FEARLESS

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This exhibition in Dublin City University (DCU) is to mark the 20th anniversary of fearless journalist Mary Raftery's series States of Fear which dealt with the brutal regimes in the nation's industrial schools between the 1930s and 1970s. Mary's exposé was not the first but it was the deepest and most dramatic and the one that captured the public's imagination.

I'll take this opportunity to mention here the Jesuit, Fr. Kenneth McCabe, who drew attention in the late 1960s to conditions in the industrial schools. His "revelations", inter alia, led to the Minister for Education, Donogh O'Malley, establishing a committee to inquire into the schools which in turn produced the Kennedy Report (1970). Although originally recommended by Declan Costello to be a member of the committee, Fr McCabe's name was deleted by the Government. Fr McCabe's actions lacked the backing of the Jesuit order from which he had resigned and gone to London. You can read about him here.

Full marks to Mary for having another go at it. The victims/survivors deserved no less.

Mark O'Brien & Brian MacCraith

The exhibition, which covers the main milestones in Mary's journalistic career, was curated by Mark, for which he was praised by the various speakers, including Brian, President of DCU, with whom he's seen above.

Miriam Corcoran

Miriam is the Interim DCU Librarian. The library, apart from fulfilling the traditional library functions, houses the special collections. These include the Mary Raftery collection, donated by the family, and from which the exhibition is drawn.

Brian was clearly thrilled that Mary's family had chosen DCU to be the recipient of this important journalist's archive. DCU has been building up its school of journalism over the years and it is now the "go to" course for budding journalists. Reflecting its developing scope it is now titled the School of Communications and is highly ranked in international league tables.

Brian also announced the establishment of a new journalism industry award – The Mary Raftery Prize – which will be awarded annually to an individual or small team responsible for journalistic work produced on the island of Ireland which, in the view of the judges, combines the rigorous analysis and commitment to social justice which characterised Mary Raftery’s journalism and resulted in a significant impact on society. The first prize will be awarded in 2020 for work produced in 2019. It will be administered by DCU’s School of Communications with an independent panel of judges selecting the winner.

John Doyle

John is the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. This is the faculty which houses the School of Communications. John was full of enthusiasm for the exhibition and took the opportunity to remind the audience of the high esteem in which DCU and the Faculty are held internationally.

I would like to add my own word of praise here for Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge which has contributed enormously in recent years to modernising and expanding support for Irish language research and activities.

Sheila Ahern

Sheila worked with Mary on States of Fear and Mary is on record as saying how Sheila joining her really made a huge difference to what could be achieved.

Sheila told us that a full two years' work went into the programme. This was not only desk research, taking on board what had already been done, but extracting a vast amount of files from the Department of Education. These showed the Department had been aware of problems all along. Then Mary followed up the leads talking to survivors and others all over the country.

When the programme was made, getting it out was not easy. The powers that be in RTÉ thought it too bleak and suggested it be lightened up a bit. I kid you not. Then Mary found they'd switched it to a late night slot without telling her. She kicked up shit and it went out in prime viewing time.

Roddy Doyle

Roddy recounted a time in his youth when he lived within sight of Artane Industrial School and got the usual parental threats of the day that he'd end up there if he misbehaved.

Sheila tells me that Roddy first met Mary in UCD when she asked him to write a piece for the student magazine she edited. He said that this was the first time he had ever written anything that was published!

The exhibition reproduces Roddy's letter to Mary after the airing of States of Fear (below).

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The exhibition recalls Mary's early work when she investigated the Dublin drugs scene. It was discovering how one of the Dunnes had been abused in the industrial school that then led her on to investigate that area.

Patrick Gallagher

Meanwhile there was the Patrick Gallagher scandal. The collapse of his Merchant Banking Ltd and the wanton destruction of Molesworth Hall.

Ryan Report

States of Fear eventually led to the Ryan Report on abuse in State-run institutions.

