Sex, Chapel and Rock 'n' Roll Wales in the Sixties

In '60s Wales, a new generation of teenagers

broke the old chapel taboos on sex before marriage as never before.

Sunday afternoon in my father's pub in the back room,

my mum and dad were upstairs and me and her downstairs bonking.

I didn't consider getting pregnant,

that actually didn't come into my head

because we hadn't been told how you get pregnant.

If I'd got pregnant that would have been the end of everything.

I'd have had to get married because the whole attitude at the time to sex

was that it only happened within marriage, which was a complete lie.

This is the story of a very Welsh sexual revolution

driven by the younger generation.

At the beginning of the decade, many communities in Wales

still lived by the rigid chapel morals of Victorian times.

Sex education was a taboo subject.

Parents and teachers regarded the issue as the other's responsibility.

As a result, teenagers were often incredibly ignorant

about the facts of life.

Joy King grew up in Morriston.

You didn't have sex education in school in those days

and it wasn't anything you spoke about, you didn't talk about it.

Parents and families, you didn't talk about it.

Singer Heather Jones grew up in the Heath in North Cardiff.

I don't think, well, I know my parents never ever told me

anything about sex.

I thought you had to be 25 and married to have a baby.

Annie Haden went to Glanmor Grammar School in Swansea

where sex education was banned in schools throughout the '60s.

When I went to school, the subject of the reproductive organs

of a rabbit came up, as they do.

And we were all given letters to take back to our parents

to ask their permission for us to be able to be taught

about the reproductive organs of rabbits.

And when I gave the letter to my mother she said,

"Well, I would think you know all about that."

From the beginning of the decade

attitudes to sex in Britain began to change.

A relaxing of the laws of obscenity

cleared the way for the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover.

However, there was resistance in parts of Wales

where the power of chapel morals remained strong.

Writer Howard Marks grew up near Bridgend.

DH Lawrence's book, Lady Chatterley's Lover,

everyone knew it was a dirty book so of course everyone my age bought it.

Every young teenager, possibly every teenager, tried to get it.

But in Swansea you had to personally order it,

they wouldn't have it on the shelves.

Cardiganshire was banned completely.

You couldn't get it at any book shop in Cardiganshire, you know.

This is a book that, yes, it's OK, the law of the land

says it's all right, it's OK, it's literature, you can read it.

# Girl, you really got me going

# You got me so I don't know what I'm doing now... #

Pop music and fashion also became more explicitly sexual.

Yet, in many communities there remained an innocence

to the age-old ritual of boy meets girl.

# There she was just a-walking down the street

# Singing do-wah diddy, diddy, dum, diddy-do... #

At weekends, teenagers from outlying villages flocked to towns

in search of the opposite sex.

-# He looked good

-Yeah, yeah

-# He looked fine

-Yes, he did

# He looked good, he looked fine And I nearly lost mind... #

Aberdare in the Cynon Valley holds fond memories

for politician Kim Howells who grew up in Penywaun,

a couple of miles away.

As a teenager in Aberdare, we wanted to be in the Sherper's Cafe

by ten o'clock on a Saturday morning

because that's where everybody was, that's where the life was.

And I learned that, very early on,

this was also a good way of getting girlfriends.

The first girlfriend that I can remember as a kind of serious girlfriend,

I remember my parents being very shocked

at having a 16-year-old girl in our house.

I don't think there'd ever been one...

There'd hardly been any girls in the house, let alone somebody who had

this skin that was unlike a boy's,

who wore a skirt, who had legs.

You know, it was just completely different!

# Picked her up on a Friday night

# Sha-la-la-la-nee... #

Cafes gave boys and girls from the many single sex schools a chance to meet.

Heather Jones went to Cathays High School in Cardiff.

I had fallen in love with a boy from the boy's school.

He was a beautiful boy and he wrote beautiful poetry,

and we fell madly in love.

He was 15 and I was 16, and he inspired me because he wrote poetry.

He used to write poetry about me,

he'd send me these poems through the post and they were wonderful.

But the word "sex" was completely taboo.

There was no sex, there might have been a lot of kissing and cuddling but there was nothing like that.

Image was everything for fashionable '60s teenagers,

when choosing who to go out with.

# I can go any way I choose

# I can live any how, win or lose

# I can go anywhere for something new

# Anyway, anyhow, anywhere I choose. #

The Mods were slick.

And I think all the good looking blokes were the Mods.

There was one particular bloke that was so absolutely stunning

and he had a Vespa.

And he was the one I was aiming my sights on.

But what I actually ended up doing was going out with somebody

who had a Morgan.

