins is a PhD Candidate at Radboud University working on the Voice of the People project. Her interests include media history, political history and popular expectations of democracy. She is also the Assistant Editor of this blog. She tweets at @jenkinsleejamie.

Header image: The BBC logo used in the 1980s, https://commons.wikimedia.org/

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[1] Simon J. Potter. The is the BBC: Entertaining the Nation, Speaking for Britain? (Oxford, 2022).

[2] Jean Seaton, ‘The BBC’, in A. Boin et al. (eds.), Guardians of Public Value (London, 2021), p. 88.

[3] Ibid., pp. 89- 90.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., p. 87.

[6] Ibid.

[7] For further information on this, see: Lawrence, John. (2009). Electing our masters: The Hustings in British politics from Hogarth to Blair. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Stephen Wagg, ‘You’ve never had it so silly: The politic of British satirical comedy from Beyond the Fringe to Spitting Image in Strinati, Dominic., & Wagg, Stephen. (n.d.). Come on down? Popular media culture in postwar Britain. London / New York: Routledge. (1992), pp. 254 – 284.

[8] Martin Conway, Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968 (Oxford, 2020), p. 8.

[9] ‘Letters’, Daily Express, May 17^th 1982, p. 23.

[10] Anthony Lejeune, ‘Whatever happened to the BBC Voice of Britain?’, Daily Mail, May 12^th 1982, p. 6.

[11] Anthony Lejeune, ‘Whatever happened to the BBC Voice of Britain?’, Daily Mail, May 12^th 1982, p. 6.

[12] Jean Seaton, ‘The BBC’, in A. Boin et al. (eds.), Guardians of Public Value (London, 2021), p. 88.

[13] Saward, M., ‘The Representative Claim’, Contemporary Political Theory 5 (2006), pp. 297-318.

The cinema of the interwar era (1919-1939) is commonly acknowledged as being an essential factor in influencing girls and women. From their fashion choices and hairstyles to what was considered at the time to be “unfeminine” behaviours like smoking and drinking.[1]  With the introduction of sound to the cinema in 1927, a new attribute that could be influenced was acknowledged, the voice.

In 1927 a Daily Express columnist claimed that ‘we have several million people, mostly women, who, to all intent and purpose, are temporary American citizens’.[2] The increasing popularity of Hollywood films over British films perpetuated the fear of Americanisation of the British culture and its perceived effects on demoralising society, by introducing their lax attitude towards manners, morality and speech. The perception that Hollywood promoted democratising and egalitarian values to a British population who had nearly tripled their electorate with The Representation of the People Act (1918), presented a danger to the concepts and ideals of Britishness.

Films with synchronised sound and dialogue, dubbed “talkies”, soon became the primary experience of the film viewing public, replacing silent pictures as the new norm. Film played an important part in offering a presentation of “proper” British speech, behaviour, and morality that could be consumed and imitated by audiences. With the introduction of the Hollywood talkies, the concern of American influence was exacerbated due to the alleged corruption of the British language with Americanisms and slang.

The preferred voice of the British screen was that of “Received Pronunciation” (RP), the uniform way of speaking to allow not only for the audience to understand the dialogue without confusing regional dialects, but to introduce a “correct” way of speaking by broadcasting the ‘superior speech’.[3] Yet in what Rachael Low calls ‘class-ridden Britain’, the audiences complained more about the ‘oxford accent’ and the ‘BBC voice’ associated with RP than the American slang and idioms of Hollywood films.[4] But how did this affect the relatability of female characters? Did hearing the voice of an actress ruin the illusion created of her on the silent screen, or would young women be more inclined to embody her, including the way she talked?

The female voice was subjected to unsubstantiated concerns over its suitability for broadcast, as women were considered incapable of retaining the attention of listeners because their voices were less commanding and could be at times “monotonous […] and shrill”, creating an unpleasant listening experience. Claims even went as far as suggesting that even if women’s voices were used, they wouldn’t have anything interesting to say anyway.

