All Irish newspapers were subject to some censorship during the second World War. However, in one famous incident, The Irish Times managed to hoodwink the censor and produce a unique front page, writes Joe Carroll

The front page of The Irish Times appeared on VE Day, May 8th with the headline "Peace To-day in Europe" and seven pictures of the Allied leaders and generals. The Editor, R.M. Smyllie, had fooled the press censor yet again.

The late Tony Gray, who was on the staff at the time, later described that when the country edition came out, "these single column pictures appeared at random scattered throughout the front page. It was an unusual, scrappy kind of layout, but not in any way objectionable from the censor's point of view.

"However, when the final city edition appeared, Smyllie had personally re-made up the front page, arranging the single column photographs into the form of an enormous V for Victory.

"There was nothing the censor could do about it," wrote Gray in his book, Mr Smyllie, Sir." "In the final moment of victory, Smyllie had played the trump card."

Three days later, one of the strictest censorship regimes during the second World War was lifted and Smyllie was able to vent his anger at its constraints and idiocies. In an editorial entitled "Out of the Shadows" he described the censorship "as Draconian and irrational as anything that ever was devised in the fertile brain of the late Josef Goebbels . . . We have been living and speaking in conditions of unspeakable humiliation."

He revealed that alone of the Irish newspapers, The Irish Times had had to submit the entire contents in advance to the censor in Dublin Castle, including the small advertisements.

Under the rules devised by the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures, Frank Aiken, and the controllers working under him, papers could not even reveal that articles had been cut or suppressed.

Smyllie had waged a secret war with the censors for almost six years, but it was not until 50 years later that the details of his almost nightly battles were revealed in the Irish Military Archives.

The historian, Donal Ó Drisceoil, described many of the encounters in his book Censorship in Ireland 1939-1945.

Aiken, whom some critics regarded as pro-German, enjoyed tormenting Smyllie with petty constraints, but the day-to-day duels were with the Controller of Censorship, Tommy Coyne, who had been in the Royal Air Force in the first World War, and with the Chief Press Censor, Michael Knightly. Smyllie and Coyne gradually built up a wary respect for each other, but for others on the staff, Smyllie had the deepest contempt, calling them in correspondence "troglodytic myrmidons", "moronic clodhoppers" "ignorant bosthoons" and "poor cawbogues".

As The Irish Times succeeded in finding ways around the most extreme restrictions, Aiken demanded that a press censor be installed in the newspaper's office or failing that, the submission of the full contents before publication. Alec Newman, who was Smyllie's deputy, was driven to despair and wrote to Coyne complaining that: "All this pathetic and humiliating business has started again . . . I wish to God I was unmarried and then I could go to England and dig drains like so many thousands of others.

"It would be a damn sight more honourable than trying to be a journalist under this contemptible system."

Coyne had equal contempt for most journalists. When German bombs fell on the North Strand in September 1941, no journalists were allowed near the scene for 24 hours for safety reasons. Coyne wrote to Knightly that "whoever was responsible was being unnecessarily fussy. I would still think this if a damaged building had collapsed on a party of pressmen. After all, news hunting is a dangerous profession and the loss of a couple of dozen pressmen need not be too deeply deplored."

Smyllie was not against some censorship during wartime, but he found it hard to stomach the clampdown on any criticism of Germany or Japan, especially when reports of atrocities began to come in. He also objected to the narrow-mindedness of the censors when they refused to allow death notices showing that Irishmen had died fighting in the British forces. The censors on their side correctly saw that the newspaper would want to take up a "pro-British" attitude given its readership in the 1940s and Aiken ordered the censors to be as "sticky" as possible with it.

But Smyllie had a good idea of the secret co-operation with the British military and security forces which the taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, had authorised. After the war Smyllie denounced the censorship as a "sham" in an article in Foreign Affairs.

The excesses of the censorship were ludicrous at times. The newspaper submitted a photograph of a rally in College Green to recruit volunteers for the Local Security Force. The censor blacked out the background to the picture of the old parliament building because it showed the British coat of arms.

Aiken claimed that The Irish Times had included the arms deliberately to "attribute a certain complexion to the LSF."

A staff member on the paper countered that, in the interests of fairness, the censor should also have cut out the figure in the photograph giving the Nazi salute.

The censor was staggered to be told that this was a reference to Grattan with his upraised arm!

A former member of the paper's staff, John Robinson, who had joined the British navy was on the battleship, Prince of Wales, when it was sunk in the Far East. The office was told that he had survived.

This led to the announcement that: "The many friends of Mr John. A. Robinson, who was involved in a recent boating accident will be pleased to learn that he is alive and well . . . He is a particularly good swimmer and it is possible that he owes his life to this accomplishment."

The censors were not amused. Coyne wrote to Smyllie later that "Your jeu d'esprit about 'The Boating Accident' to the Prince of Wales in which your pal Robinson was involved is still going around the world to the tune of a hymn of hate against this country and is doing us a lot of harm."

He urged Smyllie "to use discretion in future" and "to temper your high spirits with a modicum of meditation on the natural and possible consequences of a jape of this kind."

Even the Pope did not escape the blue pencil of Dublin Castle. When the newspaper submitted a photograph with the caption, Pope Pius XII", the censor changed this to "The Pope". It was explained that that there was only one pope and the newspaper was asked to imagine the walls of Portadown with the slogan "To hell with Pope Pius XII".

Aiken defended the censorship in the Seanad in 1940 saying that: "By and large we operate the censorship to keep the temperature down internally, and to prevent it from rising between ourselves and other countries." As the war went on, this included preventing The Irish Times printing notices about services in "Kingstown Presbyterian Church." Aiken insisted on substituting Dún Laoghaire for Kingstown. He also banned the paper's Roll of Honour of the names of Irish persons who had joined the British forces and were killed in action

Smyllie, who found his own temperature going up when the censor would not even allow the initials SCF, for Senior Chaplain to the Forces, in a death notice of the son of a member of the newspaper staff, expostulated that this was an example of "ghoulish malignancy".

But he got his revenge in the end with the V for Victory.