The Irish Times – Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Our capacity for self-delusion has had awful results for those who were locked up, but has also contributed to our economic ruin, writes FINTAN O’TOOLE
THE FIRST time I wrote about the issue of the women who were incarcerated in Magdalene homes was in September 1993. The grounds of the largest such home in the UK or Ireland, High Park in Drumcondra, Dublin, had been sold off to a property developer by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. The graveyard was included in the deal – the bodies of the Magdalenes were dug up and re-interred in Glasnevin Cemetery. I noticed that at the same time, the sisters had lost a lot of money speculating on the shares of what was Ireland’s first great bubble company, Guinness Peat Aviation.
What was not so obvious at the time was the deeper connection between these two events. Part of the reason things went so badly wrong in the way the Irish economy unfolded over the next 15 years was the extraordinary capacity for denial in Irish culture. Most societies have a talent for self-delusion but ours operated on a heroic scale. We were able to deny not just things we suspected to be the case but things we knew to be the case, whether it was the widespread corruption in politics or the fact that property simply could not be worth anything like what we were paying for it.
That capacity didn’t come from nowhere. It was formed by many, many decades of practice. With its hatred of the poor (but not of poverty), of the deviant, of the dissenting, of the disturbing, Irish society developed extraordinarily powerful mechanisms for filtering out unwanted people. One of them was emigration. The other was institutionalisation. We locked up vast numbers of people in industrial schools, Magdalene homes and mental hospitals.
The existence of these institutions was not, of course, a secret but knowledge was neutered – in large part by the sense that, since the church was running so many of these institutions, they must be good. When I wrote about High Park in 1993, for example, a no-doubt well-intentioned lady wrote to The Irish Times to share her memories of visiting the home to see her aunt who was a nun there: “My memory is of a group of tough, middle-aged Dublin women having lots of fun at the expense of my aunt, who also enjoyed the ‘craic’. These women were there from choice – they asked to be admitted, it was a ‘women’s refuge’ and protecting them was part of the nuns’ work. Sure, laundry work was hard and still is – but the women were well cared for . . .”
This habit of denial had terrible consequences for those who were locked up, but it also fed into the economic catastrophe that ultimately overtook us. The conviction that what we want to be true must be true and that anyone who doubts it must be deluded, malicious or both, undermined our collective ability to recognise what was happening to us. And if we are to change the culture that has proved to be so toxic, we have to develop a new habit of mind in which we take our own realities seriously.
It is for this reason that the continuing official denial of the State’s responsibility to the survivors of the Magdalene homes is not just a marginal question. If, after all, our Government can’t face up to the obvious injustice of locking up women for life and using them as forced labourers simply because they were judged to present a moral danger to society, how will it ever face up to bigger and more complex issues of responsibility and accountability?
Dealing decently with the relatively small number of Magdalene survivors ought not to be particularly hard. The systems in place for the survivors of industrial schools provide the obvious model, with the added opportunity to avoid the outrageous aspects of the deal that saw the State taking almost the full rap for that scandal. The problem is that the Government is still in almost complete denial.
First we had Batt O’Keeffe, as minister for education last year, claiming that the State “did not refer individuals nor was it complicit in referring individuals to Ireland’s Magdalene laundries” (it did and it was) and referring to the women who were forced to work in the laundries as “employees”. Both of these claims were subsequently withdrawn.
In April, however, Brian Cowen, answering questions from Fianna Fáil TD Michael Kennedy, engaged in further obfuscation. He claimed that “the position of women in such laundries was not analogous with that of children in the residential institutions that were the subject of the Ryan report” and that “the Magdalene laundries were run by a small number of religious congregations”, implying that the State had nothing to do with them.
From the 1930s onwards, the State transferred women from mother-and-baby homes and country homes into Magdalene laundries.
As late as 1970, children as young as 13 were being confined in Magdalene laundries – some of them transferred there from industrial schools. The laundries were unquestionably a part of a system in which the State was enmeshed. Taking responsibility for those realities would be a small step towards decency.
perhaps if thay were named , half of the churches would have to close down. that would mean a lot less money coming in. just imagine how much it costs todress all of them including the pope. after all thay cant buy thier clothes in sales on the high street.after all all that hiding takes organising,,
I TOTALLY AGREE ANDREW. NAME AND SHAME THE LOT, WHAT EVER TYPE OF ABUSE THEY COMMITTED. WHAT WILL THEY DO??? PUT US ALL IN JAIL???? WHAT’S NEW ABOUT THAT. WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN IN JAIL. WE HAVE BEEN SINCE WE CAME INTO THIS WORLD, AND AS FAR AS I AN CONCERNED, AND IM SURE A LOT OF OTHERS WOULD AGREE, ( WE STILL ARE )
WHY SHOULD THESE PERPETRATORS GET AWAY WITH WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO SO MANY INNOCENT CHILDREN, AND THE GOVERNMENT STANDING STRONGLY BEHIND THEM VIRTUALLY TELLING US WHAT THESE PEOPLE DID WAS OK, BECAUSE THATS EXACTLY WHAT THE GOVERNMENT IS SAYING.