Murphy Report

Meanwhile Mary had moved on to abuse by Catholic clerics leading to another programme, Cardinal Secrets, and to another State report, the Murphy Report. It is worth recalling here that the Vatican refused to cooperate with the Murphy Enquiry. This was true to form where it pleads diplomatic immunity as a "sovereign state" and/or that priests are not its employees, a faux moral high ground in defence of ultimate evil.

Letter from States of Fear panel

Touching, but not everyone was convinced that the airing of States of Fear was a good thing. It did give rise to a certain amount of public hysteria and it came just before the wrongful conviction of Sr Nora Wall for rape, a verdict to which it was seen to have contributed.

In a recent retrospective view, Rory Connor went so far as to label Mary a fake hero. My own view is, regrettable as the hysteria was, much of it was born of shock, and the alternative was to keep sweeping this scandal under the carpet and allow the flock to continue in their blind faith in the Church. That would have been hardly fair to the victims/survivors and would have made it more difficult to bring the real perpetrators to justice.

In addition to the wall panels, the exhibition also displays a variety of artifacts in glass cases. Some of these consist of paperwork but the one above is Mary's award for States of Fear for the best documentary in English at the Irish Film and Television Awards in 1999.

An advance look at the Mary Raftery medal to be awarded next year.

David Waddell & Brian Trench

Dave is Mary Raftery's husband and Brian is a firebrand from the era of Ireland in Transition. Brian is retired from DCU and currently President of Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST). My recollection is that in the distant past he caused offence to John Charles and Gaybo was angling for an apology on the Late Late Show. I don't think that actually materialised.

In any event, looking at this picture, it struck me to wonder if there are yet more secrets to be revealed?

Regarding the overall exhibition, it is very well presented. The panels are well laid out and there is no clutter. Text is minimal, of a decent size and well integrated with the images. Full marks to Mark and Vermillion Design.

Perhaps this can count as the lighter touch requested by RTÉ of Mary way back.

Before I finish, I think this is an appropriate place to recall the sad death recently of another fearless investigating journalist, Lyra McKee, RIP.

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RTÉ item on the exhibition
DCU item on the exhibition
Irish Times piece by Mark prior to the launch

MY EVIL LITERATURE

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No need to travel all the way to London like in the old days to get your hands on a few dirty books. All you have to do now is winkle them out of the collection held by the Dublin City Library and Archive. That is, if this latest exhibition in Pearse St. is to be believed.

Believe you me, I know whatof I speak. I have got my share of dirty books from Pagan England. I even had one of them confiscated on my re-entry at Dún Laoghaire port.

When the Irish Free State was set up and all those licentious British soldiers sent home, we embarked on the age of Celtic purity and virtue. There was a fly in the ointment though. The virtual flood of evil literature emanating from across the water was polluting the dream and it had to be stopped. So enter the censorship regime to nip this boil in the bud.

The menace was graphically illustrated on more than one occasion by Gordon Brewster in his Evening Herald cartoons, one of which is reproduced at the very beginning of the exhibition (above).

A larger artists reproduction of the same evil octopus bookends this particular panel.

Needless to say, when it comes to stamping out evil, the Church is never far behind. This video in the exhibition brings us the soothing velvet tones of Father Kelly explaining that censorship is a necessary instrument to protect the an ignorant and vulnerable lower classs while they are being slowly elevated to the level of virtue and discernment of the good Father himself.

So, what then are the dirty books on offer?

Borstal Boy? Where's the dirt in that. I must read it sometime out of curiosity. I do have an import certificate for it from the Department of Justice of the day but I never actually bothered to get a copy at the time. My application was more by way of testing the system than actually acquiring official filth.

Then, there's The Ginger Man, which I did read in the repressive 1960s when the site of a slip showing could send your pulse racing madly. I laughed my way through it. A marvelously refreshing book to keep you sane, though it equally made you sad at what you were apparently missing out on in this valley of tears.

