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Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 10 Apr 1929

Vol. 12 No. 1

Public Business. - Censorship of Publications Bill, 1928—Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be read a second time."

As, no doubt, the Seanad is aware, some time ago a representative Committee was set up to inquire into the desirability of having a Censorship Board established to deal with immoral books and publications. After very careful consideration that Committee brought in a Report which was duly considered, and the Bill now before you has been founded upon that Report. This Bill was one which for its Second Reading received unanimous support of the Dáil, and it was the same on the subsequent stages. Certain amendments were introduced in the Dáil, but they were amendments which dealt with machinery, not with principle; in principle the Bill stands; that is to say, the nature of the publications to which the Bill refers remains unaltered. The principal alterations which were made in the Dáil were alterations in machinery. As the Bill originally stood it was designed that a certain class of associations called recognised associations should be brought into existence and that those associations would, if they considered that there was a prima facie case for report, report books or periodicals to the Censorship Board on the ground that they were immoral. It was hoped that associations would come into existence, associations of public-spirited workers, associations which would work for what I might call the spiritual benefit of the population, very much as big charitable associations like the St. Vincent de Paul, and other associations of that nature, work for the material benefit of the poorer classes of the population.

However, the suggestion that there should be recognised associations which would do the preliminary work of investigation was thrown out by the Dáil, which also increased the number for the Board of Censors from five, which was originally suggested, to nine. My own view was that neither of these alterations made for the improvement of the Bill. I thought that recognised associations could have done very useful work indeed. They would have been in a position to see what books were doing harm in the country; they would have seen, at any rate, that there was a prima facie case before they made a report; they would have prevented frivolous reports, and at the same time they would have prevented books or periodicals which are doing harm from passing unnoticed. Again, I think that in the case of a board of this nature, which requires persons of special qualifications to carry out successfully a Bill of this kind, five members would have been rather better than the larger board which is now to be established. Possibly a board of three would be better than a board of five, but that would probably mean too much hard work falling upon the members. My own view was that a board of five would be a board which would be comparatively easy to fill with suitable persons; that it would not be too unwieldy and, on the other hand, would not be too small.

As the Bill stands now, any person who likes can send in a complaint to the Minister for Justice, who will investigate it, see if there is a prima facie case and, if so, send it to the Board of Censors for consideration. If the Board considers that the book or periodical comes within the provisions of this Bill they will recommend to the Minister for Justice that its circulation should be prohibited, and the Minister will make an order to that effect. At present the Board of Censors can also themselves, by another amendment inserted in the Dáil, institute and originate proceedings. I frankly admit that I am not very fond of that provision, because I thought it would be rather better that the Board of Censors should not be in the position both of accusers and judges, that it would have been better if other persons were to be accusers, and that they should be solely in the position of judges. A board of nine censors, as the Bill now stands, will be set up, and they will consider complaints which are sent to them.

I would like to draw the attention of the Seanad to the particular class of book and periodical the circulation of which will be prohibited under the provisions of the Bill. Books are dealt with under Section 6, subsections (1), (2) and (3), which read as follows:

(1) Whenever a complaint is duly made under this Act to the Minister to the effect that a book or a particular edition of a book is indecent or obscene or advocates the unnatural prevention of conception or the procurement of abortion or miscarriage or the use of any method, treatment or appliance for the purpose of such prevention or such procurement, the Minister may refer such complaint to the Board.

(2) The Board shall consider every complaint referred to them by the Minister under this section and for the purpose of such consideration shall examine the book or the particular edition of a book which is the subject of such complaint and on the completion of such consideration the Board shall make to the Minister their report on such complaint.

(3) When considering a complaint referred to them under this section the Board may have regard to all or any of the following matters, that is to say:—

(a) the literary, artistic, scientific or historic merit or importance of the book or the particular edition of a book which is the subject of such complaint,

(b) the language in which such book or edition is printed or produced,

(c) the nature and extent of the circulation which, in the opinion of the Board, such book or edition is intended to have.

(d) the class of reader in Saorstát Eireann which, in the opinion of the Board, may reasonably be expected to read such book or edition, and

(e) any other matter relating to such book or edition which appears to the Board to be relevant.

I would point out that it is only indecent or obscene books, or books which advocate the unnatural prevention of conception, which come under that section, and those are the only books with which the Board of Censors will deal. An indecent book is one which comes under the definition of indecent, which you will see at the end of Section 2—"the word `indecent' shall be construed as including suggestive of, or inciting to, sexual immorality or unnatural vice or likely in any other similar way to corrupt or deprave." If the Board comes to the conclusion that a book is indecent or obscene it will inform the Minister of that finding, and then the Minister can make an order which will prohibit the importation and prohibit the circulation of that book in this country. There are certain matters which the Board may, but need not of necessity, take into consideration. I think they should always take them into consideration, but they may not be final considerations when they make up their minds. Those are the various headings which I read to you a moment ago.

The object of this Bill is, of course, that books which are likely to do harm to the morality of the country should be kept out of the country. It must be recognised, of course, that a book may be harmful to one person and not harmful to another. A book which a man of forty, fifty or sixty can read without any harm might be very injurious to a boy of eighteen or nineteen, or to a girl of the same age, and in consequence it is only books which are likely to get amongst persons who would be injured by the reading of them the circulation of which we believe should be prohibited. Also the book must be in itself a really indecent book, and need not be prohibited because it has got possibly one or two objectionable passages in it. In the words used in another famous code of legislation, to be condemned it must be really intrinsically, ex professo, immoral, not merely immoral obiter, that is, immoral because there is, possibly, here and there an objectionable expression in it.

