via soli.zsp.net.pl, reblogged from here: “At the end of April, 60 women suddenly found themselves unemployed at the hospital in Belchatow. Since then, a large group of them have been fighting to get their jobs back. The women had already been outsourced from the hospital and had been working there through a company called Cooperative for
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| As children of unwed mothers, the dead babies were not baptized |
When my father would come home drunk all I ever heard from my mother was “You will put us all in the workhouse with your drinking.” The workhouse was the great terror in her life. Its name was then changed to the County Home. It was in Stranorlar.
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| Onward Christian soldiers |
the early 1970’s. The Catholic Church set up a committee at the time to set the wage for its lowest rank male full time workers that it calls priests. Donal Nevin, a top trade union official was brought on to the committee. This was to pretend that the labor movement was involved. This committee set a wage for these full time church workers which was three times that of the income of a single mother with three children. Am I not also right in thinking that when it looked like the Stalinist WP was going to take over the ITGWU the Catholic church mobilized its brainwashed members in the trade union and labor bureaucracy and merged the ITGWU and the FWUI and kept the “commies” out. We are dealing with an extremely powerful and conscious political organization of capitalism in the Catholic Church. The Protestant churches are also churches of capitalism but the Catholic Church with its 1.1 billion members, its own state and with diplomatic rights in countries it has a presence, is the main one.
economic power of the US would bring down Stalinism. He was not far wrong. the Catholic hierarchy held many meetings with top strategists of US imperialism as Stalinism began to crack. Google this and you will be astounded at how much information comes up. The popes of the time made trip after to trip to the Stalinist countries to whip up their supporters and make sure that Stalinism was followed by capitalism and not democratic socialism.
The issue must be taken up in this way because now the mass media is trying to blame the “Irish People.” Anything to get their class and its allies the Catholic and Protestant hierarchies off the hook.
The Ukraine crisis is an attack by U.S. imperialism, along with local fascists, on the people of Ukraine. The European Union has been ally of the U.S. attack.
The former government of Viktor Yanukovich was driven out by neo-Nazis, in the Feb. 20-22 coup d’état. These include the U.S.-funded Svoboda Party and several thousand street hooligans of the Right Sector. There has been hidden intervention on the part of the European Union. A ‘government’ of neo-Nazis in key places was named and recognized by the U.S. on no legal basis whatever. It is really only a junta, a dictatorial lineup imposed from outside.
One of Washington’s main objectives is to bring Ukraine into NATO. That directly threatens Russia militarily. It also threatens Russia’s internal security. Despite the hysterical raving of Wall Street’s government and media mouthpieces, Russia has so far entered the picture only secondarily.
Svoboda and the Right Sector both give allegiance to an infamous man named Stepan Bandera. During WW II Bandera organized guerilla forces that fought Soviet partisans in alliance with the Nazis. They murdered tens of thousands of Poles and Jews before the Soviet partisans and Red Army made them pay for their crimes.
Because it is mostly made up of Nazis, the junta has not been recognized by the people it supposedly governs. 7 million people in the Ukraine were killed by the Nazis in World War II. Few will accept the return of Nazism. The US/Nazi attack has aroused a tremendous spirit not seen since revolutionary times.
A man interviewed in Kramatorsk on April 19 spoke for many. He is worth quoting at length. He said, “The Banderites who have now come here and want to impose their ideology on us have given us a precious gift because they have awakened for us in East Ukraine our patriotism, which had been dormant for many years.
“This happened because people had forgotten more or less who they used to be, who they had become. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a kind of depression. People saw this event, the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a kind of natural disaster. The Soviet Union fell apart, and the rain came. People didn’t understand what had happened – they were demoralized, they used to believe in their leaders.
“Now people understand that it is not necessary to believe in leaders. We don’t need to believe in any Yanukovich, we don’t need to believe in a Party of Regions. We need to organize ourselves by ourselves – and to remember our own history, remember our own culture. That is our foundation.
“So thank you to all the Banderites who have come into Kiev, and who have made people remember who they are, who they are in the world, and above all why they are here on this earth.”
The heroism of the people stands out time after time. Victory Day, May 9, commemorating the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany, is the biggest holiday of the year in all post-Soviet lands. On Victory Day this year a junta-appointed Nazi governor in the city of Kherson had the gall and the stupidity to praise Hitler as a “liberator” from the “tyrant Stalin.” His filthy insults of the people’s history met with an explosion of anger and inspiring resistance from the crowd.
Mass heroism stands out most clearly where the people’s resistance is strongest, in the eastern and southern parts of the country. Early in April municipal buildings in several cities were seized by the people, who proclaimed the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Lugansk. No government has recognized them. That does not matter. The important thing is that people themselves recognize them. They refuse to be governed by the U.S./Nazi Kiev junta.
