ABSTRACT
The creation of a Welfare State in the 1940s, based on an ideology of social reconciliation and extended citizenship, inevitably involved a major reassessment of the whole field of sexuality. The welfare state and the economy benefitted as immigrant populations provide sources of cheap labour in hospitals, mills and factories. The Family Welfare Association, released from its old direct charity casework, set up a Family Discussion Bureau, while the Roman Catholics established their own Marriage Advisory Council. By the 1950s there appears to have been a widespread worry that young men who went regularly with prostitutes might never learn the value of sex within marriage. The most important debate was again over the nature of homosexuality, but the Wolfenden Report showed a readiness to explore the 'psychological element' in prostitution. The Report of the Wolfenden Committee was the most influential liberal statement of the 1940s and 1950s, and is permeated with all the period's moral and social preoccupations.