The introduction of sound to pictures only increased the list of things that a woman could be criticised for and added another aspect of femininity that could be idealised, learnt and conformed to. Larraine Porter suggests that sound cinema ‘created a vogue for particular kinds of voices’ and expected women’s voices to transform towards feminine desirability.[5]

Before the introduction of sound to film, cinema had already created visual forms of women that represented feminine desirability, sexuality, and the different tropes of female characters, to be instantly recognisable to an audience. This meant that women’s voices needed to match the aura of the character; high-pitched and girly for a youthful innocent image, lower-pitched for one of sexual promiscuity, and even manlier images. With the wrong voice, she may ruin her allure, desirability, and feminine image.

Cinema-goers when watching their favourite star had already formed an idea of their voices despite never hearing them which made it near impossible for actresses to meet expectations of their on-screen persona. The impossibility for these already successful silent actresses to meet vocal expectations set them up for inevitable criticism at every turn, they may be too high, too low, too monotonous, too fast, too slow, too weak and thin or too strong and mannish. Each critique set back the female voice, becoming evident that women were being punished for speaking at all, for occupying what radio considered to be a male vocal space.[6]

In The Film Gone Male written by Dorothy Richardson in 1932, she argued that the silent film was a feminine space that had been masculinised by the introduction of sound. The silent film produced images of feminine experiences and realities, and these male voices took away from the female audience’s experience, describing women as ‘humanities silent half’.[7] In silent film, the female audiences could easily envision themselves or insert their own voices and experiences onto the female characters being portrayed. Antonia Lant too, argues that the silent film was considered by female audiences to hold a feminine universalism, transposing onto silent film the value of femininity. After the introduction of the more dominant male voice in cinema, many women critics felt like on-screen women lost their voice, and in turn women in British society did too, suggesting that men became established as the possessor of the voice.

The arrival of sound to British film cemented pre-existing silent film gender tropes and set a precedence for the marginalisation of women’s vocal presence in film. Despite the fact that the majority of cinema audiences were made up of women, early sound cinema had developed an aversion toward the female voice that remains in film to this day.

Rachel Bogush is a PhD student at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on modern femininity in interwar British media. She tweets at @rachelbogush.

Cover Image: Exhibitor’s Herald, April 9th 1921. Still of the cast and production crew from the American comedy drama film The Affairs of Anatol (1921). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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[1] C. Grandy, Heroes and Happy Endings: Class, Gender, and Nation in Popular Film and Fiction in Interwar Britain, (2014), p.3

S. Harper, Women in British Cinema: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, (2000),

[2] Daily Express, 18 March 1927, p. 6.

[3] A. Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars, (1991) P.215

[4] R. Low, The History of the British Film 1929-1939: Film making in 1930s Britain, (1985), p.89

[5] L. Porter, ‘“Have You a Happy Voice?” Women’s Voices and the Talkie Revolution in Britain 1929–1932’, MSMI, Vol.12:2, (2018), p.141

[6] Ibid., 152

[7] Richardson, D., Continuous Performance: The Film Gone Male (1932), in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, (1983)

Whether you are an avid football fan who never misses a game or, like myself you have yet to grasp the offside rule, sport is near impossible to avoid. A form of entertainment and escapism, sport undoubtedly plays a crucial role within our lives.

In response to the irrefutable prevalence of sport, over the past decade we have seen a rise in sports history as a respected field within academia.

Noting how sport history is primarily ‘marked by a cultural approach’, in his 2021 article Harm Kaal makes a convincing case that sport should be taken more seriously by political historians of the postwar period.[1]

As Kaal states, sport and politics are ‘intimately connected’, yet until now political historians have ‘hardly reflected on the nature of this connection in the postwar years’.[2]

One of the most prominent ways that we see the link between sport and politics, and indeed between sport and many spheres of popular culture, is through language and communication. As a political historian whose research is centered on articulations of democracy in the tabloid press, it is certainly hard to avoid the conflation between sporting and political discourse.

