[In the following essay, Springhall delves into Great Britain's 1950s campaign against crime and horror comics.]

'Moral panic' occurs when the official or press reaction to a deviant social or cultural phenomenon is 'out of all proportion' to the actual threat offered, implying a periodic tendency towards the identification and scape-goating of agencies whose effects are regarded by hegemonic groups as indicative of imminent social breakdown. "Unparalleled evil and barbaric killers" says judge—but did horrific video nasty trigger James's murder?' queried a tabloid headline, rekindling the 'video nasty' debate the day after the conviction of two eleven-year-old boys for the murder in February 1993 of two-year-old James Bulger in Bootle, Merseyside. 'Moral panic' surfaced again in April this year, engendered by the rantings of the tabloid press and by Home Secretary Michael Howard's climbdown in the face of cross-party Commons' support for Liberal Democrat David Alton's illiberal amendment to the Government's Criminal Justice Bill, an attempt to ban films for home viewing on video that could cause 'psychological harm' to children.

Alton's proposal and the surrounding press clamour had a precedent nearly forty years ago with the passage through Parliament of the now-forgotten Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act. In the early 1950s lurid American 'crime' and 'horror comics' reached Britain as ballast in ships crossing the Atlantic: unsold copies were also imported from Canada and Australia. Few penetrated much further than the environs of the great ports of Liverpool, Manchester, Belfast and London. Seeking out elusive copies from London's East End street markets, one anti-comic-book campaigner confessed that 'I put on an off-white accent and an old coat before I won the vendor's confidence'. Using blocks made from imported American matrices, ensuing British versions of Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror were printed in London and Leicester to be sold in small back-street newsagents.

On May 17th, 1952, Picture Post, the popular Hulton Press photo-magazine, drew widespread public attention to the British 'horror comic' trade in a provocative article ('Should US "Comics" Be Banned?') by Peter Mauger, a Communist teacher anxious to exploit anti-American feeling. 'Who can look at these comics and escape the conclusion that there is a connection between them and the increasing volume of juvenile delinquency?' queried a reader's letter. If Hulton, publishers of the irreproachable Eagle range of British comic papers, feared American competition for the juvenile market, parliamentary deputations of teachers and churchmen feared American mass culture invading Britain. All gave voice to an orchestrated groundswell of opinion demanding urgent government action.

'The problem which now faces society in the trade that has sprung up of presenting sadism, crime, lust, physical monstrosity, and horror to the young is an urgent and a grave one', thundered The Times on November 12th, 1954. 'There has been no more encouraging sign of the moral health of the country than the way in which public opinion has been roused in condemnation of the evil of "horror comics" and in determination to combat them'. Yet the relatively small sales of American 'horror comics' in comparison to home-grown British comics was openly admitted by eminent paediatrician, Dr Sam Yudkin, an active British Communist Party lobbyist and force behind the Comics Campaign Council (CCC). Yudkin, somewhat disingenuously addressing the Tory Education Committee, estimated that perhaps only 10 per cent of British school children bought 'horror comics' but 'swopping' led to their circulation being rather wider. This small circulation did not prevent such unlikely allies as the CCC, the British Communist Party, the established church, and the National Union of Teachers (NUT) from vigorously campaigning against their diminishing sales. The NUT eventually distanced itself from the CCC, made aware of the political affiliations of many of those active in the anti-comic book campaign.

Ultimately, the Government could not afford to ignore the swelling chorus of 'moral panic' amplified through the press. The new Home Secretary, Major Gwilym Lloyd George, told the Tory Cabinet, meeting in premier Winston Churchill's office at the Commons on December 6th, 1954, that a bill to outlaw 'horror comics' would be difficult to frame. Yet if the Government failed to take the initiative, 'there was a risk that legislation might be brought forward in the form of a Private Member's bill, which would involve the Government in even greater embarrassment'. To forestall such action, Lloyd George was authorised to make an early statement in the House that legislation was being considered, restricted to the type of publication which had 'aroused so much public concern in recent weeks'.

On January 27th, 1955, the Cabinet expressed general support for legislation along the lines of an Alton-like draft bill that banned the sort of comic book which, as a whole, 'would tend to incite or encourage to the commission of crimes or acts of violence or cruelty, or otherwise to corrupt, a child or young person into whose hands it might fall'. It would become an offence to sell or publish 'horror comics', punished by up to four months in prison or a fine not exceeding £100, with the option of trial by jury.

