The Vigilance Association
Before the beginning of the 1920s, various individuals and groups in Ireland were dissatisfied with the type of periodical and newspaper enjoying a wide readership in the country. Outstanding among these groups was the Irish Vigilance Association. It brought pressure to bear on newsagents to sign a pledge against stocking or selling objectionable newspapers, and attempted to arouse (sic) public opinion by letters to the press and the distribution of handbills at opportune times. It was organized by members of the Dominican order and the Irish Rosary was used as a vehicle for its ideas. An editorial from The Irish Rosary (February 1913) defined the association as a fight
‘against papers that fill their columns, issue after issue, with vile, filthy, immoral matter, unfit to be read by our Irish men and women’
(Woodman cited Irish Rosary Editorial comment of Feb 1913)
The Association sowed the seeds for future disparagement of the press which ultimately led to the founding of the Committee of Evil literature.
The Committee on Evil Literature 1926
Composition:
The committee was composed of three laymen and two clergymen (one Roman Catholic and one Church of Ireland) and met between February and December 1926 to hear and consider submissions from a variety of individuals, organisations and institutions, including social and religious organisations. The Committee also sought advice from representatives of the principal religious bodies in Ireland: the Church of Ireland, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the Methodist and Presbyterian synods, and the Jewish community.
Recommendations
The Committee published its report in the spring of 1927. Its findings were that existing laws were inadequate to deal with obscene material and that the state had a duty to enforce controls on the production and distribution of obscene and 'morally corrupting' literature. Some necessary administrative improvements were recommended, considerable thought was given to a legally, sustainable extension of the meanings of ‘indecent’ and ‘obscene’ and the question of the dissemination of information on birth control was reviewed with the not unexpected recommendation that it should be more rigorously prohibited.
It also recommended the establishment of a censorship board. The opinions of the committee and those who submitted evidence to it were somewhat wide. Publications that the Roman Catholic Church considered to be obscene included the newspapers News of the World, The People, Sunday Chronicle and London Mail, and the magazines Vogue, Woman's Weekly, Woman's World, Illustrated Police News and most girls' picture papers. The objection to the more populist newspapers appeared to be that their detailed reporting of murders and other violent crimes depraved the readers.
Censorship Bill 1928
Although the report was published in the spring of 1927, the Bill eventually submitted to the Oireachtas did not receive its first reading until August of the following year. In the summer of 1928, the text of the bill was published in the press and the bill was passed in 1929
Brief Consequences of the Act
Many of the major literary works of the twentieth century were banned, including the books of a number of contemporary Irish writers. This continued for over three decades. Officially censorship was backed up by unofficial censorship; writers and artists were harassed and stigmatised, while libraries and booksellers were pressurized into not stocking or removing from their shelves titles which had escaped the official net. (Carson 1990)
This remained so until the demise of the act in 1967.
Critique
Kieran Woodman (1985) argues that the Catholic Church was the main factor in endorsing censorship in 1929. However, in a recent article in the Irish Times (March 23 2003), Dr. Dermot Keogh argues that because the Free State remained predominantly Catholic and nationalist in ethos and in outlook this made the censorship almost imperative.
The government was active in the celebration of the Catholic Emancipation Centenary in 1929. Throughout the 1920s, the leaders of the State and the Catholic Church were prominent on public and state occasions.
also argues this point by saying that the Church had a strong hold over the government and this enforced censorship.
The conservative and petty-bourgeois government of the Free State enforced by law and later enshrined in the Constitution its version of Irish identity as Gaelic, Catholic, and sexually pure. Both the main political parties and the majority of the population accepted the sexual purity legislation, since it accorded with their own prejudices, and the only systematic oppression to the policy of giving Catholic moral standards the backing of the State came from Yeats and his allies.
However, it must be noted that nationalism was another factor that motivated censorship.
Outside the metropolitan area in particular, there was a growing conviction that the foreign press which had so maligned the efforts of Irishmen to achieve independence was now seeking to regain a place in the minds and moral outlook of those who, it was claimed, had preferred death to dishonour and a life of modest means to one of hedonistic naturalism.
As a young state, nationalist views were still very strong in Ireland, especially in the Government. Self sufficiency was ‘all the rage’ and there was dismay at the fact that most of the reading matter bought in the new State was written for an English public. Now that the country was self-governing it was in a position to control the flood of English gutter press by legislative action on its own account; the Irish public was no longer forced to rely on voluntary action as the only alternative to lobbying M.P’s at Westminster. Thus the authorities of the Irish Free State now came under increasing pressure from the Catholic majority to ban foreign materials.
Censorship 1939-1945
Political Motivations:
Many factors motivated the Emergency censorship. These can be grouped into one main heading: political motivation. Political censorship has been defined by Pronay (cited by O’Drisceoil 1996) as:
‘Political conditioning by negative propaganda, preventing the promotion of alternative ideas to those projected as the basis of the authority, legitimacy and policies of the government’.
Neutrality:
Britain’s declaration of war on Germany on 3 September1939 marked the beginning of what became the Second World War. In Ireland it marked the beginning of ‘the Emergency’. Amongst the measures adopted by de Valera and his Fíanna Fail (FF) government to preserve the state and its neutrality was a censorship that was more rigid and wide ranging than that imposed in most other countries, particularly other neutrals.