In this blog post I will be investigating the use of sporting discourse in political reporting, in particular how it was utilised during British General Elections in the 1970s. This will provide insights into the nature of democratic culture during this period.

On 19^th May 1970, the Express announced the beginning of the election campaign with the front-page headline, ‘THE PREMIER STAKES’, accompanied by the subheading ‘They’re off on June 18^th’, utilising discourse drawn from horseracing in order to mark the start of electioneering.[3]

Alongside the article, the Express published a cartoon image of the main candidates, Wilson and Heath, racing on horseback.[4] Here the democratic process was being equated to horse racing, a sport with an unclear outcome that is very much dependent on the performance of individuals on the day. Coverage of the election was therefore less about policy and parties, and instead focused on the performances of individual prospective representatives during their campaign, as opposed to long-term party affiliation.

This process can also be seen in the following quote pulled from the Sun’s coverage of the second General Election of 1974:

 ‘As we move into the half-way stage of this thrilling contest – so help me, I am beginning to sound like Match of the Day – it is clear that honesty is the new policy. The dramatic first-half incident, in which Mrs Shirley Williams scored an own-goal, may actually have turned out to the advantage of that celebrated schemer, Twinkletoes Harold [Wilson]’.[5]

This time equating politics to football, we see politicians being referred to in a satirical manner, detaching them from their parties and instead focusing on their individual performance.

Along similar lines, in the month preceding the 1979 election, the Mirror also utilised boxing vocabulary in order to communicate their notions of the electioneering process, declaring that ‘the first round of the battle between the two election heavyweights [had] been won by Jim Callaghan – without a glove being laid on him’.[6]

Language such as ‘heavyweights’, ‘lightweights’, ‘combat’, and ‘battered’, along with describing Westminster as an ‘arena’, immediately drew parallels between politics and boxing, making democratic deliberation more tangible for newspaper readers.[7] As well as making politics more accessible, principally to men, it also shifted political representatives’ positions within democratic culture. Once yardsticks of gentlemanly civility, they instead became sources of entertainment, allowing for them to be viewed with less deference.

The use of sporting metaphors in newspapers’ coverage of politics was symptomatic of the broader changes in the way the popular press was articulating popular understandings of democracy. From the late 1950s onwards, party democracy was facing a lot of criticism from the popular press and its readers, who desired increased proximity between the people and their political representatives.

The version of democracy we see emerging in the 1970s therefore, referred to by Bernard Manin as “audience democracy”, was a product of efforts to make this an actuality.[8] Politicians attempted to present themselves and were being presented as “one of the people”. One of the ways through which the popular press did this was through the use of sporting vernacular, which allowed them to communicate politics with their readers within a framework that they could relate to. In other words, sport made politicians more palpable for the ordinary person.

What we can see from this small case study is that there is a real value in political historians taking seriously sports history, along with other aspects of popular culture including the tabloid press.

Sport can help us shed light on changes in political communication, popular expectations of representatives, inclusion and exclusion and shifts in political power.

These concerns will be explored in the Voice of the People project, which aims to put the voices of ordinary citizens centre stage in the discussions of postwar political cultural, by deconstructing articulations of democracy in the popular press.

Jamie Jenkins is a PhD student at Radboud University working on the Voices of the People project. She tweets @jenkinsleejamie.

Cover Image: Anglo-Italian Cup Winners, Blackpool FC., 1971. Source: Wikimedia Commons

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[1] Kaal, H. G. J., ‘Boundary Disputes: New approaches to the interaction between sport and politics in the postwar years’, Journal of Modern European History 19.3 (2021), p. 364.

[2] Ibid., p. 362.

[3] Maurice Trowbridge, ‘THE PREMIER STAKES!’, Daily Express, May 19^th 1970, p. 1.

[4] Daily Express, May 19^th 1970, p. 1.