The guy with the Morgan wasn't as good looking

but he was acceptable and the Morgan so outstripped the Vespa.

# Don't do it!

# Don't break my heart

# Please, don't do it... #

The Top Rank dance halls in Cardiff and Swansea were hugely popular.

This is where many a young teenage couple began to get physical.

# ..With a little bit of soul now...

# Before you ask some girl for her hand now

# Keep your freedom for as long as you can... #

The stocking top

was the point where boys stopped touching your leg.

That was the boundary.

Which helped both the boys and the girls, I think.

# Finding a good man, girls

# Is like finding a needle in a haystack

# What did I say, girl?

# Needle in a haystack. #

Boys usually made the running.

Miner Tyrone O'Sullivan grew up in the Cynon Valley.

For a valleys girl she worked in Cardiff in the pools,

Littlewoods pools, that made Elaine a different sort of girl.

She dressed Cardiff.

She wore Cardiff.

So when she walked through Abercwmboi you could hear

the tut-tut and the whispers, until you got to know her.

I remember, if ever I got too forceful,

I remember Elaine ripping my tie off and losing the badge off of me,

you know, because I got a bit fresh on the line up to her house.

But, yeah, I mean, it's a constant battle..

..to have sex.

That was natural.

GIRLS SCREAM

# Speed, bonnie boat

# Like a bird on the wing

# Onwards, the sailors cry... #

From the moment Tom Jones burst onto the national pop scene in 1965,

many teenage girls were even more likely to reject

the sexual restraint preached by the chapels.

The old guard had no chance of winning

with TV performances like this being piped into living rooms all over Wales.

# Loud the winds roar

# Thunderclouds rend the air... #

Pop music's central message was permissiveness

and it encouraged many a teenage couple to go all the way.

Broadcaster Owen Money took full advantage of being lead singer

in rock'n'roll band, The Bystanders.

Well, losing your virginity is something special,

especially on the side of the Brecon Beacons.

We went up the Glyn, they call it, in Merthyr.

It was a beautiful summer.

We went for a walk in the glades and all that

and started having a kiss and a touch.

And the next thing, Bob's your uncle.

It happened.

My God, it didn't last very long, I've got to be honest,

I was so overcome with emotion, it was about a minute.

Annie Haden, seen here with her mother,

was another teenager who lost her virginity.

I had sex for the first time when I was 16.

And I liked the petting bit, the petting bit was lovely,

that was great.

But the next bit wasn't so hot.

That was excruciatingly painful

and didn't leave me with a very good memory of sex.

But even though that happened, my virginity was lost,

I didn't consider getting pregnant.

That...that actually didn't come into my head.

Because we hadn't been told how you get pregnant.

WELSH HYMN SINGING

In the '60s it seemed the chapels were fighting a losing battle.

Attendances were dropping, especially amongst teenagers.

Many ministers tried to connect with the new generation

by setting up youth clubs.

But what seemed like a good idea could go horribly wrong.

Howard Marks was an active member of the chapel community in Bridgend.

They opened up a youth club in the chapel that I attended on Sundays.

We'd go there, we'd dance to rock'n'roll, we'd go outside,

smoke cigarettes together, we'd get drunk.

It was like, proper. You know.

A good enjoyable evening.

And because I was a regular chapel-goer...

..a reluctant one but, nevertheless, a regular chapel-goer,

I was made secretary, I think, or treasurer of the youth club,

so that I had the keys to it.

And it was quite difficult in those days,

if you were lucky enough to get a girlfriend,

to know where to take her.

But I thought, well, I could use the chapel.

It was terrible, I know.

But I took...

I only did it once, I think, took a girl there.

Switched on the organ, showed off a bit

by playing some rock'n'roll on the organ

and then made love to her.

And I never felt bad about it, really, I've never felt bad.

I don't like showing off with these sort of things

but I've never actually felt bad about it.

# And mothers and fathers throughout the land

# Don't criticise what you can't understand

# Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command

# Your old role is rapidly ageing

# Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand

# The times they are a-changing. #

In the hedonistic '60s, many courting couples

followed their passions through to sexual intercourse.

However, there was often scant regard for contraception.

They had little understanding of the importance of protection

against pregnancy.

# The line it is drawn, the curse, it is cast.. #

I met my lover.

We started to have a long-term relationship

and thought we were the new people.

We were the ones that were sticking two fingers up at society

and saying, it's us from now on.

We would follow the Bob Dylan songs, the Joan Baez songs,

all the songs that were going round,

and we believed it, I think, in our own small way.

