Theatres Act 1968

Theatres Act 1968

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long title	An Act to abolish censorship of the theatre and to amend the law in respect of theatres and theatrical performances.
Statute book chapter	1968 c. 54
Status: Current legislation
Records of Parliamentary debate relating to the statute from Hansard, at TheyWorkForYou
Official text of the statute as amended and in force today within the United Kingdom, from the UK Statute Law Database

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 Robert 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 were in some ways a reaction against the banality of the morally conservative and formally restricted period of theatre that had preceded them.

Kenneth Tynan, who was the first man to say "fuck" on British television, had been campaigning for liberalisation for many years, while John Osborne's 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.