In order to remain neutral, any expression of opinion which might seem to favour one side over another was censored; radio newscasts were confined to reading without comment, the dispatches from each side; all weather forecasts were stopped in case they helped the planes or ships of either side in the war; the word ‘emergency’ was preferred to that of ‘war’. Ireland had to seem to be neutral at all costs and this motivated censorship. The irony was that Ireland’s policy, while presented as impeccably impartial, was in reality extremely benevolent towards the Allies, to an extent that went beyond the normal tendency of neutrals to be ‘neutral for the power that threatened them most’.(Lee, 1989:244)
De Valera’s double game
The outbreak of the war in 1939 provided a perfect opportunity for de Valera to demonstrate Irish sovereignty to a wider world. It was the:
‘means whereby the end of sovereignty might be freely expressed in the form of an independent foreign policy - a policy independent, above all, of British policy’ (Fanning 1982, cited by O’Drisceoil).
To achieve this, censorship was necessary and the Emergency Power’s Act was imposed. Very little occurred in wartime Ireland without the G2’s knowledge. Both a security and political censorship became a central player in de Valera’s ‘double game’ and covered the press, publications of all kinds, film and postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications. On the one level, it operated as an internal security mechanism in the traditional sense, giving the authorities an important informative and preventative weapon in the maintenance of political, military and economic security. This supplemented the intelligence work of G2. At the same time, censorship was central to the public presentation of impartiality. It denied belligerents ‘due cause’ cause trouble for the state or its policy; the aim was to ‘keep the temperature down’ both internally and between Ireland and its warring neighbours.
Suppression of the Internal Enemies-the I.R.A
The principal threat of the I.R.A arose from the German view of them as their ‘natural ally’ and the possibility that this could lead the British to make a pre-emptive strike, or perhaps use the excuse of the I.R.A to occupy Irish bases. The I.R.A had declared a war on Britain in 1939 and had initiated a bombing campaign on the mainland. This posed a threat to de Valera’s pledge that Ireland would not be used as a base for attacks on Britain.
The I.R.A also posed a serious threat to the ‘unity of the people’ in the state and to the much sought after position of ‘national leadership’. De Valera hoped to achieve popular and cross party support for his war time policy of neutrality. O’Drisceoil argues that the Emergency provided the impetus and the opportunity to eliminate the I.R.A from Irish politics. The Offences Against the State Act (OASA), already provided censorship powers with regard to ‘incriminating’, ‘treasonable’ and ‘seditious’ documents and the publication of matter by or on behalf of ‘an unlawful organisation’.
‘The publication of anything which could give anyone an excuse for supporting the so-called I.R.A of today can only do harm at the present time’(Coyne to O’Curry cited by O’Drisceoil, 1996)
Among the matters ‘which could give anyone an excuse’ were reports which implied that I.R.A gunmen were anything other than murderers; coverage of Easter rising commemorations; reports on hunger strikes and ‘blanket’ protests; and much more. In conjunction with repression, FF countered the threat from its Republican opponents by taking every opportunity to play the ‘green card’. Censorship played its part in this process also. Thus, while material relating to the internment and imprisonment of Republicans were published in the North, similar material relating to the same issues in the South was suppressed.
Suppression of the Catholic Church
When the war began the Irish Catholic hierarchy did not speak out as a body on what was happening in Europe and tended in general to concentrate on local pastoral concerns. However, in June 1940 when Irish neutrality seemed in greatest danger following the collapse of France, the Irish Bishops issued a statement in response to a request by the government. It endorsed neutrality, rejoiced in the unity of purpose among the political parties, and enjoined upon Irish Catholics to give full obedience to the state and to co-operate in whatever measures were proscribed ‘for the common safety’ (Fanning, 1983:122) However, after a while many statements by the bishops and Catholic hierarchy condemned the Nazis. Problems were also created by the broadcast of religious services on Radio Éireann. Following the transmission of a sermon condemning Hitler, the director of broadcasting tried to get advances scripts of sermons on the supposed proviso of ensuring that they ran on time.
In 1940 the reporting of the bishops’ Lenten pastorals were subjected to censorship for the first time in the history of the state. Bishops statements and letters were censored up to 1945. Deletions from press reports of Episcopal pronouncements, though relatively frequent, were only made after prior consultation with Aiken, Minister for Co-Ordination of Defence Measures, and only ‘for the gravest reasons’
Critique
O’Drisceoil argues that the government endorsed censorship to create ‘a state of public opinion described as “neutralisation”’ Had the censorship been less rigid, the government’s aim of neutrality may have been ruined. However, O’Drisceoil argues that it undermined the system of democratic-decision making, limiting people’s options and denying them the opportunity of making informed choices about their individual and collective situation.
It can be argued that censorship during the Emergency was used against Irish Communists and Socialists who were viewed as a threat to unity, commercial interests and public order. O’Drisceoil argues convincingly that anti- communism feeling was a major influence on censorship. Had the press been allowed to publish censor-free, new ideals may have clouded the Irish mind and recruited communist-sympathisers.
While anti-patriotism accounted for most of the anomalies in the strict application of censorship, others arose from another deep-seated feature of Irish political culture: anti-communism. (p295)
Conclusion
This essay argues that the main motivation behind the 1929 censorship was the Church while the censorship during the Emergency was driven by political motivations. Other motivations such as nationalism and anti-communism were also responsible for censorship during these two periods, though to a lesser degree. It is obvious that the Church was not a protagonist during the Emergency as the Catholic Hierarchy were themselves censored. However, there were political motivations behind both periods of censorship and it is evident that the government’s role became stronger as the church’s role diminished.
Bibliography
O’Drisceoil, D, Censorship in Ireland 1939-1945, Cork University Press, Cork, 1996
Adams, M, Censorship: The Irish Experience, University of Alabama Press, Galway, 1968
Woodman, K, Media Control in Ireland 1923-1983, Galway University Press, Galway, 1985
Lee, J.J, Ireland 1912-1985 Politics and Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989
, accessed 29 March 2003
, accessed 29 March 2003
