A NEW documentary is set to air next week telling the story of a book written in 1922 that was deemed too dangerous to publish amid the political turmoil of partition.
After violence broke out in Belfast in 1920 a Catholic priest, 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.
This programme 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.
Oisín Hassan, great nephew of Fr John Hassan
Pogrom Bhéal Feirste which will air on TG4 on Wednesday 4th December at 9.30pm on TG4 was produced by Clean Slate Television with support from Northern Ireland Screen’s Irish Language Broadcast Fund.
