New TG4 doc explores book banned 100 years ago for being "too dangerous"

"Pogrom Bhéal Feirste," a new documentary airing on TG4 on Dec.4, tells the story of a book written by a Catholic priest in 1922 that was deemed "too dangerous" to publish.

The book, which concerned the situation of Nationalists in Belfast, was banned 100 years ago and is now explored in the new Irish language documentary from Clean Slate Television.

After violence broke out in Belfast in 1920, a Catholic priest named Fr John Hassan, who was based in St Mary’s in Chapel Lane, began to collect accounts of what he witnessed and was reported to him.

By 1922, the Southern Government was planning to publish Father Hassan’s report in a book, "Facts and Figures of the Belfast Pogrom 1920-1922," under the pen name G. B. Kenna. Yet not long before it was published, the Civil War broke out, and the Free State Government adopted a peace policy towards the Northern Government.

The book was ordered to be pulped. Only 18 copies of the book survived. It was almost lost forever until one of the surviving copies was found in the 1990s.

The most dangerous book in Ireland

The book was finally publish the book in Belfast in 1997.

This program explores the violence in Belfast at the time of partition, the political backdrop in which these events occurred, and how the lines of segregation established in the 1920s remained for many decades.