And then, The Dark. I think John Charles's obsessive interest in masturbation by young boys was the problem here. Not only was the book banned, and I have the cert to prove it, but John McGahern lost his teaching job in Belgrove BNS as a result. This is the school that subsequently produced Gerry Ryan and Neil Jordan and where I kicked my first teacher.

Of Lee Dunne I know absolutely nothing, but if you were to judge a book by its cover ... ...

Finally, Fr. Kelly does not hog the whole video. Here is my friend and Dublin historian, Donal Fallon, curator of the exhibition, explaining to this Millennial chappie how he had the bad fortune to completely miss the frisson that was the 1950s and 1960s - gone forever.

It now takes a ration of hard-core porn to produce the same effect.

Ah well, that's progress for ya.

The exhibition runs until the end off May 2019.

REVOLTING MANSION HOUSE

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This is Mícheál Mac Donncha's mayoral crest on the wall of the Oak Room in Dublin's Mansion House. Mícheál was Lord Mayor in 2017/18 and not being of the nobility got to compose his own crest. The elements he has picked are interesting: the gold fáinne reflecting proficiency in the Irish language, the seven stars representing the seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation (and incidentally the plough), the ship evoking his Howth maritime origins, and his motto meaning equality.

Mary Clarke

The occasion was the launch of Mícheál's book, TEACH AN ARDMHÉARA agus RÉABHLÓID NA hÉIREANN - 1912-1923. The book is published by Dublin City Council and it fell to Mary, the Dublin City Archivist, to start the proceedings and introduce our host, the Lord Mayor.

Nial Ring

Nial is the current Lord Mayor, as you may have guessed from the photo, and he is both a serious man and a bit of a ticket. Never short of a story, I think I recounted elsewhere how he brought King Billy to meet the Pope.

Well, tonight he was in his element launching Mícheál's book about the house he himself was currently living in until next June, and its role during the revolutionary period.

Mícheál Mac Donncha

Mícheál then took the floor in this historic setting and recalled how he became fascinated by the Mansion House while he was living there. Its connection with the revolutionary period was already known but was usually mentioned incidentally in other contexts. So he not only decided to bring all this together in one place but he supplemented it with his own further research into history.

He revealed that, out of deference to the second national official language, and no doubt to garner a wider readership, he had included an upside down English language version at the back of the book. This also allowed him to double the number of unique photos which are different in each version. I did notice, however, that Thomas Ashe's funeral managed a double exposure, but no matter.

And Mary was in for a surprise. He had written a little bilingual poem about Horatio Nelson's head which now reposes in Mary's reading room. In gratitude for all her help, he presented her with a framed copy which included a photo of himself with the bould Admiral. The verse is dedicated to Mary.

It would be an understatement to say Mary was thrilled, as well she might be.

If you click on the image above, you'll get a just about readable version.

Ahmad Abdelrazek

In welcoming the attendance, Mícheál made particular mention of the Palestinian Ambassador, and this evoked a clearly spontaneous and heartfelt round of applause (Bibi please note).

Caoimhín Ó Caoláin

I gather Gerry Adams was there but he had gone by the time I was alerted to his presence. Caoimhín will have to do as the next best thing. I did notice Aonghus Ó Snodaigh earlier though.

Las Fallon

I made sure to get this photo so I could give it to Las afterwards. Las knows everything there is to know about the Dublin Fire Brigade, in which he served for years and on which he has published widely.

Mícheál Ó Doibhilín & Las Fallon

I was in school with Mícheál and he has since gone on to better things. He is currently the publisher of Kilmainham Tales, commissioned books which attempt to make sense of some aspects of Irish history but in an easily understandable idiom. His titles also include new scholarship on neglected topics.

Mícheál gave his name to Dublin's hottest curry but, sadly, since the Taj Mahal closed, you have to go to Cork to savour it.

James Connolly Heron and Lorcan Collins

James is a great-grandson of James Connolly. His grandmother was Ina Connolly, James Connolly’s daughter, who married Archie Heron.