Referenda on the People’s Republics were set up for May 11. They were held on short notice, with minimal organization and little expenditure of money. The questions were, “Do you support the declaration of state independence of the Donetsk/Lukansk People’s Republic?” The Kiev junta sent military and terrorist forces to mount attacks against several towns to disrupt the voting. The referenda went on anyway because of the people’s will.
Huge crowds turned out to vote, sometimes waiting in line for hours. The participation rate in the Donetsk People’s Republic was 75%, of which 89% voted for independence. The participation rate in the Lugansk People’s Republic was 81%, out of which 90% voted independence.
Not much reliable information on the leaders of the People’s Republics is available at this time. The people face great challenges. Only those worthy of the people can lead. It is a practical question. The solution will take time.
The votes refuted claims in western countries that the separatist movements are the work of Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin called for postponement of the May 11 vote. A self-defense guard in Slovyansk was quoted in the UK Guardian as saying, “He is a coward. He will pay for this with a revolution in [Moscow’s] Red Square.”
Time after time the U.S./Nazi junta has mounted attacks on the people. Hundreds have died in dozens of attacks but the people are unshaken. They defeated Hitler’s armies during World War II. They will defeat the junta. They will defeat U.S. imperialism.
On the other hand the Kiev lineup is an unholy mess. The fascist groups Svoboda and the Right Sector are rivals for power. Another prop of U.S. regime change is a few oligarchs, i.e., gangster-boss capitalists who built their fortunes by stealing everything in sight. There are reports that the CIA is running the show from behind the scenes. The German press reports that 400 U.S. Blackwater mercenaries are in country as enforcers for the junta.
After having been stoned, mercilessly beaten and burned with Molotov cocktails in Maidan Square by the Right Sector, the police are unreliable. Like the police, the soldiers of the former state sometimes obey orders but often not. The junta sent tank columns into the cities of Kramatorsk and Slavyansk in mid-April to crush the uprising. Instead the crews got out of their vehicles and joined the uprising, saying they would not kill their own people. Things got so bad CIA director John Brennan had to visit Kiev in April in an attempt to straighten things out.
The junta’s main force against the people has been the street hooligans of the Right Sector, but they are undisciplined. At the crucial moment on Feb. 20 in Maidan Square in Kiev, hooligans were whipped to a murderous frenzy by sniper fire that killed as many as 100 people. The dead included both Right Sector protesters and the police forces of the Yanukovich government. It later came out that the shootings came from a single source and that the opposition rather than the government was behind the killings.
The same tactic was used during the May 2 massacre in Odessa that claimed the lives of anti-Kiev activists in the Trade Union Hall. The police, infiltrated by the Right Sector, failed to protect the anti-Kiev activists from attack by a Right Sector mob. The massacre was carefully planned.
EU foreign policy representative Catherine Ashton issued a statement on May 3, stating “The facts which led to this tragic loss of so many human lives must now be established in an independent investigation and those responsible for these criminal acts brought to justice.”
She said the EU urged everyone to exercise restraint and not to exploit events in Odessa “to fuel more hatred, division and senseless violence.” She also said, “All political forces must now assume their responsibility and engage in a peaceful and inclusive dialogue to find a joint way out of the crisis.”
It is a good statement on the face of it. It indicates serious divisions between some EU countries and the U.S. It also indicates Ashton had a good idea of what really went on. A thorough independent investigation should surely be carried out.
The main problem is the U.S. aggression. U.S. imperialism is now in a predicament. All of the difficulties were obvious. The ideology of Svoboda and the Right Sector would put them at odds with the people. The two are rivals for power. It is folly to rely on mob-boss oligarchs to govern. None of the junta factions have political program. The people will resist a foreign takeover of their country. Policymakers are paid to know these things. They went ahead and overthrew the Yanukovich government anyway.
The economic prospect of the west of the Ukraine is ruinous and sure to bring further unrest. The U.S. still shows no willingness to engage in any political process that could end the crisis. The American people want no part of any war in Ukraine. Sooner or later they will see through all the hypocrisy and lies that they have been fed. U.S. imperialism will meet a disastrous defeat.
On May 25 leaders of the two Republics signed a unity agreement to form a single state called Novorossiya (New Russia.) On the same day the oligarch Petr Poroshenko was anointed ‘president’ in a light-turnout travesty election in the eastern part of the country. The same western ‘let’s pretend’ media that scorned the genuine people’s referenda had no problem singing the praises of the Kiev regime farce. The first thing he did was launch a heavy weapons assault on the cities of Novorossiya, Donetsk, Slavyansk and others.
The people of the regions who have refused to submit to the junta are the bastion of world peace. So far they have responded only to defend themselves. However, the people’s self-defense forces are as yet small and not yet well-armed. The people are up to the challenge but much depends on the ability of the leaders.