[5] John Akass, ‘Twinkletoes could find it pays to tell the truth’, The Sun, September 30^th 1974, p. 6.

[6] Terence Lancaster, ‘Election Briefing’, Daily Mirror, 5^th April 1979, p. 2.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Bernard Manin, The principles of representative government (New York, 1997), p. 218.

We live in a world often dominated by the latest fashions and prevalent images of body modifications. Whether in traditional print media or on social media sites, women in particular are bombarded with images of often unattainable body shapes, whilst simultaneously encouraged to remain natural in appearance. A curvaceous body type can be obtained by plastic surgery, or alternatively, is now easily replicated with fashion companies selling a wide variety of padded products that can change how our bodies look in clothes. Even though these trends and societal expectations may seem aproduct of the modern age, how true is this?  

In reality, this trend has a much longer history. The eighteenth century saw a variety of extreme fashions introduced by women of the elite. This included wearing large hoops under dresses, bum padding, and even stomach padding to give the illusion of pregnancy. 

Celebrities and social media stars are at the forefront of establishing new fashion trends. But just as the modern media and public are intrigued and obsessed by the fashions and bodily choices of celebrities, so too was eighteenth century society.   Back then, the leaders of fashion were known as the beau monde. Fashion gave elite women a form of empowerment largely unavailable to them elsewhere in eighteenth-century society.^[1] This was a sphere they could dominate, arguably giving them a form of pleasure unavailable anywhere else. 

By the 1730s, the Rococo style was deeply entrenched in both French and English fashions, with a focus on the feminine being the most crucial quality of dress for women. This translated into using padding on the hips or hoops to create a new body shape. 

The use of padding to create a curvaceous body shape culminated in the 1780s into a rounded silhouette: hip padding alongside the addition of bum pads or rolls to give the illusion of a more rounded physique, as well as increasing appearance of breast sizes by using starched kerchiefs tucked into the front of the dress.^[2] This was not a new development in fashion, however the changing shape of the body was reaching new heights of exaggeration and extremes.

In 2021, we may often see satire and humour directed at those in the public eye on social media – for being too revealing, for having exaggerated bodily features, for all manner of fashion choices. The satirical prints of the eighteenth century did not hold back from attacking women’s fashion either.

Luxury and extravagance were often used as the measure for immorality or downfall in society. This meant fashion was consequently seen as a vice in need of correcting. All manner of vices appeared in satirical prints, and women’s fashion choices were also ridiculed.

The vast number of satirical prints created about women’s fashions suggests that enough women were participating in what the satires considered to be excessive and ‘humorous’ for such satirical prints to be rendered relevant. 

Demonstrating interesting parallels between the past and the present, the satirical print Chloe’s Cushion or The Cork Rump bares a striking resemblance to the famous Kim Kardashian image in Paper magazine where Kim ‘breaks the internet’. However, instead of a champagne glass perched on Kim’s ‘rump’, a tiny dog sits in its place on top of Chloe. 

Ridiculing the fashion of wearing padding on the bum links to a similarly themed satirical print, The Bum Shop published by S. W. Fores in 1785. Four women are at various stages of the buying process, with some being fitted for the pads, whilst others admire the final look. 

However, all of the women appear to have ugly faces, and look ridiculous to the viewer whilst wearing or holding the padding, indicating the mocking tone of the print. Extreme vanity is showcased in this print, stating it is a ‘fashionable article of female Invention’; suggesting that it is by women’s choice to dress this way. 

Society, and especially men, disapproved of these extreme fashions. In some cases, they were angered by women trying to alter their bodies in ‘unnatural’ ways with padding that gave them a different shape and appearance – it was considered to be false, and not a true representation of their natural bodies. 

Most concerningly for men, if a woman could change her body shape she could potentially hide an illegitimate pregnancy.^[3] A woman’s sexual reputation both before and after marriage was considered a matter of the utmost importance to elite gentlemen, as fears of illegitimate children inheriting their estates were prevalent in the period.^[4]

Considering this social issue, it is therefore understandable why fashion, female sexuality and a sense of female independence seamlessly blended together in the male perception, and thereby became a key target of their concern. 