Lorcan is an author and in the run up to the 1916 centenary he initiated a series of biographies of those leaders executed by the British. His latest book on the IRA guerrilla campaign during the War of Independence is on the way.

l-r: Caitríona, Liah, Deirdre, Úna, Rita

This is the Michael Mallin group. Michael was Commander in Stephen's Green in 1916 and was execcuted by the British along with the signatories.

Caitríona is a grand niece of Agnes Hickey, Michael Mallin’s wife. Liah's mother, Déirdre Warren, is a granddaughter of Bart Mallin, Michael Mallin’s brother. Úna is a granddaughter of Michael Mallin. Rita is the wife of Seán Tapley whose grandmother was Mary Mallin, sister of Michael Mallin.

This is Úna speaking at an exhibition at Emmet Hall, one of Michael Mallin's old family homes.

Myself and Dónal Donnelly

Dónal is one of the few men to have escaped from Crumlin Road Prison, long considered the Alcatraz of the North. That was in 1960. He has written a book about it and I have a copy which I am only dying to read. There are still two copies left in Easons in the Stephen's Green Shopping Centre and the distributor has only one copy left. I was tempted to buy them up to sell at a profit but thought that mightn't be fair to Dónal's fans.

We had a great chat and swopped some stories on the North. I subsequently found out that Colm Mac Séalaí had taught two of Dónal's children. Small world.

Incidentally, Caitríona in the previous picture is married to Dónal, and vice versa.

Anthony Tierney

Anthony is with Four Courts Press who are distributing the book which is published by Dublin City Council. The copies you see here are just hours off the presses. Yes, I checked and the ink is dry.

Hodges Figgis

Full marks to Hodges Figgis for a perceptive display of Mícheál's book, with every second copy upside down.

BANNED

Sitting on the hedge - the panel
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Tommy Graham, editor of History Ireland, has been organising Hedge Schools from a good while back. The term originates with informal schools set up for Catholics in penal times. Some of these provided a first class education.

I am not aware of the religious, or otherwise, convictions of the audience on this occasion (9/4/2019) in the National Library of Ireland, but they were a lively lot.

This Hedge School was about censorship and was structured around Edna O'Brien's trilogy Country Girls which was banned in Ireland in the 1960s and which is currently the choice for Dublin City Council's One City One Book initiative.

First to introduce the panel, right to left in this case.

Donal Fallon

Donal is a history gruaduate, best known as a co-author of the fabulous Dublin blog Come Here to Me!. He has recently finished a stint as a Historian in Residence at Dublin City Library and Archive.

Mary Kenny

Mary need no introduction to my generation, having been to the forefront of the Women's Liberation Movement in the 1960s. Her Wiki page tells me she is currently an "author, broadcaster, playwright and journalist" but also points out that "She has modified the radical ideas of her past, but not rejected feminist principles".

Mary, of course, was on the Contraceptive Train to Belfast when a number of prominent women went up there to buy The Pill and bring it back to town in a glare of publicity. I think I remember her saying recently that they did not succeed in getting the pills and came back with a stock of Aspirin substitutes which they passed off and which fooled the cameras, and the Customs Officers. I'm sure that story must be in print somewhere.

It reminded me of The Rose Tattoo and the non-existent frenchie, but that's another story.

Tommy Graham

Tommy is, as always, tonight's MC, or as the French would put it "animateur".

Angela Nagle

I had not come across Angela before. She has a PhD from DCU where her thesis was on 'An investigation into contemporary online anti-feminist movements' and she published a well received book in 2017 entitled Kill All Normies

You can get a flavour of her writing and current preoccupation from this piece from Atlantic in December 2017.

Niall Meehan

Niall is Head of Journalism at Griffith College.

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I'm not going to report the various contributions in detail as you can hear the full podcast here. I'll just give a flavour of the contributions below.

Tommy had Mary kick start the evening with a censorship timeline from the foundation of the state to the present day, well, the 1960s when she was most active and the traditional system began to crumble at the edges or shake at the foundations, have it as you will.