Private property in the means of production itself is coming into question. Donetsk oligarch Rinat Akhmetov declared himself on the side of Kiev on May 20 when he called on workers at his industrial plants to demonstrate against the People’s Republic.
In response, People’s Republic of Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin warned him that all of his factories would be nationalized. “All these years we were stolen from, stolen from by local oligarchs,” said Pushilin.
“Any problem can be solved with a telephone call, especially for Akhmetov,” said a local newspaper editor. “But now you have 500 people with guns for whom telephone calls don’t exist, and all your billions mean nothing.”
Sean O’Torrain
Just when you think it could not get any worse another crime of the Catholic church is exposed in Ireland. This time it is the bodies of 800 little children in a septic tank. They were thrown there when they died of malnutrition and disease which resulted from them being neglected by the Catholic church which ran the home in which they were held. They were held there and neglected because their mothers were not married, that is their mothers had not gone through the ritual and garbage that the Catholic church says they have to to be able to have sex. You have to really think about this.
The unelected dictatorship which runs the 1.1 billion Catholic church is all men. Women are banned from the top positions. They are inferior according to the Catholic hierarchy. The Catholic church is the main church of capitalism. It worked with and helped US imperialism to organize the so-called dirty wars in Latin America where tens of thousands including its own left wing the liberation theologists were murdered and slaughtered. It worked with US imperialism to see that when Stalinism fell it was replaced with capitalism and not democratic socialism. US imperialism and the Catholic church are responsible for the wars and mass poverty that has resulted from the collapse of Stalinism. The last pope was a former member of the Hitler youth. This pope was a collaborator with US imperialism in the dirty wars. This is a monstrous organization.
Back to Ireland. The Catholic Hierarchy are responsible for this mass killing of these children. But they are not the only culprits. The Irish capitalist class were too weak to lead the struggle for independence in Ireland. (See Trotsky’s Theory of the Permanent Revolution.) The counter revolution that followed the war of independence left capitalism in place but very weak. They needed allies. They looked for and found one in the Catholic hierarchy. The dirty deal was done. The Catholic hierarchy could have the schools (centers of propaganda), the hospitals and a veto over all major legislation, especially social legislation, and could dictate the “morals” of the people. I never heard of James Joyce until I emigrated from Ireland when I was 20 and a young man from Quebec told me about him.
But to get back on track. The Catholic hierarchy and the Irish capitalist class are both responsible for throwing these little children into this septic tank. The horror of it is unbelievable. And now some full time organizer of the Catholic church, they call themselves priests to better intimidate people, says the children were only “resting.” I do not believe it is a good idea to support the capitalist state to ban any organization as it can then use this ban to justify banning workers organizations. But if there was ever a case to ban an organization there would be to ban the Catholic church in Ireland.
But I do not call for this instead I call for all members of that church to leave it and never participate in any activity it is involved with. I cannot see how any decent, any intelligent person can belong to that organization. It is utterly corrupt, utterly anti-democratic and utterly anti-women. I cannot for the life of me see how people who say they are against capitalism and imperialism, how people who say they are Republicans can belong to the Catholic church.
The Catholic church has a massive structure of wealth and resources. It has tens and tens of thousands of full time organizers, they call them priests, nuns, bishops, cardinals, popes, this is again to intimidate and impress, these people are full time organizers for a dictatorial capitalist organization. So how can people who say they are against the system, get named, get married, get buried by these people, by this organization. It only gives this organization greater authority and control. I see the Republicans in Ireland attending the Catholic church and I am astounded at the reactionary role this plays.
In the North of Ireland we have the Paisleys and the Protestant organizations. They are just as bad only they did not get their hands on as much undiluted power. But they have been able to justify every wrong they have done by pointing to the role of the Catholic church in the South and internationally. Imagine what Paisley and co will be saying now about the 800 children in the septic tank in Tuam. And the Catholic population, their leaders, such as Gerry Adams and the rest of them will not have a word to say.
JUNE 02, 2014
Jimmy Gralton’s Ireland
by HARRY BROWNE
Ken Loach and Paul Laverty’s Jimmy’s Hall is as near as makes no difference to being a sequel to their superb 2006 film, The Wind That Shakes the Barley. The earlier film showed how the Irish independence struggle gave way to a brutal counter-revolution that preserved aspects of British colonialism and entrenched a reactionary Irish bourgeoisie to run the new state.
The great new film picks up ten years later and nearly 200 miles north of the Cork setting of The Wind… in the beautiful, boggy landscape of County Leitrim. The revolution that was crushed in 1922-23 attempts one last, jazzy kick in the arse of the new establishment, as an unapologetic republican-socialist returns from New York after a decade’s exile and re-opens a community hall that accepts no authority except that of the people who built it. And in Ireland in 1932, that means defying the Catholic Church.
