1912-1949

• In the past, the BBFC did not have any written rules or code of practice.
• Policy evolved along practical lines, whilst seeking to reflect public attitudes. Since 2000, the BBFC has operated under a series of published Guidelines, available on the BBFC's websites. These Guidelines are flexible and stress the importance of taking into consideration the context of each individual work. They are reviewed on a regular basis, which entails a period of extensive public consultation, the most recent of which took place in 2008.
• Standards have evolved throughout the Board’s ninety seven year history. 
• The shifts in standards are linked to external changes - new legislation, developments in technology, the social and historical climate of the period, and the accompanying changes in social attitudes. This evolution must therefore be examined in the wider cultural and historical context. Here are some key stages in the Board’s early history.

 1916, T.P.O'Connor 

When T. P. O’Connor was appointed President of the BBFC, one of his first tasks was to give evidence to the Cinema Commission of Inquiry, set up by the National Council of Public Morals in 1916. He summarised the Board's Policy by listing forty-three grounds for deletion laid down for the guidance of examiners.
 
1. Indecorous, ambiguous and irreverent titles and subtitles

2. Cruelty to animals

3. The irreverent treatment of sacred subjects

4. Drunken scenes carried to excess

5. Vulgar accessories in the staging

6. The modus operandi of criminals

7. Cruelty to young infants and excessive cruelty and torture to adults, especially women

8. Unnecessary exhibition of under-clothing

9. The exhibition of profuse bleeding

10. Nude figures

11. Offensive vulgarity, and impropriety in conduct and dress

12. Indecorous dancing

13. Excessively passionate love scenes

14. Bathing scenes passing the limits of propriety

15. References to controversial politics

16. Relations of capital and labour

17. Scenes tending to disparage public characters and institutions

18. Realistic horrors of warfare

19. Scenes and incidents calculated to afford information to the enemy

20. Incidents having a tendency to disparage our Allies

21. Scenes holding up the King’s uniform to contempt or ridicule

22. Subjects dealing with India, in which British Officers are seen in an odious light, and otherwise attempting to suggest the disloyalty of British Officers, Native States or bringing into disrepute British prestige in the Empire

23. The exploitation of tragic incidents of the war

24. Gruesome murders and strangulation scenes

25. Executions

26. The effects of vitriol throwing

27. The drug habit. e.g. opium, morphia, cocaine, etc

28. Subjects dealing with White Slave traffic

29. Subjects dealing with premeditated seduction of girls

30. 'First Night' scenes

31. Scenes suggestive of immorality

32. Indelicate sexual situations

33. Situations accentuating delicate marital relations

34. Men and women in bed together

35. Illicit relationships

36. Prostitution and procuration

37. Incidents indicating the actual perpetration of criminal assaults on women

38. Scenes depicting the effect of venereal disease, inherited or acquired

39. Incidents suggestive of incestuous relations

40. Themes and references relative to 'race suicide'

41. Confinements

42. Scenes laid in disorderly houses

43. Materialization of the conventional figure of Christ

 The Years Between the Wars

•  During this period the kind of material that caused concern included horror and gangster films, as well as those that dealt with aspects of sexuality.
• Some councils were beginning to bar children from films classified 'A', even when they had been cut by the BBFC to achieve a certificate.
• For example, the London County Council and Manchester City Council banned children from Frankenstein (1931), although a sequence in which the monster drowns a small girl had already been cut. In response to such material, the advisory category 'H' (for horror) was agreed in 1932, to indicate the potential unsuitability for children of the horror theme.

 1948m Arthur Watkins

 

Arthur Watkins was appointed Secretary to the Board in 1948, under the Presidency of Sir Sidney Harris. Many film-makers sought the Board's advice on scripts before films went into production. Watkins and Harris formulated new terms of reference for the Board based on three principles:

 

• was the story, incident or dialogue likely to impair the moral standards of the public by extenuating vice or crime or depreciating moral standards?
• Was it likely to give offence to reasonably minded cinema audiences?
• What effect would it have on children?

The effect on children was of major importance since, apart from the advisory 'H' category, from which some councils already chose to bar children, there was no category that excluded children. An 'adults only' category was increasingly seen as desirable, not only to protect children, but as an extension of the freedom of film-makers to treat adult subjects in an adult fashion.