She evinced great admiration for Edna O'Brien who she felt broke the old mold. I have not read Country Girls but Mary quotes Edna describing her father as a drunken brute, so I can accept the trilogy as mold-breaking in more ways than one. Of course it was Edna O'Brien's fame, or to put it another way, access to foreign outlets, that brought the thing to a head. Many before her had the potential to crack the mold but they lacked the hammer of exposure.

Mary also mentioned the Lady Chatterley trial in 1960 which gave a wider public access to this literary work. The hard-cover version had not been banned in the UK but its price kept it out of the paws of the proletariat. When Penguin Books published an unexpurgated paperback version all hell broke loose and they were prosecuted. Fortunately the prosecution lost the case and the paperback became widely available.

Of course the publicity had a perverse effect and a work written to extol the beauty and joys of sex was then being bought for the "dirty bits". I have to admit that this was true in my case but it turned out to be a very disappointing and potentially embarrassing purchase (see below).

Mary also mentioned that very few books were banned on the initiative of the Censorship Board itself. They mostly resulted from complaints by the (predominantly Catholic) laity.

The title of this Hedge School is Censorship in Ireland - Then and Now. We've heard a lot about THEN and are in serious danger of forgetting about the NOW. It's not always called censorship, more likely trolling or no platforming but we are every bit as much in favour of censorship now as people then and this is Angela's area - anti-feminism, the rise of the alt-right and so on.

But, as Angela pointed out, there are things going on that we don't notice and take for granted. She reminds us that the Amazon monopoly is a huge censor and that we rely on one monopoly search engine online, Google. And how do Twitter and Facebook assess tweets, posts and comments as fit for posting.

Conformity is now managed by social media platforms. Censorship no longer has to mean State censorship. And I know, myself, from comments I see and complaints about others, that these screening processes can be both arbitrary and biased.

And the alternative? The chaos of the internet - very destabilising and terrifying.

Much food for thought here.

Edna O'Brien thrived because there were alternative media by then for her to get exposure and attitudes were changing.

In preparation for the session, Niall had trawled through the Irish Newspaper Archive online to gauge public reaction to Edna O'Brien at the time of the publication of Country Girls. The archive covers both national and provincial papers with the exception of the Irish Times which has its own separate archive.

Niall found that there was virtually no hostility among the public generally to Edna O'Brien.

In earlier times, people's careers were blighted by censorship & they were embittered - he mentioned Patrick Kavanagh & Flann O'Brien.

In assessing the role of the Church in relation to censorship and such matters, you need to be aware that the Church had a system of control, often exercised through the laity, while they sat back and let it take its course. This system started to break down in the 1960s.

Donal was anxious to raise the question of political censorship, particularly as we are aware of sex based censorship and often boast how it was not political. But what about Section 31 which Donal saw as in a world class of its own.

He also drew attention to how their books being censored affected different authors. For Edna O'Brien it was almost a badge of honour, while John McGahern was devasted when The Dark was banned.

Donal is curating an exhibition on censorship at Dublin City Library and Archive in Pearse Street. It is provocatively titled: Evil Literature: Banned Books in Our Collection. It runs till end-May 2019 and is well worth a visit.

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So it's onward and upward to the Q&A.

I kicked off the Q&A by reading out my certificate (above).

I also recounted my purchase of Lady Chatterley in Jersey in 1961, how it had been taken from me at Dún Laoghaire on my return and how I went through a period of utter panic when I thought I might end up the centrepiece of an Irish trial in the matter.

I referred to informal systems of censorship in the Dublin diocese and in UCD and to the book-burning of Seán Fagan's book in more recent times. However I also evoked changing times with the survival of multiple copies of the book in the public library system. The symbiosis of Church and State had surely exploded.

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You can listen to the full podcast (including the Q&A) at the bottom of this page.

My contribution is at 49:18.

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This is my third Hedge School. I have reported on my two previous attendances on Nelson's Pillar and The Somme.