Women controlled what they wore, making fashion unique as an area lacking domination by men; yet these prints indicate this did not stop men, and wider society, from trying to encourage changes.

The social scientist Mostafa Abedinifard puts forward the theory that ridicule (and therefore satire) can act as a key tool in society to threaten ‘any violations of established gender norms’. ^[5] This theory can help explain why satirical prints of women’s fashions were made. In Abedinifard’s words: ‘Through a mechanism involving fear of embarrassment, ridicule apparently occupies a universal role in policing and maintaining the gender order’. ^[6] By nurturing a fear amongst women of being ridiculed by the rest of society, the prints arguably created an environment of self-policing that encouraged women to stay within gender expectations.^[7] These expectations guided women towards remaining natural in their appearance and staying within the private sphere, if they did not wish to be ridiculed.

There are many intriguing parallels between eighteenth century society and our own times in terms of how women’s self-expression through fashion is viewed. Using padding to alter the appearance of certain body parts is not a new phenomenon. In a post-lockdown world where we once again reassess how we clothe our bodies, it is interesting to consider the power fashion held in eighteenth century society, and the responses it generated.^[8]

Holly Froggatt is an MA Historical Research graduate of the University of Sheffield. Her research seeks to explore the relationship between satirical prints and the ridicule of elite women, and the expectations they faced in eighteenth century Britain. You can find Holly on twitter @Holly_Froggatt 

Cover Image and Title: William Dent, Female Whimsicalities, pub. James Aitken, 1793, col. etching, British Museum 1902,0825.3 (BM Satires 8390), Wikimedia Commons.

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^[1] Cindy McCreery, The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 2004), p. xii.

^[2] Aileen Ribeiro, The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750-1820 (London, 1995), p. 72.

^[3] Erin Mackie, Market à la mode: Fashion, Commodity, and Gender in the Tatler and the Spectator (Baltimore, 1997), p. 125.

^[4] Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991), p. 25.

^[5] Mostafa Abedinifard, ‘Ridicule, Gender Hegemoney, and the Disciplinary Function of Mainstream Gender Humour’, Social Semiotics 2 (2016), p. 241.

^[6] Ibid., pp. 244-45.

^[7] Mackie, Market à la mode, pp. 238-241.

On 27 May, it is exactly fifty years since the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (MDA), the UK’s primary legislation for controlling drugs, received Royal Assent.

The Act arranged drugs into a three-tier classification system – A, B and C – with controls based on the perceived relative harm of different substances. Now the legislation is at the centre of a campaign by Transform Drug Policy who are calling for an overhaul of the law which the organisation considers having represented ‘50 years of failure’. 

One of the rationales behind the MDA was to consolidate the existing patchwork of legislation that had developed in the UK since the Pharmacy Act of 1868. This was the first time Parliament recognised a risk to the public from ‘poisoning’ and the 1868 Act distinguished between substances that were ‘toxic’ (poisons) and substances that were both ‘toxic’ and ‘addictive’ (‘dangerous drugs’). 

Some of these so-called ‘drugs of addiction’ were later subject to further controls under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920 (DDA) which introduced prescriptions and criminalised unauthorised possession of opium, morphine, heroin and cocaine. 

Whilst this did represent a continuation of wartime drug control efforts it was also the result of a racist media-led panic around Chinese opium dens, as well as being a response to international moves toward uniformity on drug regulation. 

The DDA was later clarified by the Departmental Committee on Morphine and Heroin Addiction in their 1926 ‘Rolleston Report’. This formed an interpretation of the Act that became known as the ‘British System’, framing ‘drug addiction’ as a medical issue rather than a moral failing. 

By the 1950s, drugs were becoming increasingly connected in public consciousness with youth subculture and – especially in the tabloid press – black communities and the London jazz scene, stoking further moral panic. 

