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  • Lord Decies, 1916–19:Ireland's Reluctant Press Censor?
  • Alan McCarthy (bio)

During the years 1910 to 1921 Ireland experienced a marked rise in political activism and violence, culminating in the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty that created the Irish Free State in December 1921 and granted the fledging Irish nation an unprecedented level of autonomy from the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Divisions centering on the acceptance of this treaty were shortly followed thereafter by a fratricidal civil war. Throughout this revolutionary period newspapers were to the fore in the shaping and reflection of public opinion, serving as indispensable fulcrums by which political concepts could be disseminated to the masses from the new political elite. The corollary of this role was attempts by the British administration in Ireland to steer and control the press, later resulting in extensive censorship following the Easter Rising of 1916. Similarly, the IRA emloyed intense intimidation and suppression against newspapers from 1919 onward.

The administrative citadel of the British government in Ireland at this time was Dublin Castle, an entity, as assiduously noted by Eunan O'Halpin in The Decline of Union, that found itself in a perpetual state of disorganization and incapable of reform.1 Likewise, Diarmuid Ferriter has recorded that the Castle "lurched from crisis to crisis."2 Examination of the censorship employed by the Dublin Castle administration in Ireland is largely emblematic of some of the issues facing British governance in Ireland as a whole. Consequently, it is imperative to engage with the man orchestrating the British administration's censorship in Ireland, Lord Decies. [End Page 119]

Monochromatically presented as an inconsequential bureaucrat, the aim of this research is to move away from the pervasive caricature of Decies that has been put forward by Frank Gallagher under the pseudonym of David Hogan in his memoir The Four Glorious Years. Gallagher described Decies disparagingly as a "typical Anglo-Irishman of the huntin', fishin', and shootin' tradition," who was "blessed with little subtlety" and easily duped.3 This research aims to showcase that the censorship and suppression employed by Decies under the Defence of the Realm Act, otherwise known as DORA, represented an extensive curtailment of free speech, something Decies was both acutely aware of and struggled with. Engaging with both DORA's application and the role of Decies, this research also assesses press censorship following the abolition of the office of press censor in 1919, querying if the nationalist press had actually been better served by Decies's inconsistent and often puzzling decisions as opposed to dealing with local competent military authorities.

Scholars currently regard freedom of the press as a topic of considerable importance. Nevertheless, assessment of official press censorship in Ireland during this period has been largely limited to Ian Kenneally's absorbing work The Paper Wall, Benjamin Novick's analysis of DORA between 1914 and 1915, and the research of Donal Ó Drisceoil, who contextualizes press censorship against the backdrop of gradual political radicalization in Ireland during this epochal period.4 This paper seeks to build on this work by engaging specifically with the ambiguous character of Decies via an assessment of his correspondence with contemporaries both in the British War Office and elsewhere, the largely underutilized White Files and Indexes of the National Archives of Ireland, official press-censorship reports, and the records of his interaction with provincial and regional newspapers throughout the country. These interactions highlight Decies's impact on a cross section of political opinion as opposed [End Page 120] to just the advanced nationalist press, which included titles like Arthur Griffith's Nationality and was decidedly antagonistic toward the censor. Decies's unease in his position influenced his inconsistent decision-making process and made him susceptible to pressure from the military. Moreover, the dubious nature of Decies's appointment and inexperience was representative of the malaise blighting Dublin Castle in general. Ultimately, this research serves to highlight the crucial role played by newspapers during this period while showcasing the role of a pivotal but forgotten figure from the Irish revolution.

Career Sketch

John Graham Hope de la Poer Beresford was born into a powerful Anglo-Irish Ascendancy family in 1866 and became...

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