How the Irish States Efforts to Censor Publications Compare With Trends in Interwar Europe - Coursework Example

How The Irish s Efforts to Censor Publications (And its Motivations for Doing So) Compare with Trends Elsewhere in Interwar Europe University: Course: Tutor: Date: Reason for censorship In Ireland it was about morals, from a church point of view. In fact, the committee that was formed to deal with the issue and that led to the legislation of the Censorship of Publications Board (Ireland) in Ireland was made of the more than fifty percent clergy from both the protestant and the catholic side. The issue was that moralists were worried that the interference of foreign culture was polluting the local culture1. More so, there was a fear that the Irish morals were failing and that there was need to protect the public from obscene materials. As a result, the committee reviewed proposals from the public and organizations and then developed deliberated on the proposal that led to the creation of the Censorship of Publications Board (Ireland)2. In this regard, while other nations were implementing censorship for other reasons such as political issues, Ireland’s censorship was geared towards morals and this made it unique. The politically inspired censorship that had started even before then were usually with regard to governorship. Those in power were worried that if the kind of literature that reached the public was not censored, it would reach a point where the public knew too much to be governable3. This fear of a public that is too informed for it to be governed ran in almost all governments across Europe, Asia and even America. As a result, censorship became the government’s tool for managing this issue, even in Ireland before the interwar period. There were many issues that led to the government being afraid of the publicly amiable literature and information. The printing press Although the printing press may not look like a big issue today especially given that it is eventually dying off and giving way to the internet as the next big way to communicate information, during its invention in the 17th century, it revalorized the way people could get information. Like never before, it was now easy for people to not only access information, but to also speak their minds through writing books that would be published and read by millions of people4. In this regard, the printing press was like the internet of today and it caused a lot of concern among those in power. The printing press posed two types of threats to those in power. First, it could be used as a way to inform people with regard to matters of governorship and their rights5. The fear by the government that this would lead to an ungovernable population was imminent in almost any government including the authorities in Ireland before the interwar period. As a result, they tried as much as they could in order to make sure that any kind of information that reached the public was scrutinize and filtered by the government. Ireland was not different especially before the interwar period. It is good to note that Ireland had chosen to remain neutral during 1st world war6. The fear by the government that the public may revolt against its decision for Ireland to seclude itself from WWI led to not only strict censorship, but also to government propaganda in order to make the public believe that what they were hearing about the war was propaganda from the British government. The government in Ireland did not want the public to really know about war crimes such as holocaust because if they knew, they would have pressured the government to join the war on humanity grounds in order to have the many Jews who were being sauntered by Hitler in the war7. As a result, the government in Ireland, apart from implementing censorship, also spread propaganda to make the public believe that the holocaust stories they were hearing were just propaganda. To make it even easier to make the public believe that the whole holocaust issue was propaganda, they also spread propaganda like stories about the Germans using the dead bodies of Jews to make soap8. By making such wild propaganda stories, it would now be easy for the public to discredit any other propaganda issue that they could hear about the war in Germany. However, although the censorship and the use of propaganda during the First World War era in Ireland was majorly politically motivated, things changed after the first world war. By 1925 for instance, the censorship that was witnessed in Ireland was definitely very different from what was seen in the rest of Europe, including East Europe that was still having issues with governance9. In Ireland, the censorship was geared towards moral issues and the church was seen to be at the center of it. In fact the censorship can be said to have been supported by three main sides, the government was not even one of the three sources of the pressure for censorship. These three sides are as follows; The church The church in Ireland, whether it was catholic or the Protestants was very conservative at the time and it was not happy with the way things were turning out. The church believed that the Irish public needed to be salvaged from the moral decadence that was creeping into it through literature that was obscene and that was taking a place in most people’s hearts, especially the young people. They saw a need to make sure that any obscene materials were presented from being accessible to public. However, the church was aware that they did not have the authority or the resources to enforce a censorship. As a result, it sought to use the government help in implementing the censorship against certain materials. They had the belief that there was a need for the government to come up with censorship laws and to enforce them strictly in order to ensure that the public was protected from the moral decay that they (perceived) to be creeping in. Their fears however were not unfounded. The globalization of cultures at the time was now interfering with the way the culture in Ireland was being practiced. As a result, people and especially young people were losing traditional morals especially with American Jazz musicians who were flooding into Irelands and whose music was considered by the church to be explicit and obscene. According to the church this was a war against the devil who was trying to corrupt the good morals of the church. In this regard, the church and the public as well (considering that the public is a part of the church) pushed for the government to create censorship laws. It must be noted that the government had declined to come up with these censorship laws that dealt with moral issues. In fact, in 1925 right before the formation of the Censorship of Publications Board (Ireland), the minister of justice has issued a statement saying that it was not in the powers or the interest of the government to define what is moral and