But the only time you could get any help with contraception

was by trolleying down and buying some French letters.

Using the term "French letters" instead of condoms

for male contraception was common in those days.

Explicit references to sexual matters were to be avoided.

But this could also hide a great deal of ignorance.

Former boxer George Evans grew up in Merthyr Tydfil.

We used to go to a barber in them days,

and the barber would cut your hair.

And then he'd say to the chap on the chair,

"Something for the weekend, Mr Jones?"

"Oh, yes, OK, thank you."

And there'd be a packet wrapped in paper, newspaper.

"That's an extra £3."

That's the way it was then, nobody spoke about contraception.

I didn't use a condom.

I'd heard of them and I knew what they were

but I didn't use one at all, I don't think.

I was 17, she was 18.

Sunday afternoon in my father's pub in the back room,

we'd go downstairs to listen to the records.

We didn't listen to many records.

They were on but we never listened to them, we were doing other things.

I just thought I'm too young to have a baby,

probably my sperm wasn't fertile enough.

# Now all you good looking women

# Stand in line

# I can make love to you, baby... #

For most of the decade, female contraception

was all a matter of whether you were married or not.

The Family Planning Association

operated just a few specialist clinics across Wales.

And the contraception they provided was for married women only.

Margaret Lloyd, who had four children of her own,

worked at a clinic in Merthyr.

If there was a clinic, you had to be recommended to these clinics

and it was very secret.

The health visitor would recommend you, almost, for it

so everything was done to make you feel

as if you were being very naughty.

The contraceptive pill was introduced in 1961

but it only became available in clinics a few years later.

Also, the law limited GPs to prescribe the pill

just for married women.

It was not until 1967

that the pill was legally made available to single women.

Yet in Wales, the reality was that the change in law

made little difference to many unmarried teenage girls.

'The pill transformed women's lives.

'But single women coming into the surgery, well,'

it's admitting that they were having sex, you know,

and it's very hard...

When a procedure is new it's very hard for people to overcome

the prejudices.

It's only when it's acceptable that everyone says,

"Oh, I'm on the pill."

Before that, you wouldn't tell anybody.

I wasn't married, and your doctor knew you,

he knew your family and straightaway he would probably

have mentioned it to your family upon passing anyway.

So you were more or less admitting

that you were having sex outside of marriage.

# We skipped the light fandango... #

We didn't consider contraception, didn't enter our minds

because contraception wasn't readily available for single women.

Single women weren't encouraged to protect themselves.

In fact, single women who were having sex were considered as tarts.

But the boys who were having sex that weren't married

were considered a bit of a boy.

For single girls in a sexual relationship without contraception

it was often only a matter of time before she fell pregnant.

There would then be family pressure to avoid the disgrace

of being an unmarried mother.

In over two thirds of all marriages of girls under 20 in '60s Wales,

the bride was pregnant.

Shotgun weddings could be tense affairs.

# People were standing

# All around

# At a shotgun wedding here in this town... #

I think everybody was terrified of being made pregnant

or making someone pregnant.

Because that would have put the kibosh on everything.

You'd have to get married, and some of my friends did,

even at the age of 16 or 17.

And my mother would always tell us boys,

"Now, remember now, just one minute of pleasure

"and you've got misery for the rest of your life."

# Ah-a

# Oh, yeah

# Somebody please, somebody... #

Actor Sharon Morgan grew up in Carmarthen.

I wanted to go on the pill because if I'd got pregnant

that would have been the end of everything.

I would have had to get married

because the whole attitude at the time to sex was that it only

happened within marriage, which was a complete lie and always had been.

There was this tremendous respectability about that

and it would have been the end of my education,

the end of independence, earning my own living, having a career,

whatever that was going to be.

# I want to spend my life with a girl like you

# Ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba... #

Now, the thought of getting married was far from my mind,

I was never going to get married.

And we'd been going together for four years

and after four years I finally said it's OK, it'll be OK.

I can't get pregnant because I'm only four foot ten

and I'm too young, and you have to be married to get pregnant.

And I really believed that.

And I would say we had sex twice and the second time I got pregnant.

Mother knew, I think.

I had to tell my father and he sat in the chair

and he just burst into tears.

I still feel awful about that today, you know.

I'll never forget that horrible feeling of, I feel so ashamed,

I'm so ashamed that I'm pregnant, and I tried to hide it.

The first thing we did, we arranged the marriage.

We got married within four weeks, I think, of knowing.

I held my stomach in although I didn't really show at that stage.

But we wanted to please our parents,

we didn't want them to think we didn't love each other.

And I think, you know, we did love each other

but we didn't want to upset them.

