Theatres Act 1968

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The Theatres Act 1968 abolished censorship of the stage in the United Kingdom.

Since 1737, scripts had been licensed for performance by the Lord Chamberlain's Office (under the Theatres Act 1843, a continuation of the Licensing Act 1737) a measure initially introduced to protect Walpole's administration from political satire. By the late 19th century the Lord Chamberlain's Office had become the arbiter of moral taste on the stage, and the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s are in some ways a reaction against the banality of the morally conservative and formally restricted period of theatre that had preceded them. Key figures in the passing of the Theatres Act were John Osborne and Kenneth Tynan, both of whom gave evidence extensively to the House of Lords on the issue. Tynan, also the first man to say "Fuck" on British television, had been campaigning for liberalisation for many years, while Osborne's radical play A Patriot for Me, brutally cut by the censor and put on at a private members' club, exposed the untenable nature of the system.