what is not moral for the people of Ireland. This was not regarded well by the church and also the public, a great part of which, having been very religious people, believed that the availability of explicit and obscene literature was corrupting the morals of the Irish culture. The minister of justice then had no choice but to start working towards creating these censorship laws, and almost as soon as these demands were made, the Committee on Evil Literature which comprised mostly of clergy members was formed. This was to form the basis of the censorship board and the censorship act which delved on matters of morality. Definitely, this was very unique and very different from what was being witnessed in the rest of Europe with regard to censorship. The people themselves The other issue that can be seen in the Irish censorship that separates it from the rest of Europe is the issue of the fact that the public was also part of the push for censorship. This was peculiar especially considering that any censorship is always geared (at least ultimately) towards the public. When the government censors materials produced by the publisher and producers of literature, the main target is always the public and not the producers of these materials. As had been identified earlier in this article, censorship emanates from the fear by the government that the published materials that are not supposed to each the public may reach to the public. It was therefore a unique thing to see that the public towards whom the censorship is always geared was the one pushing for the government to create censorship laws in the interwar Ireland. The censorship was also initiated by the public as opposed for it to come from the government or other quarters of power. At the time the Censorship of Publications Board (Ireland) was being founded, it was due to the pressure from the public for the government to come up with better ways to censor what was being delivered by the government though arts such as music, film and drama10. For instance, in 1925, the government through the minister of justice formed the Committee on Evil Literature which led to the censorship act. This can be seen as being a matter of parts of the public having different onion on certain matters. This is because the fact that there was enough demand for these materials that were considered good for censorship, it meant that the public was already in love with these materials. Given that, it then begs the question of why the same public could have been at the center of pushing for censorship. The explanation is in two ways. First, it can be argued that the part of the public that was pushing for censorship was probably the older and more religious people who were more conservative than the rest of the public. Secondly, it can be argued that the part of the public that sought for the creation of censorship in interwar Ireland was mainly parents who were worried that their children were being exposed to bad moral and that they wanted to protect their children. Whichever the way, it can be seen that the public was split into two with regard to their opinion on how Cultural Revolution was happening in Ireland. The cultural enthusiasts Cultural enthusiasts also played a part and tried to put some effort to prevent the [perceived] rotting of Irish culture that they thought was being contaminated by outside culture posing as modern culture. At that time in Ireland, there was many cultural enthusiasts and conservatives who were concerned that the Irish culture was being swallowed and also being corrupted by the foreign cultures that were intruding, these cultural enthusiasts were eager to make sure that they could preserve the culture in Ireland. In their opinion, preventing literature materials from reaching the public would be the most formidable way to make sure that the Irish culture was preserved and that any foreign culture was shunned and kept away from the pure Irish culture. They had especially a problem with regard to the new music that was entering the country from foreign culture. They wanted to ensure that they could retain the status quo. This xenophobia was displayed by a number of cultural enthusiasts, not necessarily from a moral point of view, but instead from a point of view of culture. So, unlike the clergy and the public that was mainly concerned with issues to do with morality, these cultural enthusiasts were mainly concerned with conserving the Irish culture as opposed to conserving morals. Nonetheless, they also formed part of the push on the government to create censorship laws that they thought would be useful in making sure that the Irish culture was conserved and that it was not interfered with by the external culture or at least it was not evolving in the wing direction. This very fact also makes the Irish censorship to be very different from the res to Europe in the interwar period. In the rest of Europe it was about governability In other places such as in Britain, the censorship was so sublime such that the government could deny any forms of censorships. According to most historians, the censorships in Britain was so well executed that people did not even realize that there was censorship, or at least they accepted it as legitimate and allowable. The government called this voluntary censorship so it argued that it did not itself impose censorship. According to him, the government used a number of tricks in order to censor materials and still manage to retain its credentials as a liberal government. The first trick as he identified is the changing of the meaning of the use of the word censor. The rest of Europe had other uses that led to censorships11. To understand this, it might be necessary to highlight the fact that Ireland, having abstained from the World War I, had different governorship issues form the rest of the European regions. The other countries, in Europe such as UK had just come from the First World War in the history of the world. And just like in any war or fight, not even the winner gets out of the war without some bruises and some broken bones. As such, despite the fact that Britain was on the winning side, this did not mean that it did not have some wounds to heal. Its economy had been affected drastically. The presence of divided opinions among the British population was something that had to be monitored and managed by the government12. The authorities were afraid that if it did not manage the situation by imposing censorship, the opinion of the public would lean on the wrong side and that there would be governorship issues. Censorship therefore became the way to help the government to overcome this issue. As a result, unlike the case in Ireland where censorship was geared towards managing moral issues, the censorship in UK was geared towards managing governorship. This was the case in most other nations that had been involved in the world war, especially Germany that had