David Webb (anti-censorship campaigner)

David Alec Webb (6 March 1931 – 30 June 2012) was a British actor and anti-censorship campaigner.

Webb was born in Luton, the second child and only son of Alec Webb, and attended Luton Grammar School from 1942 to 1950. He did his National Service from 1950 to 1952, and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1952 to 1954. In 1954 he joined the York Repertory Company, in 1955 the Bromley Repertory Company, and from 1955 to 1956 he toured in the play Love From Judy.

He moved into television, appearing in Dixon of Dock Green, Doctor Who,^[1] and several other series.^[2] His fifty-one appearances on television started in the early 1960s, and increased throughout his career; the majority were in the 1970s, and his television work was not much slowed down by his activism during the 1970s and 1980s.^[2]

In April 1976, he set up the anti-censorship pressure group, the National Campaign for the Repeal of the Obscene Publications Acts;^[3] this was amended to National Campaign for the Reform of the Obscene Publications Acts (NCROPA).

NCROPA was very active from its inception through the 1980s, and in 1983 Webb stood as the anti-censorship candidate against the incumbent Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in her Finchley constituency. He was also a member of the Campaign Against Censorship. By the late 1990s, NCROPA was more or less moribund, and had been inactive for some time before its founder's death. In December 2014, NCROPA was formally merged with the CAC.

David Webb never married. He was a secular humanist. He died at Trinity Hospice, Clapham, and was cremated at Mortlake Crematorium on 17 July 2012.

References

External links

• The David Webb Virtual Archive & Fan Site
• The NCROPA Virtual Archive
• Libertarian Alliance documents, including unpublished material by David Webb
• NCROPA archives, at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
• David Webb at the Internet Movie Database