Dion Fanning writes about the lessons that Ireland needs to learn, from Tuam and elsewhere, in order to escape the mistakes and the traumas of the past.
In 1979, a US mini-series called ‘Holocaust’ was broadcast on West German television.
A Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel had previously described it as ‘untrue, offensive and cheap’. Yet more than half the German population watched the series when it was shown in the country. In one poll, 70% of those between 14 and 19 said they had learned more about the horrors of Nazism from the programme than they had from their years studying German history in school.
‘Holocaust’ was seen as central to the process in the 1970s and 1980s when the Germans accepted their role in recent history. It had been a slow process, but a necessary one.
Two months later, the same programme was shown in Austria and the response was, essentially, a shrug.
Austria, after all, had been declared Hitler’s first victim in 1943 and that viewpoint hadn’t altered much. In 1990, 43% of Austrians thought Nazism “had good and bad sides”. But, as Tony Judt pointed out in Postwar, they had been more Hitler’s first victims. Out of a population of seven million, more than 700,000 people held membership of the Nazi party.
Germany’s attempts to come to terms with its past was confused and imperfect, but there was a coming to terms with it.
While there is no parallel with what occurred in Nazi Germany, Ireland may see similarities in its response to the horrors which took place in Mother and Baby homes across the country.
‘If it is always somebody else’s fault, there are no lessons to be learned’
Ireland’s choice seems to be to accept their role in the past, as Germany did, or to continue to see themselves as victims, this time of the Catholic Church.
There were victims; the mothers and children who lived and died in these places, and those who loved them.
But there were those who did nothing. This is understandable. It is easy to demand bravery of others without knowing how we would behave in similar circumstances. But if it is always somebody else’s fault, there are no lessons to be learned.
Some understandably bristle at the idea we are all complicit. They see the dark work of the Catholic Church and identify a real and vicious culprit. But who was the church and where does it stop? Irish Catholicism was a particularly brutal form of the old superstition.
‘Ireland was an oppressive country’
The church may have gained more power in Ireland than it did in other countries which considered themselves devout, but the power was enforced by brothers and uncles, sisters and aunts, and depended on the acquiescence of the population.
Enda Kenny may be right when he says that nuns did not come in to homes and take the babies, but power doesn’t work that way. Ireland was an oppressive country and the oppressors were not a foreign force.
Credit: Newstalk/YouTube
Most of Ireland’s story post-independence is a story of deference to the Church, who had hard power for a long time, and soft – or as soft as it could be – for a lot longer.
After all, it was only in 1977 that legislation was passed preventing unmarried women from losing their job if they became pregnant. Ten years later, the concept of illegitimacy was abolished. Bessboro in Cork was still open in the 1980s.
This is not an issue of the past. It informs the present and should shape Ireland’s future.
Speaking about Tuam in the Dáil on Tuesday, Enda Kenny described the Ireland of that era as a “social and cultural sepulchre”.
But it is not just the recent past that matters. Ireland can blame the Catholic Church for the past treatment of women, but who do we blame today?
In the past, the responsibility was handed over to the church to deal with the responsibility and the perceived shame of unmarried mothers who, as Kenny pointed out, seemed to have the power to self impregnate.
Now, we export this generation’s version, shirking our responsibilities with relative ease because Britain is close at hand, a fact which allows us to be comfortable in our piety if frozen in our infantilism.
‘Ireland needs a new constitution’
If we accept the past and our role in it, we can accept that piety and false notions of moral virtue have no place in the present when we are failing so many Irish people.
If Ireland is to move on from that time, it needs a new constitution, a new republic which acknowledges the past, but also aspires to be something other than the old, holy pious Ireland full of hypocrisies and shame.
Ireland functions under a constitution written in 1937, when the Catholic Church’s power was oppressive and frightening. The church was consulted on the drafting of the constitution which is reason in itself to move on.
Credit: Stephen James Smith/YouTube
Maybe through understanding and acceptance of the role so many played in these “chambers of horrors”, Ireland will develop a true compassion, not just compassion for the mothers and children who survived and died in these homes, but for those it ostracises now, including those women who are forced go to the UK for abortions.
This compassion would involve shaping an Ireland based on reality, not myth. This compassion might lead to an Ireland based on a desire to deal with our own issues, no matter how uncomfortable, instead of being confident that while someone else is around to take care of them, there will also always be someone else to take the blame.
“Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history contributes to the disenchantment of the world,” Judt wrote.
“Most of what it has to offer is discomforting, even disruptive – which is why it is not always politically prudent to wield the past as a moral cudgel with which to beat and berate a people for its past sins. But history does need to be learned – and periodically re-learned.”
Ireland’s history constantly adds to the disenchantment of the world, but the more recent stories do not allow us to feel sorry for ourselves as we talk of our oppression at the hands of a foreign invader.
‘Nobody to blame but ourselves’
How is this history taught in schools today? Could Ireland tell its young people an accurate version of its relationship with England while it was under British rule? Can the rule of the Catholic Church be really taught in schools while the church continues to have such influence over education?
In Postwar, Judt tells an old Soviet joke about a caller to an Armenian radio station who asked if it was possible to forecast the future. “Yes, no problem,” he is told. “We know what the future will be. Our problem is with the past: that keeps changing.”
Ireland can predict its future by looking at its past. Unless there is real change, the same mistakes will be made, and only the details will change. But we are running out of road. There is nobody but ourselves to blame for how we treat the vulnerable today.
This one is on us, this one will tell the story of what this generation wanted to believe in for ourselves.
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