Freedom of speech Published on December 5th, 1966Photograph by Jack McManus

IF YOU EVER doubt how much Ireland has changed in the past 50 years, try this quick reality-check. This photograph shows the actors Micheál MacLiammóir and TP McKenna at The Gate Theatre in Dublin in December 1966. They are not, however, on stage in a play: instead, they are addressing people who have come along to support the setting up of a Censorship Reform Society in Ireland.

The impressive line-up of speakers on that night included Bruce Arnold, Hugh Leonard, James Plunkett, Brendan Kennelly – then a junior lecturer in English at Trinity College, Dublin – and Edna O'Brien, who had come from London proudly bearing her newly published novel, Casualties of Peace, only to have it seized by customs when she disembarked at Dublin Airport on her way to the meeting.

It may have been well into the Swinging Sixties, but in Ireland any book with so much as a hint of sex was banned under the Censorship of Publications Act. The ban saw Irish readers protected from manuals on reproductive matters – and also from works of literature by such international luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Ian Fleming, Truman Capote and Marcel Proust. Meanwhile, Samuel Beckett, Patrick Kavanagh, Liam O’Flaherty, Austin Clarke and Maura Laverty were among those whose books could not be sold in their home country.

A depressing situation, to say the least, for Irish arts practitioners, many of whom were crammed into the Gate to register their desire for reform. MacLiammóir and McKenna, needless to say, don’t look depressed in the least: the photographer has captured the irepressible pair at an infectious moment of spontaneous laughter. Perhaps they’re reacting to MacLiammoir’s remark – duly reported in the news piece which accompanies the image – to the effect that if Irish children were not shocked by the Bible and by Shakespeare, would they not be shocked by the the works of Edna O’Brien?

One way or another, the censor was not amused. Ten days after this get-together, Casualties of Peacewas banned by the Censorship of Publications Board on the grounds of "indecency". Nevertheless, the meeting marked a turning of the tide against censorship, and liberalisation of the laws in 1967 led to the slow but inexorable disappearance of the practice from Irish culture.