The story of Jim Gralton and his hall is absolutely true, though director Loach and writer Laverty have taken plenty of liberties with it. Gralton, who had US citizenship, was deported back to New York from the country of his birth in 1933, ironically by a government that was supposed to be truer to the republican ideals of the Irish rebellion than the one that ruled the first decade after independence. Gralton was gone and nearly but not quite forgotten, with a few leftists and local-historians clinging through the decades to his ideas and to a story that knits together Marxist internationalism with Irish anti-imperial resistance; a love for Irish music and culture with the irresistible strains of American jazz. I can remember a quarter-century ago marching through the lanes of a Leitrim village with a few dozen of the assorted clingers, at a very lovely and thought-provoking event called the Jim Gralton Summer School.
Irish actor, playwright and activist Donal O’Kelly became the latest to draw a spark from the Gralton flame when in 2012 he produced a sort of multimedia, audience-participation pageant, directed by Sorcha Fox, called Jimmy Gralton’s Dancehall. (O’Kelly turns up in Loach’s film in a bit part; Fox is wonderful in a more substantial one.) The ‘play’ gets credited by Loach and Laverty, and so it duly turns up with a mention in many of the (mixed) reviews of the film. But I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that none of the international film-critic fraternity actually saw O’Kelly boogy-woogying as JIm Gralton in any of the handful of performances of Jimmy Gralton’s Dancehall that were staged, with the involvement of scores of local people, in remote locations in the west of Ireland.
I saw it in the old ‘Rainbow Ballroom of Romance’ in Glenfarne, County Leitrim, and wrote about it for the Irish edition of the Sunday Times. (My article is behind Rupert Murdoch’s paywall.) As in Loach’s film, Gralton’s stand-off with his parish priest, hater of both Gralton’s politics and his African-Americanised cultural baggage, was the dramatic centre of the affair; but the dancing, during and after the ‘play’, was the highlight of the show, great Irish highsteppers mixing with African asylum-seekers, and anyone else who showed up, to try some old and new steps, with the floor heaving beneath us. I wrote at the time:
“… there’s nothing terribly radical in 2012 about mocking and chiding the 20th-century Catholic Church for its oppressive terror, even if the story of Ireland’s jazz rebellion can always do with more telling. Jimmy Gralton’s Dancehall, happily, does more than mock: it invites everyone to come and dance on the church’s grave. This grave-dance is, you suddenly realise as you’re pulled out on to the dance floor, a party that Ireland has been waiting for, especially now that the hollowness of the Celtic “we all partied” Tiger has been revealed. It’s one thing to condemn the Church for its failings and consign it to history, it’s another thing to celebrate the passing of its power and genuinely let everyone join in.
O’Kelly and Fox used a range of visual and textual tricks, mostly involving slides projected on the back wall of the ballroom, to connect that celebration to various present-day struggles, including that of asylum-seekers fighting against deportation. (The results of the 2004citizenship referendum, the tenth anniversary of which will be marked next week, mean that the strange spectacle of an Irish-born person being deported as an alien is no longer just a frontman anomalous old footnote tied to Gralton’s name.)
Loach and Laverty, with their fundamental devotion to realism and verisimilitude, can’t quite play it that way. To be sure, they splendidly capture the joyous defiance of the dancefloor; and cinematographer Robbie Ryan uses Loach’s beloved, dying medium of 35mm film to infuse scenes with a watery Leitrim-light magic. But while playing the story straight, they’ve got a political trick up their sleeves all right: instead of dancing on the Church’s grave, they breathe complex human life into their repressed and repressive clergymen, and remind us that there was (and is) more to reactionary Ireland than the power of the Catholic hierarchy.
It helps that they’ve got great actors to play the young and old priests of the parish: Andrew Scott and Jim Norton. For British and Irish audiences, the latter actor reveals a sort of in-joke that colours our understanding of the film-makers’ purpose. In an absurdly brilliant TV sitcom of the 1990s, Father Ted, produced in London but with Irish writing and acting talent, Norton played Bishop Len Brennan, an occasional character and a nasty, hypocritical piece of work who turned up to bully and discipline the eponymous Father Ted Crilly. In one of the series’ most memorable episodes, Ted, having lost a bet, was required to “kick Bishop Brennan up the arse”.
The joke of the episode (okay, one joke of the episode) is that the beleaguered Ted pursues the arse-kicking task methodically and without rancour, to the extent that when it is completed, the speechless bishop literally cannot believe it has happened. That didn’t stop the TV moment from being enjoyed and understood as a new Ireland’s symbolic revenge for centuries of repression and cruelty (including sexual violence, as the episode’s casual repetition of the phrase “up the arse” keeps insisting). There’s even, inevitably, an academic book called Kicking Bishop Brennan Up the Arse.
