No sex please: how Northern Ireland was united by ‘evil’ films

Leaders of Protestant and Catholic churches joined forces in the 1970s to stop ‘moral threat’ from across the Irish Sea

It was the height of the Troubles, with Northern Ireland teetering on all-out civil war, but Catholics and Protestants found at least one cause to unite them: banning films.

Conservative religious and political leaders from both sides rallied to block Last Tango in Paris and other “evil” films in the 1970s that were deemed threats to morality, according to new research. Protestant churches in particular sought to create a de facto cultural border along the Irish sea to separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, said Sian Barber, a film studies lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast.

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from World news | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3013qFZ