Typical of the permissive 1960s and 1970s

The Jimmy Savile scandal continues to be news (it was a major item on the Today programme this morning).

Was he a lone individual, uniquely bad, or was the culture of the BBC in the 1960s and 1970s infected by the prevailing social climate of permissiveness?

I think it is possible that the Labour government's policy of social permissiveness, as espoused by then Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, gave a "nudge" to sexual liberation that perhaps proceeded too far along the liberal-sexual behaviour spectrum before being reined back in the 1980s.

For instance, recently I read a novel published in 1975.

The author (whom I will not name as he is still alive and I do not want to start a Sally Bercow style witch-hunt) was for many years a BBC producer, and his work was lauded by the Guardian.

The blurb on the back of the paperback includes praise by Christopher Wordsworth from the Guardian, in which he mentions "the girl Hetty" which indicates he must have read the book and seen what became of "Hetty".

So I read the novel, all 209 pages, and most of it I found rather dreary despite the picaresque scenes and oddball characters.

And towards the end I was expecting it to just fizzle out.

Instead the author describes a gratuitous and horrific scene in which "the girl Hetty" is gang-raped by three youths while a retired teacher voyeur watches (and does nothing to intervene).

After the rape instead of going to the police "the girl Hetty" appears to be quietly satisfied by the rape and violence, and to have gained some kind of maturity from it.

She just shrugs the rape off.

This is a 1970s BBC producer who wrote this.  It was a 1970s Guardian literary journalist who reviewed and praised the book.  I am not extrapolating from one work of fiction the idea that "the left" has a problem with rape.

But the novel does promote the idea that a 17 year old girl can be raped with no consequences for the rapists.

If this is typical of the permissive 1960s and 1970s is it any wonder that Savile got the idea that everything was up for grabs?