Obscene Publications Acts
The Obscene Publications Acts are a series of laws in the United Kingdom aimed at regulating the distribution and possession of obscene materials. The first of these, the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, was introduced to combat the burgeoning pornography trade in London and empowered authorities to search for and destroy obscene materials without defining obscenity precisely. This initial act laid the groundwork for subsequent legislation, including the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, which replaced the earlier legal standards with a new test based on the potential corrupting effect of materials on the audience.
The 1959 Act introduced a "public good defense," allowing for the publication of works deemed obscene if they had scientific, literary, or artistic merit. Further amendments in the Obscene Publications Act of 1964 aimed to address gaps in the previous legislation and expanded the definition of what constitutes an obscene article. Over the years, these acts have sparked discussions around censorship, morality, and the balance between protecting the public and ensuring freedom of expression. Overall, the Obscene Publications Acts reflect ongoing tensions in society regarding the regulation of potentially harmful content versus the importance of artistic and literary freedom.
Obscene Publications Acts
Enacted: 1857, 1959, and 1964
Place: United Kingdom (national)
Significance: These acts were among the major statutes in Great Britain aimed at controlling pornography and obscenity
One of the earliest obscenity statutes in British law, the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 is sometimes called Lord Campbell’s Act, after the lord chief justice who proposed it in the House of Lords. Campbell’s bill aimed to curb London’s pornography trade. It did not create a new offense; instead, it gave authorities holding valid search warrants power to search private premises for obscene materials and to seize and destroy what they found. Despite some opposition to the bill because of the seemingly arbitrary power to censor that it would give to magistrates, Parliament passed the bill in 1857.
The crime of obscene libel had originally developed in English common law to restrict written materials whose religious or political content was objectionable because it was blasphemous, heretical, or seditious. Later the concept was extended to include works whose sexual content was objectionable. In 1727, for example, the Queens Bench Court convicted Edmund Curll of the common law offense of obscene libel for publishing Venus in the Cloister or the Nun in Her Smock, a book whose sexual content was considered objectionable.
The Obscene Publications Act of 1857 employed no precise definition of obscenity. In the 1868 case of Regina v. Hicklin, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn articulated a test of obscenity that remained the standard in British and American law for nearly a century. It defined as obscene any work that tended “to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences.” According to Cockburn, it was the effect of the materials—not the author’s intent—that mattered.
The Obscene Publications Act of 1959 replaced the Hicklin test with a new statutory definition of obscenity: an “article” was regarded as obscene if its overall effect tended “to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it.” In practice, this definition—like the Hicklin test—was often disregarded. Real efforts to gauge the depraving and corrupting effects of allegedly obscene articles were rarely made.
The 1959 act eliminated the old common law offense of obscene libel and created the crime of publishing an obscene article or having it for the purpose of publication for gain. It also provided for the seizure by authorities of goods suspected of being obscene. One section of the act established a “public good defense,” whereby articles otherwise considered obscene (that is, that they tended to deprave and corrupt) would not be subject to criminal prosecution or seizure if their publication could be “justified as being for the public good” because of their scientific, literary, or artistic value.
The Obscene Publications Act of 1964 sought to close several “loopholes” found in the 1959 act. It created the offense of “having an obscene article for publication for sale.” It also broadened the definition of “article” so that photographic negatives were included.