The “clunk click for every trip” public information films presented by Jimmy Savile have been removed from the National Archives as official bodies seek to erase from history records of Britain’s most notorious child abuser.
Savile made 20 clips in the 1970s warning of the dangers of driving without seatbelts. The “clunk click” films, which were repeatedly broadcast in the 1970s, were seen as playing a key role in reducing road deaths before seatbelts were made compulsory in 1983.
One of the adverts featured in a collection of public information films issued by the National Archive in 2006. But a spokeswoman has admitted that the film was quietly removed from the National Archive’s website in 2014 after the extent of Savile’s child abuse became clear.
She said: “It was on our website as part of a selection of public information films that we curated there to mark the 60th anniversary of the Central Office of Information. We took it down in July 2014. We just felt with the current climate it wasn’t the best choice and it was perhaps ethically wrong to highlight it. So we removed it from the selection.
“We didn’t say anything about it at the time.”
Savile’s once ubiquitous public information films, which also include a series of adverts promoting train travel for British Rail, are available online. But they are absent from the British Film Institute’s online archive.
A new collection was released by the BFI on Wednesday, which includes more than 100 public information films, but none featuring Savile despite his prominence in the genre. The BFI said it omitted the films out of respect for Savile’s victims.
It said: “The BFI decided to not release a film in the new public information film collection that featured Jimmy Savile as it would have been inappropriate and disrespectful to those affected by his crimes.
“This new collection is not supposed to be a comprehensive catalogue of every film, however; rather a curated anthology. There are plenty of road safety films of this genre in the BFI Player collection and we are pleased to be able to make available less familiar items.”
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents website acknowledges the importance of the clunk click adverts in the history of road safety. But it makes no mention of the role Savile played in the films.
• This article was amended on 13 April 2016. An earlier version said the “clunk click” films had been made for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. In fact they were funded by and made for the Department for the Environment.
