The Irish Times view on Ireland’s history of censorship: dealing with filth

A century ago, the Irish Free State’s Committee on Evil Literature heard evidence from various individuals and groups, having been established by then minister for justice Kevin O’Higgins to consider “whether it is necessary or advisable in the interest of the public morality to extend the existing powers of the state to prohibit or restrict the sale and circulation of printed matter.” In their submission to the committee the Christian Brothers urged the banning of “gilded filth… papers and books which urge people to the most monstrous crimes.”

The committee recommended the establishment of a censorship of publications board, which was legislated for in 1929. There was nothing uniquely Irish about the moral panics of that decade. Australia, for example, then had one of the strictest censorship systems in the world, and there was concern in various parts of Europe about the publication of birth control literature.

But the Irish censorship regime became unusually severe and long lasting. Its reach will now be fully appreciated due to the commendable decision by the Department of Justice to move its historic collection of about 12,000 banned titles from the department to the National Archives. The plan is to make them accessible to the public.

Some writers in the 1920s reacted with hostility to the new censorship regime. Poet WB Yeats declared in 1928 “Our zealot’s idea of establishing the Kingdom of God upon Earth is to make Ireland an island of moral cowards”.

It led to the banning of books by gifted and serious writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Seán O’Faoláin, Frank O’Connor, Ernest Hemingway, Edna O’Brien, Iris Mudoch and John McGahern.

The 1929 censorship legislation was framed around considerations of “indecency” and “obscenity”. It caused considerable hurt to writers and by the mid 1960s generated ridicule with the banning of John McGahern’s novel The Dark, after which the law was liberalised. The time capsule of banned books opens a fascinating window on the impulses that drove some of our State builders and their selective definitions of purity.