The anti-pornographers

THE DEATH OF J. B. Murray P.C. last month from a surfeit of Spikery has left the Irish ultra-right without its guiding star. J. B. Murray had symbolised the reaction against sexual liberalisation since he founded the League of Decency in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision allowing the importation of contraceptives.

But the ultra-right will carryon. Murray held no office in the League of Decency on his death. He conferred on himself the title of "Founder" but had retired from office two years ago. The leader of the League now is Brother Denis Carroll from Synge Street. Brother Carroll is as obsessed with liberalism as Murray

The running now is being done by the Irish Family League spearheaded by Miss Kennedy. Its style is much more potent than the League of Decency's and it claims to have more than 2000 members on its rolls.

It was the IFL which sent off an order for contraceptives on behalf of minors in order to bring family planners to court. It was the IFL too that attacked Ms Poole, when she was running for the Presiidency of the Irish National Teachers Organisation.

The politics of the League . are reactionary; they react against trends; the politics of the IFL is much more fascist, its language about the interrnational conspiracy of capital is inherently fascist, but havving a clear ideology the IFL scores with new members.

But one Merrion Square eccentric solicitor, T. C. G. O'Mahony , who from his office/home runs five diffferent right wing organisaations, each with Community, Concern and Co-operation in the title, may have the answer to that.

O'Mahony, who hails from Northern Ireland, led a counter-demo on Mayday last year against the left wing march to the GPO. He called his meeting a "prayer session for St. Joseph the Worker".

But on that score there IS another body, Clarion,led by Jim Keating (the darling of Sunday Independent commmentator Des Hickey) which campaigns frenetically about Communism's real and allegged evils. But Keating, a Dublin businessman, does not seem to have the charisma necessary to lead the ultraaright as a whole.

Then there's STOP (the Society to Outlaw Pornoography) which tries to rid our bookstalls and newspapers of nudery and so on .

After Murray's death the whole ultra-right scene (which commands about 1,000 supporters, slightly less than the ultra-left) seems bound to become departtmentalised in an entente beetween the jealous groups which accuse each other of softness and other errors. The League of Decency will look after television, the Family League the legislators, the Community Co-operation' Concerns the more flambuoyant of counter-protest, Clarion the international scene, and STOP the rest of printed matter as well as cinema and theatre.