So when some of us see actor Jim Norton in clerical garb, part of our reaction is, “Oh yes, we kicked the Church up the arse. In 1998. And in regular repeats since then.” Whether Loach and Laverty intended the connection — and trust me, Jimmy’s Hall can be enjoyed without prior knowledge of Gralton, O’Kelly or Father Ted — they clearly grasp that the idea of the Church as the sole villain of the piece has been done, and it just doesn’t cut it, not in 1932, not in 2014.
In Jimmy’s Hall, Norton’s Father Sheridan calls Gralton’s attention to a painting on the wall of his study, John Lavery’s 1922 The Blessing of the Colours: it shows a patriotic Irish soldier kneeling, head bowed and flag in his grip, in front of a bishop: State subordinate to Church. This, says the priest, is as it should be. But as the film develops, it becomes clear that the relationship is not as simple as the old priest might wish, and that the Church is not Gralton’s only, or most dangerous, enemy. Gralton moves repeatedly into open conflict with the powerful when he challenges their class power, as when he and his followers restore an evicted tenant family to a rural estate that Irish ‘freedom’ hasn’t freed from its near-feudal lord. When the local big landowners and petty bourgeoisie confer with the priests about what should be done with Gralton, they address the clergy with a striking lack of respect; and by the end Father Sheridan appears to realise dimly that his culture-war with Gralton has been providing cover for an economic war being waged by local and national bosses and proto-fascists.
There is nothing trivial or academic about such an analysis today. For decades in Ireland, the liberal-left has been fighting the authority of the Church; even after (incomplete but culturally real) defeat of its power over the last two decades, Irish public life is dominated by retrospective revelations of the horrifying cruelty of the institutions through which bishops, priests and Catholic religious orders ran and ruined the lives of the disenfranchised: just last week we learned of a mass grave for babiesat a home for unmarried mothers in County Galway. By refusing to paint the Church only in shades of black and blacker, Loach invites us to consider on whose behalf Mother Church crushed the lives, hopes and joys of generations of Ireland’s poor.
After all, the ruling class here has long since stripped off its ecclesiastical garb. The Taoiseach (prime
minister), Enda Kenny, is a direct political descendent of the nationalist clerico-fascists so brilliantly captured by Loach, but he conspicuously made his mark early in his term with a stirring retrospective denunciation of the Church, earning him a great rush of liberal kudos. Meanwhile, though, he has ruled with an iron fist on behalf of international bondholders in Ireland’s casino banks, and on behalf of the multinational companies that are happy to make a low-tax home in post-Catholic Ireland.
Love of Ireland lives in every frame of Jimmy’s Hall, in the scenery, in the chat, in the faces of Loach’s usual mix of professional and undiscovered actors. Barry Ward is magnetic as Gralton, Simone Kirby beautifully blue-eyed and careworn as his comrade and love-interest, Oonagh; and Francis Magee visibly channels Robert Mitchum in a key supporting role. It seems that Loach and Laverty love Ireland enough to know that (some electoral grounds for optimism aside) it still needs a Jim Gralton, or a few, not to fight the Church, but to fight the class that now rules without wrapping itself in Christian piety.
Harry Browne lectures in Dublin Institute of Technology and is the author of The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power). Email:harry.browne@gmail.com, Twitter @harrybrowne
There is a growing international scandal around the history of The Home, a grim 1840’s workhouse in Tuam in Galway built on seven acres that was taken over in 1925 by the Bon Secours sisters, who turned it into a Mother and Baby home for “fallen women.”
The long abandoned site made headlines around the world this week when it was revealed that a nearby septic tank contained the bodies of up to eight hundred infants and children, secretly buried without coffins or headstones on unconsecrated ground between 1925 and 1961. Now a local historian has stepped forward to outline the terrible circumstances around so many lost little lives.
Catherine Corless, the local historian and genealogist, remembers the Home Babies well. “They were always segregated to the side of regular classrooms,” Corless tells IrishCentral. “By doing this the nuns telegraphed the message that they were different and that we should keep away from them.
“They didn’t suggest we be nice to them. In fact if you acted up in class some nuns would threaten to seat you next to the Home Babies. That was the message we got in our young years,” Corless recalls.
Now a dedicated historian of the site, as a schoolgirl Corless recalls watching an older friend wrap a tiny stone inside a bright candy wrapper and present it as a gift to one of them.
“When the child opened it she saw she’d been fooled,” Corless says. “Of course I copied her later and I tried to play the joke on another little Home girl. I thought it was funny at the time.”
But later – years later – Corless realized that the children she taunted had nobody. “Years after I asked myself what did I do to that poor little girl that never saw a sweet? That has stuck with me all my life. A part of me wants to make up to them.”