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE RELIGIOUS ALWAYS SUNG FROM THE SAME HYMN BOOK. AND BELIEVE ME, THEY ALWAYS WILL.
THEY DONT HAVE THE BALLS TO ROCK THE BOAT WITH THEIR RELIGIOUS COUNTERPARTS. THE GOVERNMENT AND THE RELIGIOUS ARE ONE, AND YOU BETTER BELIEVE THAT. JUST LIKE THE ISRAELIS, AND THEIR AMERICAN COUNTERPARTS, STUCK TOGETHER LIKE ( S**T TO PAPER. ( AND THEY ARE BOTH FULL OF IT.)
Martha is quite right in saying the Irish public is just as culpable as the State and Church vis a vis the Laundries. Too many sheeple brainwashed into shunning their own female relations into these gulags.
But for the Irish people to admit responsibility, the State and Church must do so first and foremost.
I have a brother somewhere in England who spent time in an industrial school here in Cork. He was put in there at age 5yr 7 months in 1958. My sisters and I were put in a different industrial school. About age 10 he was taken to England by some relative. I don’t know if he even knows about the Ryan Report or the Redress Board. I and my sister would so love to meet him but we have no idea where exactly he is. Shattered lives, families torn apart and the abuse still goes on.
As much as I admire Fintan O’Toole, I have to take him to task with his notion (which is shared by most Irish adults/parents) that those who were incarcerated in the Magdalene Laundries, and Irish Catholic Industrial Schools per se, were somehow different from the norm of Irish society, i.e., the HOLY CATHOLIC IRELAND that was the foundation of the Irish Republic as we know it today.
Lets get real here, people: the Republic of Ireland was built on the insidious dogma of ROME – and anyone – ANY Irish-born adult who says differently is either a moron or a sociopath.
Charles O’Rourke wrote:
“And so the Saville Report finally got it right. No “IFS AND BUTS”, no apologies issued through clenched teeth.”
And none of the perpetrators behind bars.
“Words to the heat of deed to cold breath give” (Macbeth Act 2, Scene 1)
Our actions speak louder than our words.
Tony Duggan wrote:
“There are still senior churchmen who have broken the law an are still wandering around unquestioned.”
Tony, they are not the only “respectable” criminals still sauntering around Ireland; the country is crawling with such insects!
This is Catholic Ireland after all. If anyone thinks the so-called Celtic Tiger changed the Irish collective psyche in any significant way, then they are as deluded as MOST of the adults I knew as child growing up as I did in the Holy Catholic Ireland of the 1950’s!!!
Just take a close)er) look at so-called Middle-Class Irish society – and their deeply-ingrained love of money, and you’ll see what I mean.
Its all BLING! BLING! BLING! Or should I say, the BING-BONG=DING-DONG sound of the Angelus Bells. LOL!!!
Andrew wrote:
“It shows that the Government is STILL acting heartlessly. Looks to me like the Fianna Fail party is still hell-bent on protecting the Religious slave-masters.”
Andrew, What you’re talking about here is called STOCKHOLME SYNDROME. That’s when the Slave becomes psychologically identified with the Master. Like when the child NATURALLY identifies with his/her primary carer – usually the parent.
In other words: Rome wasn’t built in a day.
James M. Smith wrote: ”
The State knew of the nature and function of the Magdalene laundries.”
The State was (and still is) backed-up by the Irish people – so – “the State” IS the majority of the Irish people.
Lest we forget: the MAJORITY of Irish CATHOLIC mothers voluntarily put their own daughters into those Magdalene Laundry hellholes. That is a fact. And it is this FACT of Irish history that the Irish people, per se, should be looking at.
I know what I am talking about. My own mother was a brainwashed Irish Catholic woman. She will “rest in peace” (we all do when we die) but she left a terrible legacy behind her.
To paraphrase Shakespeare: “The evil we humans do lives after us, and the good (we do in our one and only life) is often interred with our bones”.
Madam, – I refer to Fintan O’Toole’s piece on the Government’s continuing denial of responsibility for the Magdalene laundries abuse (Opinion, June 15th).
I would argue that the abuse suffered by women and girls in the Magdalene laundries amounted to slavery and/or forced labour under international law, judging by the evidence in the Ryan Report (Volume III, Chapter 18) and other survivor accounts in the media. Essentially, the religious orders exercised absolute control over the women and girls, their labour, and the product of that labour. Ireland has had international legal obligations to prevent and suppress slavery and forced labour at the hands of private individuals since the 1930s.
It is no excuse for the Government to state, as Batt O’Keeffe told the Dáil in February, that the laundries were not subject to State regulation or inspection (and were therefore fundamentally different to industrial schools). The very fact that the Magdalene laundries were not subject to regulation or inspection, when the State was aware of their nature and function, was a gross violation of the State’s duty to protect its citizens from such fundamental attacks on human freedom and dignity as slavery and/or forced labour.