Not only does this Bill deal with books, but it also deals with periodicals, newspapers, magazines, and other productions of that nature. These are dealt with in Section 7 (1), which says:—

(1) Whenever a complaint is duly made under this Act to the Minister to the effect that the several issues of a periodical publication recently theretofore published have usually or frequently been indecent or obscene or have advocated the unnatural prevention of conception or the procurement of abortion or miscarriage or the use of any method, treatment or appliance for the purpose of such prevention or such procurement or have devoted an unduly large proportion of space to the publication of sensational matter relating to crime, the Minister may refer such complaint to the Board.

You will see, therefore, that the same principle is applied there as is applied in the case of books. A newspaper might possibly, in one particular issue, have something objectionable or immoral. It is not considered that the circulation of a newspaper should be stopped immediately simply because something may have slipped into the paper once. It is only if the general tendency of the newspaper, as shown by various editions of it, is to tend to corrupt or deprave, that the circulation of it would be stopped.

In the Dáil the Bill was, to a great extent, enlarged. This section is now a little wider than when the Bill was originally introduced. As originally introduced, the Bill was to deal with nothing except with publications which were immoral, using "immoral" in the sense sexually immoral. These words were added to the section in the Dáil: "or have devoted an unduly large proportion of space to the publication of sensational matter relating to crime." It was the considered view of the Dáil that you might have a paper within which you could not find any particular passage or any particular paragraph which by itself was objectionable or which by itself should not be published, yet if you get a paper which consists of nothing but reports of murders, blackmail cases and the various types of crime, that is very unhealthy and very bad reading for a considerable proportion of the community: that it tends to encourage crime and leads to crime. It was considered that persons who read papers which deal with practically nothing else but reports of cases such as I have referred to, papers whose main features are details of unpleasant cases relating to crime, might very easily be led into crime themselves. That is to say, if their minds are perpetually dealing with questions of crime, there is a tendency to deprave their minds and to make these people themselves criminals. Criminals, we know, are very imitative, and the method of disposing of bodies which one criminal adopts, even though unsuccessfully, we find other criminals adopting.

Section 10 deals with the punishments which are inflicted. The section says:—

It shall not be lawful for any person, otherwise than under and in accordance with a permit in writing granted to him under this section—

(a) to import into Saorstát Eireann for sale or distribution, or

(b) to sell, or expose, offer, advertise or keep for sale, or

(c) to distribute or offer or keep for distribution,

any book or any particular edition of a book, or any issue of a periodical publication the sale and distribution of which in Saorstát Eireann is for the time being prohibited by a prohibition order.

Later on in the same section the penalties are set out. I do not want to weary the Seanad by reading out the whole of these sections. Senators may notice that the reason why a permit can be granted is this: that there may be a book which is, for general circulation, a very objectionable book, but it may be a book which may be very necessary for a person who is seriously studying as a student general social questions.

It may be very necessary he should have access to certain books that are prohibited from general circulation. A person may wish to write a thesis against, let us say, the unnatural prevention of conception. In order that he might write such a book, it would be necessary for him to study the case as put by the persons in favour of it. Therefore, that provision has been inserted in order that persons who are really interested in social questions and are studying them as students may have every book of every kind available to them.

Part 3 deals with the judicial proceedings. That follows very closely upon an Act recently passed in England, and which, I understand, has been found to work very successfully. It prevents the publication in certain classes of cases of any evidence except what is contained in the judge's charge. Of course, those largely deal with divorce cases. We have not got any of them in this country, and it is very unlikely that part would be called into use very much here, because it is very unlikely that papers in this country would have details of what occurred in England and which were not published in the English Press. Section 15 is very useful. It is:—

(1) If any person being the proprietor, editor or publisher of any book or periodical publication or being a master printer engaged in the printing of such book or publication prints or publishes, or causes, procures or permits to be printed or published therein in contravention of any of the provisions of this Part of this Act, any matter, details, or particulars in relation to any judicial proceedings such person shall be guilty of an offence under this section and shall be liable on summary conviction thereof to a fine not exceeding five hundred pounds, or at the discretion of the court to imprisonment with or without hard labour for any term not exceeding six months or to both such fine and such imprisonment.

Where there is an indecent case, say a case of indecent assault, or something of that kind, a newspaper may have given very full details of what took place. That penalty would then be liable to be inflicted upon the person who has published that unpleasant report. Part 4, in Section 16, deals most specifically with this particular class of paper, that is, one

"which advocates or which might reasonably be supposed to advocate the unnatural prevention of conception or the procurement of abortion or miscarriage or any method, treatment, or appliance to be used for the purpose of such prevention or such procurement."

This section makes it an offence to sell books or periodicals of this particular class, whether they have or have not appeared in the list of censored publications, but if the bookseller can show that he had exercised all reasonable care and could not have known of the contents of the particular book he was selling he would not be liable for prosecution under this section. That is a brief summary of the provisions of this Bill, which I venture to ask the Seanad to accept. I think there can be very little doubt that at present a great deal of harm is being done by the circulation of indecent literature and by the circulation of a certain class of newspaper. That is already a great evil, it is a growing evil, and it is an evil which ought to be checked. This Bill is designed to check it, and I hope it will have the approval of the Seanad.

I beg to move the adjournment of the debate until to-morrow.

Question put and agreed to.
The Seanad adjourned at 6.40 p.m. until Thursday, 11th April.
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