By 1958, the British Medical Journal observed that the regulations around drugs and poisons were already ‘rather complicated’.[1] This picture was complicated yet further by the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs which laid out an international regime of drug control, ratified in the UK in 1964 by another Dangerous Drugs Act. 

Another committee was also formed under the Chairmanship of Lord Brain, ultimately leading to (yet another) Dangerous Drugs Act in 1967 which held onto the principles of the ‘British System’ but introduced new stipulations, such as requiring doctors to apply for a licence from the Home Office for certain prescriptions. 

During the 1960s, drugs continued to be associated in popular imagination with youth, with most attention by 1967 on the ‘Counterculture’ and ‘the hippies’, and in particular their use of cannabis and LSD. That same year, Mick Jagger’s country retreat in Redlands was raided by the drugs squad in a bust that was symbolic of a broader clash of ideologies.

The arrest and harsh sentencing of Jagger, Keith Richards and their friend Robert Fraser prompted William Rees-Mogg’s famous Times editorial ‘Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?’ on 1 July 1967. This became part of a wider public debate on drug use and on 16 July a ‘Legalise Pot’ rally took place in Hyde park, followed on 24 July by a full-page advert (paid for by Paul McCartney) in the Times calling for cannabis law reform.  

Imaginatively, the Government decided to convene another committee, this time under Baroness Wootton. Its report, published at the end of 1968, argued that whilst it did not think cannabis should be legalised, it should be made distinct in law from other illegal drugs. 

Finally in 1970, Home Secretary James Callaghan introduced a new Bill that was described during its passage through Parliament as an attempt to replace ‘…the present rigid and ramshackle collection of drug Acts by a single comprehensive measure’.[2] But the Bill was as ideological as it was pragmatic, and Callaghan himself had rejected the recommendations of Wootton.

The debates in both the Commons and the Lords indicate that not only did most Members of Parliament who spoke on the subject have little understanding of the complexities of drug use, but also that the theme of the ‘permissive society’ and its supposed excesses was central.

The Bill was approved in May 1971, given Royal Assent the same month and fully implemented after two more years. The Act also established the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), tasked with keeping the drug situation in the UK under review. 

Successive governments have tended to accept the recommendations of the Council but there have been clashes, such as in 2009 when there was a total breakdown of relations when Professor David Nutt, then Chair of the Council, was sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson after Nutt had claimed – with substantial evidence – that MDMA and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol. 

For all of this, what has actually been the impact of the MDA? Well, as Simon Jenkins recently pointed out in a blog for the Guardian, 27,000 children and teenagers are now involved in ‘country lines’ drug gangs. Jenkins had previously described the MDA as a law that has done ‘less good and more harm’ than any other law on the statute book.

It is difficult to argue with this. Far from stemming recreational drug use, use of illegal drugs only increased after the MDA and became endemic in cities during the 1980s as heroin became a significant social issue. In 1979, the number of notified heroin users exceeded 1,000 for the first time. 

Over the 1980s and 1990s, drugs like MDMA were also increasingly used to enhance users’ experiences, especially in rave contexts, yet the Government line remained the same. As drug and harm reduction expert Julian Buchanan argued in 2000, ‘two decades of prevention, prohibition and punishment have had little noticeable impact upon the growing use of illegal drugs’.[3]

The MDA also deterred drug users from seeking help for fear of legal repercussions and limited the opportunities of countless young people. Last year, Adam Holland noted in the Harm Reduction Journal that in the UK, drug-related deaths were at the highest level on record and that although enormous time and money has gone into combating the illicit drugs trade, the market has not stopped growing.[4]

Writing thirty years after the MDA, Buchanan had argued that a ‘bold and radical rethink of UK drug policy’ was needed. Such a rethink never materialised. In 2019, the House of Commons Select Committee on Drug Policy concluded that ‘UK drugs policy is failing’. Now after half a century it might be time for real radical change, and the anniversary presents a great opportunity for this conversation to gain momentum. 

