Revealing how conservative Christians acted as moral vigilantes from 1945-65, this study exposes Britain's most powerful vigilante body, the Public Morality Council, an appendage of the Church, and how they badgered government and local councils into censoring sexual knowledge and atheist viewpoints until their spectacular collapse from 1965-80.

Callum G. Brown is Professor of Late Modern European History at the University of Glasgow. A social historian specialising in secularisation and Humanism in nineteenth and twentieth century western society, he is the author of numerous publications including The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000 (2nd edition, 2009), Religion and the Demographic Revolution: Women and Secularisation in Canada, Ireland, UK and USA Since the 1960s (2012) and Becoming Atheist: Humanism and the Secular West (2017).

Part I. The Battle in Context: 1. Introduction; Part II. The Heyday of Christian Vigilance 1945-1965: 2. Moral vigilance; 3. Licensing at the front line: London and Blackpool; 4. Licensing in the provinces: Sheffield, Glasgow and Lewis; 5. Battle at the Beeb part I; Part III. The Sixties Crisis and its Legacy, 1965-1980: 6. The privatisation of moral vigilance; 7. The sixties liberalisation of licensing; 8. The Humanist challenge; 9. Battle at the Beeb part II; Part IV. Conclusion: 10. The birth of civilised Britain.