So we thought if we got married and straightened it all out

and smoothed it all over, it would all be OK.

BABY CRIES

During the '60s, the annual number of illegitimate births in Wales doubled.

Some families secretly arranged for their daughter's baby to be adopted.

These cruel, forced adoptions reached an all-time high at this time.

So in communities where sex education was banned, like Swansea,

much depended on parents to teach their teenage sons and daughters

about sexual relationships.

Few did.

At the age of 18, Annie Haden had a steady boyfriend,

although she still lived with her parents.

One day I made an appointment to go down to see the doctor

because I was putting a lot of weight on, my bust was hurting,

everything, and something was going wrong.

So I went down to the doctor, and she asked me

when I'd had my last period, so I roughly told her

because I couldn't remember.

And when she examined me she told me that I was in advanced pregnancy.

Which was a little bit of a shock because I hadn't thought,

I hadn't even considered being pregnant.

We didn't want to get married, we were the new people,

we were the new generation, we didn't need marriage.

But when my parents found out about the baby

and as soon as they found out,

both sides decided we had to get married.

Steven and I had to get married immediately.

I was angry at the time because they were wrong.

They failed, those parents.

They failed me, they failed my husband, they failed my daughter.

They failed because they hadn't told me about sexual education

and things like that.

The mindset of that generation was still,

if you're going to have sex, don't get caught.

Well, I got caught.

Like a lot of girls my era got caught because we weren't prepared

and weren't encouraged to protect ourselves.

Although thousands of pregnancies resulted in shotgun weddings or adoptions,

there were those that ended in termination.

This usually meant a dangerous self-administered or backstreet abortion

until 1967 when abortion was finally legalised.

Owen Money had a steady girlfriend in his hometown of Merthyr.

We made love and you weren't careful, you know,

you didn't realise what the consequences were.

You hadn't been told in the proper way then.

You are like that when you're very young,

you don't care, it's not going to happen to me.

But it does, it does happen and it did happen to me.

When she told me she was pregnant she said,

"My mother won't let me have the baby and we're going to go and see about it."

It was never discussed with me at all

and my mum and dad never even knew about it.

Never, nobody ever knew.

Thing was, we did it again and about a year later the same bloody thing happened.

However, in the late '60s, the contraceptive pill

gave more and more unmarried girls the freedom

to become sexually active without the risk of pregnancy.

But even young women starting out in student life

could find it no easy matter going on the pill.

Sharon Morgan went to Cardiff University.

My grandmother, who was a very puritanical religious maniac said,

"Oh, I worry about Sharon being away there at university."

And my mother said, this was reported to me,

"Oh, Sharon's sensible enough, she'll go on the pill!"

Which I thought, "Oh! She didn't say to me, 'Go on the pill.'"

And I thought... It wasn't something that we'd discussed.

But that is what I decided to do.

But I would never have gone to my GP at home

because that would have been absolutely totally embarrassing.

So I was sharing a house with other students

and we had a GP and I went to see him.

You're supposed to be married and have a ring etc.

He was great but I nearly fainted, it was just...

The pressure was just so awful, asking for this in the first place.

Sort of saying to somebody, I'm having sex, was just, like, huge.

But it felt like it would have been a complete trap

to get married and have children at that stage.

We were the first generation, maybe, compared to our mothers,

who'd had these opportunities to be whatever we wanted to be

and the pill gave us that opportunity.

# Then I saw her face

# Now I'm a believer... #

Nevertheless, marriage remained at the heart of society

and young people's expectations.

There were more marriages recorded in '60s Wales than ever before.

And chapel morals in many communities remained strong.

Especially towards divorce.

Joy King lived with her parents and grandparents in Morriston.

I was 17 and by now I had met somebody.

And he was ten years my senior.

He'd been previously married.

Now this was terrible for this Welsh-speaking, Christian family

to have a granddaughter/daughter who was going out with a young man

who'd been married previously.

Divorce still had a terrible stigma

and there was a lot of taboo about it.

People would gossip, they would talk, obviously.

But I was young, I was in love, it was my life at the end of the day,

so I decided I was going to leave.

I didn't tell them I was getting married

because there was no contact between us at all.

So we just had a few friends and I was very happy.

I did what I wanted to do, I did what my heart told me to do.

I followed my heart.

Such opposing forces of chapel and sex

made single teenage girls vulnerable to the risk of pregnancy.

But despite this, the very Welsh sexual revolution

also brought the first few steps in women's liberation.

Next time:

We see how a rebellious new generation

tried to create a brave new world in Wales.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd