If you were to ask a member of the public about the Magdalene
Laundries they would probably tell you one or other of these three
things.
First, the Magdalene homes were a Catholic invention.
Secondly, they were an invention specifically of Catholic Ireland.
Third, they were established to punish unmarried mothers for having had
sex outside marriage.
None of these three 'facts' are true.
Instead they belong to something called 'Myth-History', that is, a
version of history that has been concocted out of parts of the truth and
that suits a particular ideological point of view, in this case that
Catholic Ireland was a uniquely cruel and awful place.
This
Myth-History must be placed before us at all times in order to eliminate
any danger of us ever repeating the mistakes of that benighted time.
Momentum
towards this inquiry has been building for some time. It really began
to gather steam late last year when the Irish Human Rights Commission --
in truth, a left-wing quango -- published a document calling for an
inquiry.
It sent this document to the UN Committee on Torture and
last month this committee called on the Government to accede to this
call. It has now done so.
Now, before proceeding any further,
let's be clear about one thing: abuses without doubt happened in these
institutions and the women who were abused deserve justice.
Many women
were placed in institutions without any real justification and that they
were placed in them is testament to the often harsh climate of the
times.
In the 19th and for much of the 20th Century, institutionalisation was the response to all sorts of social issues and problems.
But
let's also be clear about a number of other things.
First, Magdalene
homes in Ireland were not established in the first instance by the
Catholic Church.
Second, they existed in other countries, too, and not just in Ireland.
Third,
they were not established primarily with unmarried mothers in mind and
to this day it is not clear what percentage of their residents unmarried
mothers comprised.
The first Magdalene asylum in Ireland was
established in 1767 by a Protestant benefactor named Lady Arabella Denny
as a home for 'penitent prostitutes'.
The first Catholic Magdalene asylums in Ireland did not appear for several more decades.
As
mentioned, Magdalene asylums were founded in other countries also.
The
Magdalene Society of Philadelphia, for example, was founded in 1800 by,
among others, Quakers, with the intention of "restoring to the paths of
virtue those unhappy females who in unguarded hours have been robbed of
their innocence".
In Northern Ireland, both the Church of Ireland
and the Presbyterians also ran Magdalene asylums. So far as they were
concerned, they were responding to a real need.
The asylums didn't
exist only for prostitutes. Many of the women in them suffered from
intellectual disabilities and were placed in them by their families.
Others were indeed unmarried mothers. A small minority were guilty of
crimes such as infanticide and were in them as an alternative to prison.
We
don't know the breakdown between the various categories of women
because, in Ireland's case at least, the archives of the institutions
haven't been properly investigated.
Maybe by a certain point in time
they did mainly house unmarried mothers.
We need to find this out.
But
according to the Government's own report to the UN committee, the
overwhelming majority of women in the Magdalene Laundries were there
voluntarily.
The Government's decision to establish this new inquiry is at once both understandable and indicative of a double standard.
It is understandable because there is a need to know what took place in the Magdalene asylums.
But
it shows up a double standard because the Government could, if it
wished, establish inquiries into all sorts of other matters.
For example, we still await a thorough inquiry into the banks and how they were run during the boom years.
It
could, if it wanted, set up all kinds of inquiries into the years of
the Troubles.
But as Enda Kenny told David Cameron in April, we can't
have endless inquiries into that time.
Ireland's Catholic past, on the other hand, can never be the subject of enough inquiries it would seem.
We
can also legitimately ask why that UN committee hasn't asked other
countries to establish inquiries into their Magdalene Laundries. Why
just us? Is it simply because it was prompted to do so by the Human
Rights Commission? Why can't the committee ascertain for itself which
countries also ran such institutions and make similar demands of them?
If
this new inquiry does its work properly it will provide a fully rounded
picture of the Magdalene asylums.
If not, it will only add to the
Myth-History that the Magdalene homes were a uniquely Irish and Catholic
phenomenon designed to punish unmarried mothers.