sustained massive infrastructure destruction. These governments in the rest of Europe were more concerned in making sure that the nations stuck together as one and that there were no incitements to create divisions. The unity was deemed necessary if they were to be able to rebuild their infrastructure and make sure that the nations remained as a secure nation. In UK, the censorship was done in such a smooth way that even the fiercest of government critics seemed to have accepted that this was the way forward. A good example is George Orwell who is the author of Animal Farm and who is hailed as one of the most effective critics of the government at that time. While Orwell had criticized the government on so many ways, he admitted that he did not see the government censorship in the media as any bad and hailed the government for being able to sustain a relatively good level of censorships that was necessary to keep the people together. The same case was for the rest of the European nations where the governments were desperate to sustain cohesive nations that would work together to help in rebuilding their nations. These included Germany, Italy and a host of other nations in Europe that had taken part in the 1st world war. Despite the differences in the censorships in ire as compared to the rest of Europe, there are a number of important similarities which also offer a peek into the underlying issues of any censorship even in the modern world. These are as follows; Fear of mass media Whether it is censorship in interwar Ireland or any other part of Europe, it becomes clear that the censorship was as a result of fear of the power of mass communication13. As has been discussed in this paper, mass media was still in its infancy. There were no television sets and there was no interne at the time, the main mass communication medium at the time was the printing press and this was also relatively new14. Prior to that, the government did not have to worry about these issues. With the printing press offering the public a major way to access information on a daily or regular basis through the daily newspapers and the periodicals such as magazines, this looked like a threat to the government. It was now apparent that the public was not depending only on the government as its only source of information. The printing press had an impact on the way people could not be informed about issues especially issues that had to do with governorship15. With regard to Ireland however, the mass media was seen as a risk, not necessarily with regard to governorship issues but with regard to how it could affect the morals and how it could affect not only the pace but also the direction of the moral and Cultural Revolution. In this regard, it can be said that whether it was in Ireland or the rest of Europe, the issue at the heart of the censorship was the issue of the mass media (the printing press) and how it would affect the onions of the public with regard to various issues. However, the censorship was not only geared towards the printing press alone. Other media of delivery of information towards the public were also targeted16. But it can be argued that the main issues were the mass media which the government, or the church and cultural enthusiasts in the case for Ireland regarded as a threat. The fear of the mass media and how to could affect the onions of the public was therefore a unifying factor for the censorships in both Ireland and the rest of Europe. This fear of the mass media that cannot be controlled can be seen even in the modern world where the governments are now afraid, not of the printing press like it was the case in the interwar Europe, but of the internet that now poses a great threat to them today17. Not successful The other unifying factor that can be seen between the Irish censorship and the censorship in the rest of Europe is that it was not successful. In fact, the more the censorship, the more the public was now interested in the materials that were censored. In fact, illicit publishers would publish the material that had been banned because they knew this is what would sell most. Governments would try as much as they could with regard to trying to censor the material but it did not succeed, in fact, it can also be argued that the censorship worked against the very reason it was implemented, whether it is in the rest of Europe or it is in Ireland where the bone of contention was the morals and culture as compared to the rest of Europe where the issues at the centre of the censorship were governorship issues. There was a kind of “forbidden apple” aspect to the censorship. Forbidden apple here is used to refer to the fact that people generally seem to be more interested in things that are forbidden to them. In this regard, the materials that the government shunned and censored are the ones that the public ended up being more interested in, thus leading to illicit publishers concentrating on publishing these materials and smuggling them to the public. This was ironical because the censorship that was geared towards preventing the access of these materials by the public ended up being like a marketing campaign for these materials. In fact, any author who would want a wide readership would have hoped that his material will be censored because that way, the public would be more interested in his material thus creating more market for it. Conclusion Censorship by the government is not a thing of the past. It existed long before the interwar period in Europe, during the interwar time in Europe and even after the interwar period. After the Second World War, it still is there even in the modern society. However, unlike in the past where printing press was the main culprit, in today’s world, the main culprit is the internet. Various ways have been used by governments across the world whether it is in Europe, America, Asia (especially China) and even Africa, to try and control the internet. Unfortunately, just like the printing press brought in some unprecedented issues that the government had not faced before, the internet has also brought in such unprecedented issues that are even harder to deal with for many governments18. It is also clear that censorship, whether it is the kind that was seen in interwar period in Ireland or the kind that was seen in the rest of Europe, cannot be effective in achieving the kind of things that it is intended to achieve. Humans are a curious species and trying to bar them from accessing information only creates more curiosity and this leads to them wanting to access the censored materials. It is also clear that humans are hungry for information. It is this hunger to create and also share information is what separates human from the animals19. This hunger to create and also share new information cannot be satisfied, or thwarted, not even by censorships. Bibliography Carmilly, M. (1977). 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