“Security leads to decadence” was the subject of a “sparkling” discussion at the Putney Literary and Debating Society on February 5, 1960.

According to the National Archives, the society, which met in a number of places - including Zeeta House, Upper Richmond Road - and included MPs, judges and doctors as members, existed from 1922 to 1983, but was suspended during the Second World War.

Opening “the proposition” was Brian Manning, CBE, who said “of course security is good”.

Income earners provided for dependents and it was incumbent on them to provide enough for themselves in old age so as not to become dependent on the state, he said.

A man’s aim should be to put more into the national pot than take out, the Wandsworth Borough News on February 12 reported him as saying, but that security was not desirable if it removed incentives and risk taking - which could lead to great achievement.

He said the spirit of adventure was more important to some people than their own wellbeing, and while British people were not of the “safety first” attitude there “might come a time when material affluence so stifled the spirit of adventure that decadence would be the result”.

Opposing, Miss Heather Bell said civilisation was not possible without a measure of security.

“If man could not foresee his future and did not know if he would reap the harvest he had sown he could not plan a civilisation,” she said, adding Elizabethan England was the first time England felt secure from the “depredations of the robber barons” - which showed economic security was essential to an ordinary life.

She said the modern “Beat” generation in America - who rejected mainstream values and experimented with drugs sex - was decadent as it “appealed to the emotions at the expense of common sense”.

The discussion was opened to the floor and the motion was found to be lost by 15 votes to 21.

After a discussion like that one wonders what society members spoke about in the pub afterwards.