The Children's Department of the Home Office, a liberal bastion, felt that this draft bill was misconceived because it laid too much emphasis upon 'horror comics' as an incitement to juvenile delinquency, statistically declining in mid-1950s Britain. 'First, there is no evidence that the kind of publication aimed at does incite to the commission of crimes by juveniles and, second, crimes of violence, cruelty or horror … are definitely infrequent among children and young persons'. Attorney-General Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller felt that the cumulative effect of 'horror comics' on the young was the real evil, leading to 'contempt for the law and an entirely wrong view of adult society'. Furthermore, the Eisenhower administration was concerned, according to the Foreign Office, 'about the extent to which American participation in the production of horror comics is being used to foster ill-feeling between the United States and this country'. The Commander of American Forces in England even attempted to get American PX's to stop bringing 'horror comics' into the country, so desperate was the threat to basic British values.

Fuelled by a 'moral panic' given fresh impetus with the British publication of New York psychiatrist Dr Fredric Wertham's tendentious Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today's Youth, the Harmful Publications Bill was piloted through the House of Commons by Major Lloyd George and the Attorney-General in just a few months. The bill's second reading on February 22nd, 1955, was attended by a full house and the debate lasted for over six hours, with strong views being presented both for and against.

The Commons traditionally got excited whenever a question of the liberty of the subject was involved and this debate was no exception. Roy Jenkins and Michael Foot for Labour took up the cudgels in defence of freedom of expression, seeing no apparent contradiction in arguing that a more comprehensive measure should have been introduced to reform the 1857 Obscene Publications Act (eventually modernised by the 1959 'Jenkins Act'). Tory backbenchers who caught the Speaker's eye protested an ardent desire to protect children from being corrupted by the sort of reading matter so graphically exposed in the NUT's highly selective exhibition of 'horror comic' illustrations, conveniently allowed in the Palace of Westminster for two weeks. Several MP's were worried that legislation against 'horror comics' could be given a wider application than intended by the bill's framers. On the other hand, Parliament's interference in liberty of publication was justified by both Government spokesmen and Labour's shadow Home Secretary, Sir Frank Soskice, as necessary to plug gaps in existing obscenity legislation.

'It is true that the public outcry last autumn and the decision to introduce this bill have stopped the publication of "horror comics" in this country', confessed Major Lloyd George, 'but I am convinced that, if the House had not been resolute in its determination to deal with this evil, we would have been faced with a much more serious problem'. The already redundant bill passed its second reading by a unanimous majority and became law on May 6th, 1955. Six months later, only one complaint had reached the Home Secretary and of three other comic books brought to the attention of the Attorney-General none were proceeded against. The sledge-hammer of parliamentary legislation had been wielded in order to crack a very small nut indeed.

The Act was renewed without discussion in 1965 and is still on the statute books. The first, and seemingly only, prosecution under this legislation came on October 22nd, 1970, when W.L. Millers and Co. of Stepney, East London, was charged at Tower Bridge Court with importing from America 25,000 copies of Tales from the Tomb, Weird, Tales of Voodoo, Horror Tales and Witches Tales. Part early-1950s reprints, part poorly drawn originals, they had already been allowed past customs. Despite being fined only £25 with £20 costs, the firm closed down soon after.

Intellectual rigour and honesty are in short supply on all sides of the current debate about the effects of violent forms of entertainment on a young audience. There can be no easy answers based on inconclusive or contradictory evidence. Scapegoating then censoring the media offers little solution to juvenile delinquency, primarily a complex structural and pathological problem. Equally problematic is the term 'moral panic', popularised in 1972 by sociologist Stanley Cohen to represent a press outcry in the 1960s against those modern 'folk devils': rampaging teenage gangs of Mods and Rockers. One of those deflating phrases used by social scientists to condescend to excitements among the general populace, there is a danger of minimising the contemporary sense of worry and crisis by an account of its repetitious and historically relative character. People may be right to feel 'panic' about rising crime levels, for example, and hence undeserving of academic disdain.

The very fact of a recurring historical cycle might suggest not so much a persistent irrationality or media-induced 'moral panic', argues criminologist Richard Sparks, rather the expression of fundamental contradictions in relations between classes and generations. Assigning each successive 'crisis' to the inclusive category of 'moral panic' risks disregarding particular features of historical context, new technology, or social anxiety. We should, perhaps, give more emphasis to the continuity of the fear and loathing of modern technology which such fears represent and the specificity of the various constituencies, populist, conservative, and fundamentalist, from which they emerge. Violent or sensational forms of popular culture can be offered in any historical age, but the public reaction to them belongs to that age alone.