Surrounded by an eight-foot high wall, Tuam, County Galway locals say that they saw little to nothing of the daily life of The Home or of the pregnant young mothers who arrived and left it without a word over the decades.
In the few surviving black and white photographs taken at the site no child is smiling. Instead they simply frown at the camera, their blank stares suggesting the terrible conditions. A local health board inspection report from April 1944 recorded 271 children and 61 single mothers in residence, a total of 333 in a building that had a capacity for 243.
The report described the children as “emaciated,” “pot-bellied,” “fragile” with “flesh hanging loosely on limbs.” The report noted that 31 children in the “sun room and balcony” were “poor, emaciated and not thriving.” The effects of long term neglect and malnutrition were observed repeatedly.
Children died at The Home at the rate of one a fortnight for almost 40 years, one report claims. Another appears to claim that 300 children died between 1943 and 1946, which would mean two deaths a week in the isolated institution.
In The Home’s 36 years of operation between 1926 and 1961 some locals told the press this week of unforgettable interactions with its emaciated children, who because of their “sinful” origins were considered socially radioactive and treated as such.
One local said: “I remember some of them in class in the Mercy Convent in Tuam – they were treated marginally better than the traveler children. They were known locally as the “Home Babies.” For the most part the children were usually gone by school age – either adopted or dead.”
Because of Corless’ efforts we now know the names and fates of up to 796 forgotten infants and children who died there, thanks to her discovery of their death records when researching The Home’s history.
“First I contacted the Bon Secours sisters at their headquarters in Cork and they replied they no longer had files or information about The Home because they had left Tuam in 1961 and had handed all their records over to the Western Health Board.”
Undaunted, Corless turned to The Western Health Board, who told her there was no general information on the daily running of the place.
“Eventually I had the idea to contact the registry office in Galway. I remembered a law was enacted in 1932 to register every death in the country. My contact said give me a few weeks and I’ll let you know.”
“A week later she got back to me and said do you really want all of these deaths? I said I do. She told me I would be charged for each record. Then she asked me did I realize the enormity of the numbers of deaths there?”
The registrar came back with a list of 796 children. “I could not believe it. I was dumbfounded and deeply upset,” says Corless. “There and then I said this isn’t right. There’s nothing on the ground there to mark the grave, there’s nothing to say it’s a massive children’s graveyard. It’s laid abandoned like that since it was closed in 1961.”
The certificates Corless received record each child’s age, name, date – and in some cases – cause of death. “I have the full list and it’s going up on a plaque for the site, which we’re fundraising for at the moment. We want it to be bronze so that it weathers better. We want to do it in honor of the children who were left there forgotten for all those years. It’s a scandal.”
Corless believes that nothing was said or done to expose the truth because people believed illegitimate children didn’t matter. “That’s what really hurts and moved me to do something,” she explains.
During its years of operation the children of The Home were referred to as “inmates” in the press. It was believed by the clergy that the harsh conditions there were in themselves a form of corrective penance. The state, the church and their families all failed these women, Corless contends.
But even now the unexpected difficulty that the local committee Corless has joined to fundraise for a plaque to remember the dead children suggests that not everyone wants to confront the truth about the building’s tragic past.
“I do blame the Catholic Church,” says Corless. “I blame the families as well but people were afraid of the parish priest. I think they were brainwashed. I suppose the lesson is not to be hiding things. To face up to reality.
“My fear is that if things aren’t faced now it’s very easy to slide back into this kind of cover-up again.
I want the truth out there. If you give people too much power it’s dangerous.”
Living and dying in a culture of shame and silence for decades, the Home Babies’ very existence was considered an affront to Ireland and God.
It was a different time, some defenders argued this week, omitting to mention that the stigmatizing silence that surrounded The Home was fostered by clerics. Indeed the religious orders were so successful at silencing their critics that for decades even to speak of The Home was to risk contagion.
And now that terrifying era of shame and silence is finally lifting, we are left to ask what all their lonesome suffering was in aid of, and what did it actually achieve?
To donate to the memorial for the mothers and babies of The Home, contact Catherine Corless at catherinecorless@hotmail.com.
Over the past two weeks, the U.S. and NATO-backed junta in Kiev has persistently pushed Ukraine further down the path of civil war. Regime-orchestrated violence against the anti-fascist resistance is escalating, with a crackdown on both independent militias and civilians in the east.
The ongoing turmoil is part of the aftermath of the Ukrainian presidential elections on May 25. The U.S.-backed coup makers held elections in an attempt to legitimize their fascistic rule and crusade against the independent forces in Eastern Ukraine. While billionaire oligarch Petro Poroshenko won with over 50% of the vote, multiple independent and foreign observers are pointing to an extremely low turnout and election process violations. Right Sector thugs ‘guarded’ polling booths in some areas, while in other places citizens eventually turned to throwing trash in polling boxes rather than cast ballots for an illegitimate regime.
