Now that you mention Ireland, it occurs to me the UK plays second fiddle compared to its former colony. After achieving independence, the Irish Free State and its successor, the Republic of Ireland were dominated by right-wing, conservative, Papist and authoritarian nationalists.

Modern art and music – particularly “evil” jazz – were all banned. Our best writers had to leave the country. The writers that didn’t leave had to apply to the Department of Justice for permission to possess a copy of their own book. The video nasties of the eighties didn’t even have a chance to become a problem in Ireland.

The UK’s censorship of the Irish Republican movement paled in comparison to that of Ireland. Enforcement of Section 31 of the Broadcasting act began in the early seventies and lasted until the mid-nineties. And it was often interpreted to prevent Sinn Féin members from speaking about non-political issues. We didn’t even get to have Stephen Rae’s voice standing in for Gerry Adams.

As a young adult in the mid-nineties, censorship was still an issue: I only ever saw Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” on a very crap video in a student centre. I remember watching Robert Rodriguez’ “From Dusk Till Dawn” in a cinema in the Netherlands knowing that it was banned back at home and around the same time, I remember it being a big deal when the ban was lifted on Playboy magazine.

I have a tendency to focus on the good things in life and try not dwell on the negative. As a result, I have nostalgic memories of the nineties (formative era for music) but forget how bad things actually were in the “good old days”. A more important example I forgot to mention in my comment above was the censorship of information relating to contraception (“family planning”), abortion and anything else relating to reproductive rights.

Until the late nineties, it was illegal to provide any information about abortion services – regardless of circumstances or if the services were in other countries. Newspapers and periodicals from the UK that contained listings or advertisings for abortion services had the relevant pages removed before they could be sold by Irish newsagents. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children successfully won cases against family planning agencies (that went all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights) and the Union of Students of Ireland for providing information about clinics in the UK that provided abortion services.

The censorship you refer to happend 30-40 years ago under Thatcher [1]. Sense prevailed and these were promptly overturned.

I'm not sure what mentioning such old events brings to the conversation, any more than a discussion of modern US censorship would benefit from discussing the Satanic Panic under Reagan.

Perhaps you would care to elaborate?

[1] Many quipd that the reason she was cremated was that a burial grave would have needed a ballroom to be built above it.