Every woman and girl in a Magdalene laundry, whether she was placed there privately or by the State, was owed a duty of protection. It is time the Government acknowledged the abuse suffered for what it really was. – Yours, etc,
MAEVE O’ROURKE,
Global Human Rights Fellow,
Harvard Law School,
Cambridge,
Massachusetts, US.
Andrew is the any legal hinder in naming the abusers by name on this site?. I have a few I would love to put up there.
And so the Saville Report finally got it right. No “IFS AND BUTS”, no apologies issued through clenched teeth. It was “unjustified and unjustifiable” When the British prime minister issues his apology the survivors applauded outside the Guild Hall in Derry/ Londonderry. He got it right. The leaders of the different traditions came out to meet the relatives of Bloody Sunday. They got it right as well.There was no bitterness or hate just a sense of liberation and relief. The truth shone victorious and a people could move forward. Contrast this to the Ryan report and its aftermath and I wonder would things have been worse with the British?.
Hi. Paddy.
Update on Peter McDonnell solisitors Dublin, ad in Sun newspaper UK,
Legal advise is for those whom missed the deadline for the redress board.
Hope this helps somebody.
Paul.
The names of our abusers should now be published … by US. It would be one way to flush them out of their hidey-holes. What I wouldn’t give to see Br O’Hanlon of the Rosminians arraigned before a judge and jury ….
I simply wouldn’t trust the current government at all. The man who tried to pull a corrupt deal benefiting the church is still a TD when he should be in jail (Michael Woods).
There are still senior churchmen who have broken the law an are still wandering around unquestioned. A certain Cardinal is wide open to charges of perversion of the course of justice and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
The religious orders were given three weeks in mid-summer of last year to provide a statement of assets.
A very dodgy looking list of assets was finally provided THIS year in a format which attempts to exclude profitable assets defined as ‘schools’ for the purpose of evasion.
The people identified in the Ryan report had their names withhheld on the basis that there could be criminal charges accruing. Where are those charges?
Why has the church still been allowed to hold on to files which details where their perverts are hidden around various houses in the UK and elsewhere.
The President is a papal dame. Ahern was a papal knight which is a low point in the entire history of papal orders.
You’ve got the A Team on the way from Rome to ‘crack down on secular opinion’ ie the same opinion that saw them investigated in the end.
They aren’t going to get the picture until the Pro-Cathedral comes down on their heads.
And I for one hope that happens.
It shows that the Government is STILL acting heartlessly. Looks to me like the Fianna Fail party is still hell-bent on protecting the Religious slave-masters.
WELL SAID ROBERT. IT’S GREAT TO SEE SOMEONE WHO WILL STAND UP AND BE COUNTED, AND NOT AFRAID TO SPEAK THE TRUTH. OF COURSE PEOPLE WILL NEVER LIKE THE TRUTH TO BE HEARD, ALWAYS TRYING TO SUPPRESS IT NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES. WE HAVE SUCH PEOPLE IN RIGHT OF PLACE. PERHAPS YOU COULD DO AN ARTICLE ON THEM SOMETIME, IT WOULD MAKE VERY GOOD READING. YOU BET. LOVE YOUR STORIES.
It is almost one year since Justice for Magdalenes (JFM)—a survivor advocacy group—circulated its proposal to all politicians in the Oireachtas offering draft language towards (i) an official apology, and (ii) a distinct redress scheme. We have since demonstrated the State’s complicity in referring women to the laundries and its awareness that there were children in the laundries. And still the government denies any obligation towards survivors of these institutions.
The government’s position is to assert that the laundries were private institutions and to direct all queries to the Catholic religious congregations. Fintan O’Toole addressed Brian Cowen’s recent example of “obfuscation” and passing the buck (“State still in denial over Magdalene scandal,” 15 June 2010). The Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, similarly asserts that, “Magdalen Laundries were not State institutions and their records are a matter for the individual religious congregations concerned” (27 May 2010).
But, the fact that the laundries were private institutions does not absolve the State of responsibility to protect the women and girls from abuse endured at the hands of the religious orders. The State knew of the nature and function of the Magdalene laundries. Just as the State held a duty to protect children in State residential institutions, it held a duty to protect all the women and girls in the laundries. The State referred certain women and young girls to the laundries. It had a Constitutional duty to educate all children and to care for children in cases of parental failure. The abuse suffered by women and children in the Magdalene laundries, whether they entered privately or at the hands of the State, amounts to slavery and/or forced and compulsory labour, and the State was obligated at the time of the abuse to abolish slavery and forced labour under international law, international labour law, European human rights law and possibly Irish constitutional law.
Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides for the right to an effective remedy for violations of Convention rights and freedoms. The ongoing failure of the State to provide a remedy to victims of abuse in the Magdalene laundries is a violation of this right.
Sincerely,
Jim Smith