The military operation against eastern Ukraine’s 7 million people was resumed within hours of the election, and some of the worst fighting yet has gripped recently independent Donetsk.
On May 26, just after the results of the election, Kiev’s ground and air forces launched a new assault to capture Donetsk’s international airport, a crucial airport of the region, and penetrate further into the city. Nearly 100 casualties of self-defense fighters and civilians were reported within 24 hours. Many died when Kiev forces opened fire on ambulances transporting the injured to hospitals. Although Kiev declared on Tuesday that self-defense forces had been routed, Donetsk self-defense forces announced on May 28 that the airport and downtown area were retaken. The contention continues, with a Kiev helicopter shot down on the morning of May 29, killing a general.
Donetsk is not alone in being under intensified siege and assault since its successful referendum on independence on May 12. The Ukrainian military has besieged Slavyansk and shelled civilian buildings, including hospitals and schools, including a kindergarten, in an effort to break the resolve of the resistance. Heavy gunfire has also plagued Lugansk.
As Kiev continues its campaign of violence, Kiev’s oligarchs are unsuccessfully ordering workers in the east to refuse to cooperate with the new People’s Republic government. On May 28, however, in an act of courageous defiance, nearly 3000 miners of the Donbas region marched in Donetsk and demanded an end to Kiev’s military operation and the removal of its forces from the area. Miners’ shouts of “Fascism won’t pass!” and “Donbas will not forgive!” challenged the endless noise of gunfire and Kiev’s military airplanes overhead. More miners across Donetsk are joining the protests, with anti-oligarch, anti-fascist revolutionary ideas spreading amongst the people.
The resistance of Donetsk and the east is heroically persevering amidst artillery shells bursting in civilian areas and air force and helicopter attacks on citizen soldiers. With Kiev’s new billionaire president violently tormenting civilians, Putin’s recognition of the Ukrainian presidential election, the announcement of an initiative for reconciliation, and the de facto abandonment of the People’s Republics appeal to join Russia, the people of the East are up against tremendous odds.
Nonetheless, the people’s resistance is refusing to kneel down before the billionaire oligarchs and fascist rulers of Ukraine. On May 24, representatives of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as other struggling cities, met to establish the state of New Russia and unite resistance territories into a sovereign state with a coordinated military. The fightback of the people of Eastern Ukraine is equally a beacon of light in the struggle against Kiev. The eastern bastions of anti-fascism need progressives’ solidarity more than ever. With the arrival of volunteers to the self-defense forces of Donetsk from Russia and Chechnya and the establishment of New Russia, internationalism must be on the agenda of anti-fascists around the world.
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following May 27 statement from the United Electrical Workers (UE) on developments in the Ukraine and U.S. intervention.
The Ukraine Crisis and the New Cold War
On February 22, the elected president of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup which was supported by the Obama administration. Since then, the country has been torn apart and violence has escalated. On May 2 in the southern city of Odessa, supporters of the new unelected Kiev government, including members of the violent extremist Right Sector party, surrounded peaceful, unarmed anti-government protestors who had taken refuge in the city’s main union hall. The right-wing crowd then set the union hall on fire, and 46 people died by being burned alive or jumping to their deaths trying to escape.
We are troubled by this horrific atrocity, and by the fact that mass murder was committed by burning a union hall. We are concerned about the conflict in Ukraine, by the massing of Russian troops near Ukraine’s eastern border and U.S. and NATO troops and planes in neighboring Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which signal the return of the Cold War and the threat of a much hotter war.
A defining period in the history of UE was our union’s courageous opposition to the Cold War. At the end of World War II there was great hope among union members and other Americans for a continuation of FDR’s New Deal, with progressive social and economic policies including national healthcare, expanded Social Security, and progress against racial discrimination in employment. What we got instead was the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act and the Cold War. Military spending, including the nuclear arms race, continued to trump all other priorities. Local conflicts all over the world were treated as global showdowns between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. In the name of “fighting communism,” the U.S. sided with the French and British colonial empires against independence movements, and backed many brutal dictators against their own people. The 40-year-long Cold War included some very hot wars – notably Korea and Vietnam. The CIA organized coups that overthrew democratic governments that dared to disagree with the U.S. government or corporations. On the domestic front, the Cold War was a massive attack on civil liberties and an effort to wipe out organizations, including UE, that refused to enlist in the Cold War.
UE said the U.S. government should direct its resources toward making life better for its own people. UE favored negotiations to resolve differences between the U.S. and the Soviets, and to end conflicts such as Vietnam. UE said the arms race robbed human needs on both sides of the Cold War divide. As UE President Albert Fitzgerald often said, “You can’t have guns and butter.”
