Anne Perkins paints a misleading picture of Harold Wilson when describing him as the PM who presided over great liberalising reforms that paved the way for modest decriminalisation of homosexuality and ended theatrical censorship (Labour needs to rethink Harold Wilsons legacy,10 March). These two reforms were achieved despite and not because of Wilson.
In the case of fully dismantling theatre censorship he fought a rearguard campaign in cabinet to urge continued bans on stage of portrayals of living people. On homosexual law reform, Wilson rejected domestic secretary Roy Jenkins’s proposal that the government should facilitate a private members bill. The governing motive for Wilson’s campaign against the decensoring of the stage was revealed when the lord chamberlain’s papers on theatre censorship entered the public domain. The PM objected to seeing himself impersonated on stage in Stratford East’s proposed adaptation by Richard Ingrams and John Wells of their Mrs Wilson’s Diary in Private Eye. The lord chamberlain sent the PM the farcical script and he loathed it. Most other cabinet members were unconcerned.
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Source: theguardian.com