We allowed our democracy to be perverted by church’s control freaks

WHILE at university in Texas during the mid-1960s and early 1970s there was very little news about Ireland either on television or in the newspapers.

Blowing up Nelson Pillar made the news in 1966 largely because it occurred in March shortly before St Patrick’s Day.

Television news made a fuss about the contraceptive train on which some of the Women’s Liberation Movement protested against the ban on condoms and “the pill” by going to Belfast to buy them in May 1971. The US television networks highlighted Irish customs officers fleeing from the cameras and the women bearing condoms and other contraceptives.