Wolfenden Report

When the Wolfenden Report was published on 4 September 1957, its dry, academic 155 pages sparked an unexpected firestorm. The first print run of 5,000 copies sold out within hours, and Sir John Wolfenden found himself cursed by religious groups and confronting graffiti outside his home.

A Response to Government Discomfort

Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe had commissioned the committee to address two issues troubling the government: the visibility of sex workers on London’s streets and the rising arrests of gay men. Ironically, this increase stemmed from Maxwell Fyfe’s own policy of deliberate police entrapment of homosexual men.

The crackdown had ensnared high-profile figures including codebreaker Alan Turing, actor Sir John Gielgud, and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. These prosecutions embarrassed the establishment and generated extensive press coverage—exactly what the government hoped to avoid.

“You knew what could happen,” recalled Rex Batten, a gay man living in London at the time. “You knew the cases that had come up, the people who were in jail for a year, two years, three years.”

Groundbreaking Yet Flawed Recommendations

After three years of testimony from police, psychiatrists, religious leaders, and some affected gay men, the committee recommended that consensual homosexual acts between men over 21 in private should no longer be criminal. The report’s philosophy was clear: “We’re concerned primarily with public order and not with private morality,” Sir John told the BBC.

However, the recommendations weren’t pioneering—many European countries, including France, Italy, and the Netherlands, had already decriminalized homosexuality. The report also contradicted itself by condemning homosexuality as “immoral” and “psychologically destructive” while rejecting the idea that it was a mental illness.

Harsh Treatment of Sex Workers

The report’s stance on prostitution was far more punitive. Rather than decriminalisation, it recommended harsher penalties, including three months’ imprisonment for third offences. Sir John justified this by wanting to avoid making detours when walking with his teenage daughter through certain London streets. Notably, the committee never consulted any sex workers.

Public Backlash and Eventual Success

The report faced fierce opposition. The Daily Mail warned that “great nations have fallen and empires decayed because corruption became socially acceptable.” Even Maxwell Fyfe rejected the homosexuality recommendations, though the government quickly adopted the prostitution measures in the 1959 Street Offences Act.

Despite resistance, the report sparked a crucial public debate. The Homosexual Law Reform Society was formed in 1958 to campaign for change. A decade later, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act finally decriminalised consensual homosexual acts in England and Wales, though it took until 1980 for Scotland and 1982 for Northern Ireland to follow.

Legacy

While deeply flawed, the Wolfenden Report opened a conversation about equal rights and the state’s role in private behaviour. As Rex Batten reflected: “We just wanted to be left alone to live our lives.” That simple wish, eventually granted, remains the report’s most important legacy.

Links:

• ‘It provoked a fierce public debate’: The 1957 homosexuality report that divided the UK
• Beyond The Law by Charles Upchurch – Gay Book Review