Come Here To Me!

Evening Herald, October 1975.

My apologies for a relatively quiet CHTM!

I’ve spent the last few weeks traversing across Ireland with the National Treasures project. We set out to “crowd-source everyday objects that explore the history of the island of Ireland over the past 100 years”, and I feel confident in saying we did that. There will be an exhibition and a telly series in 2018, so it is all ahead of us.

Anyway, a few items that came forward around Ireland really took me by surprise. In Belfast, we had a stall from the Brand New Retro team, and Brian McMahon and Sinead Kenny brought some wonderful periodicals from the Ireland of yesteryear. One which was most unusual was Man Alive (see issue 1 here), a short-lived magazine from the 1970s aimed at Irish men which included culture, sports, politics, art and…..a bit of nudity. The magazine attracted the predictable ire of the League of Decency, whose President described the banning of the mag as “a victory for morality.” The outlawing (temporary) of the magazine was front page news to the Irish Independent:

Irish Independent, 25 October 1974.

Published for the first time in April 1974, Man Alive was too complex a publication to just dismiss it as an ‘Irish Playboy‘, or even the Playboy Of The Irish World. In its first editorial, it noted that “despite some of advance speculation it is definitely not, nor will it be, a pornographic magazine.” Man Alive insisted that it was “in fact the first general interest man’s magazine in the modern international mold. Our package is aimed at today’s increasingly sophisticated Irishman in his 20s and 30s.”

Contributors to issue one included Jim Fitzpatrick, the artist then best known for his series of posters celebrating Irish literary figures, not to mention the iconic Che Guevara poster of 1968. J.P Donleavy wrote about the response to The Ginger Man, which had infuriated Ireland’s moralists, while Alan Coran was an interesting international voice, a regular contributor to Playboy and The Times.

The magazine was produced by the Creation Group, responsible for titles as diverse as New Spotlight, Woman’s World and the Sunday World. The publication was decidedly liberal (not least beside the Sunday World!), with Issue One including a profile of Senator Mary Robinson. A British newspaper, baffled by the controversies around Man Alive, insisted that “it offers no more titillation than that endured almost daily by readers of the British popular newspapers, all of which except The Sun circulate freely and uncensored in the Republic.” To The Sunday Times, “what appears to have shocked the Irish most is the fact that local models were prepared to sell their modesty for £100 a session and appear on the pages of the magazine.”

High profile interviews included Charlton Athletic footballer Eamon Dunphy, who proclaimed that “football is run by an ignorant, amoral petite-bourgeoisie and it shows.” Philosophical as ever, Dunphy’s views on the state of the game wouldn’t have been welcome in a tabloid, but here he proclaimed:

There’s a crisis in football: the signs are everywhere – violence at the game, violence coming from the game, dull football. And of course, the thing which really worries the management, falling gates. People are beginning to realise that football is in part a con: that’s why there’s falling gates.

Profiles, sometimes critical, of leading figures in Irish life included Conor Cruise O’Brien, a man who had his own obsessions with censorship (though in his case, limited to political opponents with Section 31). There were difficult issues addressed in the magazine too; an article by Carol Shaw noted that while there organisations like The Union for Sexual Freedoms in Ireland, “it’s difficult for a movement like Gay Liberation to get off the ground in Ireland – mainly because of attitudes to sex.” An article on men’s sexual health issues  included an interview with a representative from the Irish Family Planning Association, which discussed the issues of men who attended their weekly psycho-sexual help clinics.

Clearly, there was a demand for the magazine.  Whether most people read the articles or not remains a subject of debate, but the sheer volume of sales told its own story. Issue 3 of the magazine boasted of the growth of the magazine, as “we printed 15,000 more than the first issue and it was a sell-out”. A circulation of 40,000 was claimed at the height of Man Alive‘s popularity.

Against the backdrop of the controversy, the League of Decency’s Joseph Murray was interviewed in the Irish Independent, outlining a belief that “what this country needs to stem the tide of depravity and corruption was not less censorship but more”, before singling out Christy Brown’s Down All The Days as a “very disgusting book and certainly not a book that should come from the pen of an Irish writer.”  Murray claimed that the League was heading towards boasting “eight significant branches in Dublin…ten in Cork and branches in at least 30 counties.” For someone who hated Man Alive, he could boast of owning a few copies, and showed one to the interviewing journalist:

I find that revolting and disgusting, a gross display of indecency.Those pictures are without doubt an incitement to sexual immorality. These days you cannot pick up a book or magazine or even so-called newspapers without seeing a naked or almost naked woman. This is bound to affect young and impressionable minds.

Letter from the League of Decency to the Irish Press, December 1974.

The Censorship of Publications board ruled against the magazine on the basis it was “indecent or obscene”,  meaning that after four issues it temporarily disappeared from the shelves. Returning later in the year, they were warned a second ban would mean the “permanent banning of the magazine.” Man Alive limped on, with the Summer 1975 edition noting that it included “a new short story by John McGahern” and “Gorgeous girls galore.”

By October 1975, the magazine was no more, but foreign imports remained. It was all enough to lead the Catholic Young Men’s Society to declare Dublin a “cesspool of porn… the filthy literature that litters the streets of Dublin is on par with any cesspool in Europe.”

For a look inside the magazine and more from the weird and wonderful world of Irish publications, visit Brand New Retro.