Clean-up TV campaigner dies

Whitehouse: Dubbed the "The Queen of clean"

LONDON, England -- A former teacher who waged a 30-year war against TV sex and violence has died.

Mary Whitehouse, 91, died at the Abberton Manor Nursing Home in Colchester, eastern England, after a long illness, the home announced late on Friday.

She became the scourge of British broadcasters after launching a Clean Up TV Campaign in 1964, which developed into the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, with her at the helm as president until she stepped down in 1994.

Whitehouse believed violence on television led to a violent society, and that the exploitation of sex was destroying Britain's moral fibre.

To some she was a crank, to others an admirable figure fighting to hold back a tide of smut about to engulf Britain.

The British national press dubbed her "the Queen of Clean" and "Archangel of Anti-Smut" -- nicknames she endured while continuing her fight.

Whitehouse tangled repeatedly with the British Broadcasting Corporation and the UK's commercial stations.

Lord Grade, former controller of BBC1, said: "She was very good-humoured and very good-natured and she argued her case very strongly."

"She was very witty, she was a great debater, she was very courageous and she had a very sincere view but it was out of touch entirely with the real world."

Former Conservative MP Harry Greenway, a longtime Whitehouse supporter, disagreed with Grade's judgment that she was ineffectual.

"She was highly effective in highlighting what she considered wrong with television and a lot of people sat up and took notice of her. She was an honest and fearless woman who did valuable work," he said.

Whether or not Whitehouse was in touch with society at large her campaign did have its successes. In 1990, the Broadcasting Act extended to TV the legislation covering obscene publications. It also established the Broadcasting Standards Council, a watchdog suggested by Whitehouse 22 years earlier.

She also helped inspire and promote the Protection of Children Bill in 1978 after a campaign to ban sexual exploitation of children.

Whitehouse, a mother of three, always denied that her intention was to censor saying: "The very last thing I want to do is to impose my wishes and thoughts on anybody.

"I don't think that to stand up and say what one feels puts an imposition on anybody."

Funeral plans have not been announced.