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We’re looking at Tik-Tok. We may be banning Tik-Tok. Donald Trump, 2020
God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide. Rebecca West
This is Donald McGill: the king of the saucy seaside postcard. And here is Mr McGill fifty years ago in a Lincoln prison cell. He is quite possible wondering how a seventy-nine-year-old man with a wooden foot who sold more than two hundred million postcards and put a smile on the face of the nation is practically penniless and facing the rest of his life in jail. Censorship at the Seaside: The Postcards of Donald McGill, BBC 2010
It’s a scorcher, and the nation is off to the seaside ... After the war ... One industry in particular goes into overdrive: and that is the saucy seaside postcard industry ... In the summer of 1947 sixteen million saucy postcards are sent from the seaside. And rather remarkably almost all of them bear the name of just one man: Donald McGill. So just who is the one-man postcard-producing machine? ibid.
The nation’s shopkeepers are on his side. ibid.
For the first time ever the authorities decide to directly pursue the artist himself. The Director of Public Prosecutions believes that these twenty-one cards created, painted sold and distributed by Mr McGill constitute no less than obscene libel – they have the power to corrupt. ibid.
Over 2,000 Postcards Seized By Weymouth Police. News headline cited ibid.
Postcards Seized and Destroyed in Brighton. News headline cited ibid.
Man carrying gigantic stick of rock on beach: A Stick of Rock, Cock? Donald McGill saucy seaside postcard
She’s a nice girl. Doesn’t drink or smoke, and only swears when it slips out! Donald McGill saucy seaside postcard
Nurse delivering newborn baby to mother: What was the colour of the father’s hair?
Mother in bed: I don’t know. He kept his hat on. Donald McGill saucy seaside postcard
Devil: Do you know who I am?
Drunken man: Of course I do. I married your sister. Donald McGill saucy seaside postcard
What is the role of media in wartime? Is it simply to record or is it to explain, and from whose point of view? John Pilger, Frontline: The Search for Truth in Wartime, ITV 1983
[William Howard] Russell was The Times’ man of the Crimea, a war which Queen Victoria described as ‘popular beyond belief’. It certainly wasn’t that after Russell had got through with it. ibid.
Falklands: The truth of that war is still coming in. Indeed, the Crimea was the last British war before censorship. ibid.
The advent of the telegraph during the American Civil War changed almost everything. ibid.
World War I: It was the big lie. There was a deliberate state-run conspiracy to lie to the British people about the futility of the war and its carnage. ibid.
Since the present Irish war begin in 1968 several hundred major programmes on Ireland have been banned, censored, doctored and delayed ... Even during the recent ceasefire, the British government’s propaganda model was strictly adhered to. The underlying issues such as poverty and the RUC’s policing methods were ignored. John Pilger, lecture 1996, ‘The Hidden Power of the Media’
These days we are constantly told we live in an information society. On the contrary, I believe we live in a media society in which there may appear to be saturation information but in reality it’s information that is repetitive, controlled and above all safe. ibid.
The press in the United States is looked upon as the great bulwark of American freedom, and its destruction in Nauvoo was represented and looked upon as a high-handed measure, and manifests to the people a disposition on your part to suppress the liberty of speech and of the press. Thomas Ford, Illinois Governor to Joseph Smith in Carthage jail, cited Fawn M Brodie ‘No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, The Mormon Prophet’
The media is effectively censored. Andy Thomas, lecture Alternative View III, ‘The Age of Media Smugness’
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. George Bernard Shaw
Names, numbers and pictures of casualties are totally banned until the censor has announced them. Remember the chaos following the bombing of two transport ships in the Falklands when there happened by bad luck to be a camera crew in the area?
Locking journalists up in Riyadh, Bahrein and Dahran has secured the first urgent priority: to prevent any news whatever emerging from Iraq during the carpet bombing of Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and other cities.
Thus ten times the amount of explosives dropped on Hiroshima were dropped in Iraq without, according to the media, a single civilian dying.
... Many journalists have been stunned by the extent of the censorship into a sullen acceptance of it. Paul Foot, article 1991, ‘Press Censorship, The Media Response’
It makes you angry, not on your own behalf, but on behalf of the people whose voices weren’t allowed to be heard. When you had trade unionists, ordinary people, rank and file, never been on television, never been interviewed, and they’re not allowed to be heard, that’s scandalous. And you see it over and over again. I mean, we heard very little from the kids in the riots. You hear some people being inarticulate in a hood, but very few people were actually allowed to speak. Ken Loach
I would call with the strongest voice and say this is crazy. Mary Whitehouse, criticism of Hot Gossip dance group
There was a purge which consisted of a secret blue book which was circulated to Chief Constables by the Home Secretary, and it contained pages of densely packed titles of books that should be banned as obscene in this country ... 1954 when more than a 167,000 books and magazines were banned and sent to be burned in the furnaces of Scotland Yard. Alan Travis, journalist & writer on censorship
Who needs censorship when we have self-censorship? When news is being withheld, or neutralized, at best, how can we expect anything but cynicism from those who read our daily papers? Maybe the reason many aren't buying newspapers isn’t that they can get information for free on the Internet, but because they don’t believe what they read, and how can they? Jane Lyn Stahl
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence. Charles Austin Beard
The British Board of Film Censorship was set up by the industry in 1912. The letters in its archives reveal the untold stories behind cinema’s most controversial films. Timeshift: Dear Censor: The Secret Archive of the British Board of Film Classification, BBC 2011
Arthur Watkins: Chief Censor 1948-1956; John Trevelyan: Chief Censor 1958-1971; Stephen Murphy: Chief Censor 1971-1975; James Ferman: Chief Censor 1975-1999. ibid.
The Garden of Eden: 1950’s Nature film; Some Like it Cool: 1962, director Michael Winner; Women in Love: screenplay Larry Kramer; The Devils: director Ken Russell; A Clockwork Orange: 1971, director Stanley Kubrick; Straw Dogs: director Sam Peckinpah; Death Wish: director Michael Winner; Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom: 1975 director Pier Paolo Pasolini; Rambo III: 1988. ibid.
The BBFC’s letters and papers from the last twenty years remain behind closed doors. ibid.
The portrayal of evil in works of art is not the same thing as its endorsement. James Ferman BBFC, letter to DPP
Kids nowadays are becoming acclimatized to more violence than kids twenty years ago. James Ferman, interview Barry Norman
Henry Miller Faces Arrest In Case Here: A warrant for the arrest of Henry Miller was issued in Brooklyn Criminal Court yesterday because of the failure of the author of Tropic of Cancer to appear to face an obscenity charge. News article
I cannot emphasise too greatly the importance of conducting this war to the finish. Persistent, intelligent, and intensive action on a nationwide scale will be absolutely necessary for a long time to come. General Arthur Summerfield, Kefauver Senate Hearings on Obscenity, 1955
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D H Lawrence Complete and Unabridged: Make no mistake! Ask for – and be sure to get – the famous Grove Press paperback edition. Only 50c. Advertisement
The last maverick in American publishing. Obscene: Portrait of Barney Rosset & Grove Press, 2009
Hey, man, which way to Grove Press? ibid. hippy cartoon