But to me the most awful thing about the censorship is the way it perpetuates the negative
attitude we oppose to every manifestation of intellect and scholarship. We can find no
better employment for two brilliant judges of our High Court than a task that could be
adequately performed by a policeman with a bit of intelligence.
We have a Censorship Board and a Censorship Appeals Board, but we have no such thing as a
Society for the encouragement of Irish literature, over which Mr Justice Haugh or Mr Justice
Conroy might preside with honour to himself and honour to his country.
We have a Censorship Board but we have no publishers. We have a great literature, published
by Englishmen and Americans, and, thanks to our censors, ninety-nine per cent of it is out
of print and unobtainable, so that, as I have said before, we have brought up a generation
which knows nothing of its own country, or its own literature.
Be as moral as you please, have all the censorships you think necessary, but be positive
about it. Don't merely ban books, publish them.
If we can't read the filthy works of J.D Salinger like Catcher or For Esme with Love and
Squalor is there any reason why we can't put back into print the hundreds of books by
Irish writers which are essential to our very survival as a literate people -
books like [William] Carleton's Autobiography, The Tailor and Ansty, The Irish Countryman
and Reminiscences of a Maynooth Professor?.
You have the Phyrric dances yet;
Where is the Phyrric Phalanx gone?
Of the two lessons why forget
The noblier and the manlier one?
In conclusion think of that one book, 'The Tailor and Ansty' [by Eric Cross, published in
1942] and consider its history. In this country it was banned as indecent and obscene.
Only one public man defended it - Sir John Keane, who wasn't either pale or primrose, and
in replying to him in the Senate one of our national heroes described the tailor as
'a dirty old man' and his wife as a 'moron'.
As a result that kind old couple who had offered their simple hospitality to students from
all over Ireland were boycotted. I am not exaggerating. I was there with them one night
when a branch of a tree was driven between the wall and the latch so that we were
imprisoned. Three priests appeared at their cottage one day and forced that dying old man
to go on his knees at his own hearth and burn the only copy he had of his own book.
When Mr Justice Haugh took over the Censorship Appeals Board he and his colleagues
discovered to nobody's astonishment that 'The Tailor and Ansty' was not obscene at all. But
by that time, of course, the tailor and Ansty were dead and the book out of print. It is
still out of print.
But the statue of the tailor as one of the Apostles stands over a Catholic Church in San
Francisco, and 'The Tailor and Ansty' has been taught in Harvard University by an American
anthropologist.
Must we always depend on foreigners to teach us the difference between a pornographic book
and a masterpiece? Have we no independent scholarship or criticism? What a race of humbugs we are!
I am asked to propose to you that Irish censorship is an insult to Irish intelligence.
Gentlemen of the jury, if you feel otherwise I can only say that Irish intelligence is a
contradiction in terms.
© Searc's Web Guide 1997-2007
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