Irish Targeted Sex Pistols

According to newly released papers, Irish officials targeted punk rock legends, Sex Pistols, in a 1978 campaign to "protect the country's Catholic morals." The Garda Síochána was looking into their breakthrough album, Never Mind the Bollocks, and whether or not it broke the country's censorship laws (of the time).

Virgin Records eventually successfully defended an obscenity cause (in neighboring Britain), but prior to that, the censorship board decided to be lenient because the maximum penalty was too low to warrant the resources that would have been spent upholding the censorship laws. It would have meant every record store which carried the album risked being fined (£2)!

© C Harris Lynn, 2008