> Ghostscript [...] may well allow you to view the PDF as it sometimes circumvents
> (gets around) the Password protection I seem to remember

I doubt this will work. Password-protected viewing of PDF files is not just a flag that a viewer can decide to simply ignore (contrary to disabled or password-protected editing, copying or printing). A PDF file that is password-protected from viewing is also encrypted with the password being used as a parameter for the encryption algorithm, so will have to be decrypted for viewing. Without knowing the password this is only possible with brute force method or similar.