Hallam Roffey is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Sheffield. His research looks at the idea of ‘acceptability’ in English culture between 1970 and 1990, examining changing attitudes around sexually explicit imagery, violent media, offensive speech and blasphemy. You can find Hallam on Twitter @HallamRoffey

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[1] John Glaister and Edgar Rentoul, ‘The Control of the Sale of Poisons and Dangerous Drugs’, British Medical Journal (1958;2), p. 1525.

[2] House of Lords debate (October 1969), Hansard volume 790, cols 189-90.

[3] Julian Buchanan and L. Young, ‘The War on Drugs—A War on Drug Users’, Drugs: Education, Prevention, Policy 7:4 (2000), pp. 409-22.

[4] Adam Holland, ‘An ethical analysis of UK drug policy as an example of a criminal justice approach to drugs: a commentary on the short film Putting UK Drug Policy into Focus’, Harm Reduction Journal 17:97 (2020).

RuPaul’s Drag Race sells itself, and has been praised, as a subversive television series. RuPaul, eponymous creator of the drag contest gameshow, has stated ‘true drag will never be mainstream. Because true drag has to do with seeing that this world is an illusion’. British judge Graham Norton recently claimed ‘there’s something dangerous about drag still’. Echoing this, a contestant queen from the syndicated British Drag Race enthused that ‘Drag was always a protest, a political statement’. Drag Race, participants and producers alike insist, is inherently subversive because drag necessarily challenges the gender norms of ‘straight’ society.

Drag Race has also become a mass media phenomenon. A niche show in 2009, its 13^th series premiered this year to 1.3 million viewers. Interviewed, like any self-respecting A-list celebrity, by the Muppets and toting both a Simpsons cameo and a star on the Hollywood walk of fame, RuPaul is arguably the most famous drag queen in the world. This begs the question, can drag retain a subversive edge in mainstream media?

To consider this, it is instructive to look at one of drag’s first brushes with mass media in Britain. It was during the interwar period that drag first appeared onscreen, chiefly through cinema newsreels. Newsreels – short non-fiction topical films summarising the week’s current events – were included in almost every cinema programme until the 1960s. To leaven the news, they frequently featured variety entertainment; offshoot newsreels such as Pathetone were evencomprised entirely of filmed music hall acts.

A well-established form of music hall repertory from the nineteenth century, drag soon found its way into the newsreel. Bert Errol amazed cinemagoers by changing into high drag before their eyes in 1922. West-End comedian Douglas Byng appeared in rudimentary drag singing innuendo-laden falsetto across the 1930s. A 1937 item covered a police pantomime, with multiple shots of officers putting on makeup and dresses. In 1939, six sailors dressed as fairies sang and pranced before King-Emperor George VI during a naval inspection.

This seems remarkable at a time when populist paper John Bull ran editorials attacking London’s queer men for transvestism, castigating them as the ‘painted boy menace’.^[1] From the mid-1920s, men wearing women’s clothes and makeup became tantamount to being queer.[2] In the 1930s, it is estimated 40 percent of Britons went to the cinema once and 25 percent twice or more a week.^[3] To make drag palatable for the mainstream, newsreels had to ensure conventional manliness remained unchallenged and any association with queerness was muted.

As such, newsreels usually placed drag in establishment settings. Byng was a fixture of London’s fashionable set, always filmed in high-end venues like the Paradise Club, laughing with elites more so than at them. Likewise, Errol’s wife helped him change into drag, making sure audiences knew he was a red-blooded heterosexual, wig and high heels notwithstanding. The police officers and sailors returned to their uniforms, drag but a brief interlude (the naval fairies lasted but twenty seconds onscreen) from their ‘manly’ public service. Ensconced in marriage, elite society, and ‘masculine’ professions, queens could not truly send up the establishment when they were often performing from the heart of it.

Moreover, newsreels always framed drag as comedy. Ian Green has argued comedy allows latitude for contentious topics. Yet, because comedy resolves in laughter, it curtails earnest critique.^[4] David Sutton likewise concludes comedy as a genre is ‘the appropriate site for the inappropriate, the proper place for indecorum’.^[5] Comedy is establishment-condoned critique, safely dissipated in laughter. All the above acts, awash with puns and gags, aimed to make cinemagoers laugh, not challenge their gendered assumptions. Far from a challenge to the status quo, then, interwar drag acts could only enter mainstream media as safe entertainment bereft of queer connotations.

This is not to say drag culture could not be subversive. For queer men to wear women’s clothes and attend drag balls was certainly a brave and subversive act in the interwar period, one that provoked the British establishment.[6] The interwar life of Quentin Crisp is representative of the defiant subversion that came from wearing cosmetics.

Yet, as Jacob Bloomfield has shown, drag onstage was not inherently controversial and remained a staple of popular theatre.[7] Similarly, filmed drag acts obviated controversy in order to appeal to the broadest possible audience. In fact, looking at newsreel drag items reveals a legacy of conservatism for drag acts in the mainstream.

The producers of Drag Race would like to make their show the heir to the counterculture of drag balls and gay bars. Yet, in many respects, itis the mainstream heir to newsreel variety acts. Like newsreels, Drag Race is foremost comic entertainment, more inclined to jokes than politics. What little gender discussion there is occurs in the fleeting moments between farcical gameshow skits. The only challenges presented are to the competing queens’ dignities.

Like Pathe’s producers, RuPaul has espoused a profoundly conservative view of ‘true’ drag. Through transphobic comments, he has stressed drag as the exclusive province of gay men. Thus, much as newsreels removed any ‘controversial’ association with queerness, so Drag Race has placed strict limits on what drag represents and who can perform it.  

A look at the history of drag in newsreels reveals that to project drag through mass media is not inherently subversive. Whether in Pathé or on BBC3, being produced as mainstream entertainment severely curtails any potential for real subversion of societal norms such as gender. Former drag performer Paul O’Grady, carping in 2017 about Drag Race, contended that his drag persona Lilly Savage ‘belonged in a pub, especially a gay bar, where you could rant and rave’.  Considering drag’s relationship with popular media, perhaps it is only in niche subcultures that subversion can truly flourish.

Conner Scott is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Sheffield. His research seeks to explore the role of British newsreels in everyday life, and how they (re)presented the cinemagoing public to itself on a weekly basis between c.1919-c.1939.

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Cover image: Manchester Pride Parade 2019. A group of five drag queens representing BBC’s ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ on pink stage, Manchester, 24 August 2019. Used courtesy of Goncalo Telo for non-commercial, educational purposes. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/manchester-uk-august-24-2019-pride-1489347011

[1] Matt Houlbrook, ‘“The man with the powder puff” in Interwar London’, The Historical Journal 50.1 (2007), pp. 147-49.

[2] I use the term queer as it was the most common self-identity of interwar men who had sexual and emotional relationships with other men and avoids the anachronism of gay. See Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 (London, 2005), p. xiii.

[3] Annette Kuhn, An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory (London, 2002), p. 2.

[4] Ian Green, ‘Ealing: In the Comedy Frame’ in James Curran and Vincent Porter (eds), British Cinema History (London, 1983), p. 296.

[5] David Sutton, A Chorus of Raspberries: British Film Comedy 1929-1939 (Exeter, 2000), p. 60.

[6] See Matt Houlbrook, ‘Lady Austin’s Camp Boys: Constituting the Queer Subject in 1930s London’, Gender and History 14.1 (2002), pp. 31-61; Houlbrook, Queer London.

[7] See Jacob Bloomfield, ‘Splinters: Cross-Dressing Ex-Servicemen on the Interwar Stage’, Twentieth Century British History 30.1 (2019), pp. 1-28.