The Cold War supposedly ended with 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, which had been composed of the USSR and its Eastern European allies. A key event was the 1990 agreement between the U.S., West Germany and the Soviet Union allowing the reunification of Germany. In those negotiations, President George H.W. Bush promised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO – the U.S.-led anti-Soviet military alliance – would not expand any further east than Germany.
Yet despite that promise, and despite Russia and its former allies no longer having communist governments, NATO has moved steadily eastward toward Russia. NATO now includes the former socialist states of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as three former republics of the U.S.S.R. which border Russia – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Two more former Soviet republics, Ukraine and Georgia, have been promised eventual NATO membership. NATO is now clearly an alliance against Russia, sitting on Russia’s doorstep.
In late 2013 the U.S. began expressing hostility toward Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, and sympathy with the often violent anti-government protestors in Kiev. Yanukovych was not an exemplary leader – we now know that he’d been feathering his own nest – but he was elected in a fair election, and the U.S. supports many governments that are more corrupt and undemocratic than his.
What made Yanukovych a target for regime change was his decision in November to reject harsh loan terms from the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) – including the kind of pension cuts and austerity that have driven Greece into poverty. Yanukovych instead accepted a more favorable offer of economic aid from Russia. His proposal that Ukraine have good economic relations with both Russia and the EU was rejected by the EU and the U.S., which wanted a Ukrainian government hostile to Russia.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland met in December 2013 with Oleh Tyahnybok, head of the far-right Svoboda Party. In a 2012 resolution the European Parliament had called Svoboda “racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic” and appealed to democratic parties in Ukraine “not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party.” In May 2013 the World Jewish Congress labeled Svoboda “neo-Nazi” and called for the party to be banned. Svoboada leader Tyahnybok has called for ridding Ukraine of the influence of “the Moscow-Jewish mafia.” Svoboda is also anti-gay, anti-black, and hostile to equal rights for women.
But since the overthrow of Yanukovych, Svoboda holds four cabinet ministries in Ukraine’s “provisional government” (including deputy prime minister.) In a Feb. 4 conversation caught on tape, Nuland and the U.S. ambassador to Kiev discussed who would get which positions in the new government, including cabinet seats for Svoboda.
In Europe since the end of World War II, there has been a political taboo against allowing fascist and neo-Nazi parties into any government. The Obama administration has now broken that taboo and allied our country with fascists in Ukraine. According to German media reports, about 400 elite mercenaries from the notorious U.S. private security firm Academi (formerly Blackwater) are taking part in Ukrainian military operations against anti-government protesters in southeastern Ukraine. News that Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden has joined the board of directors of Ukraine’s largest private gas company adds the element of conflict of interest. Obama’s policies toward Ukraine and Russia have significantly increased the chances of military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, the world’s two nuclear superpowers. This threatens world peace.
It is unclear whether the presidential election conducted on May 25, under conditions of near-civil war, will help to defuse the crisis in Ukraine.
We reaffirm UE’s historic position. We favor peace and friendly, equitable economic relations between nations. We favor negotiations rather than military confrontation to resolve disputes, including this one. We believe the countries that defeated Nazism in World War II, including the U.S. and Russia, should work together against any resurgence of racism, anti-semitism and fascism in Europe.
Bruce Klipple, General President
Andrew Dinkelaker, General Secretary-Treasurer
Bob Kingsley, Director of Organization
May 27, 2014
Tucson, AZ – Tucson activists organized a presentation and discussion on the crisis in Ukraine, May 23. The teach-in was part of the nationwide emergency action campaign, initiated by the United National Antiwar Coalition, against U.S. intervention in Ukraine.
The event, attended by 20 anti-war activists and Tucsonans eager to learn about the ominous developments in Ukraine, featured speakers from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Alliance for Global Justice, and Workers World Party. The presentations covered the history and dynamics leading up to the Maidan protests, the U.S. and NATO-backed fascist coup in February, the current anti-fascist resistance across the country and the role of U.S. imperialism and the corporate media.
Paul Teitelbaum with Workers World Party and an organizer of the panel explained, “People will never be told the truth of the situation by the bourgeois media. So it’s important to gather and learn about the role of U.S. imperialism in creating the crisis in Ukraine and the relationship between the imperialists and the fascists. Combating media lies and clarifying the political character of the events will help us build the strong anti-imperialist, anti-war movement that we need.”
After the presentations, a lively question and answer discussion shed further light on the urgent need to oppose the U.S. efforts that are backing fascists in Ukraine and the malicious expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe. Speakers and participants also drew connections between U.S. meddling in Ukraine, Belarus and Venezuela.
In front of a flag of the newly established Donetsk People’s Republic in Eastern Ukraine, activists demanded “U.S. hands off Ukraine,” and “Victory to the anti-fascist resistance,” and vowed to uphold solidarity with the people of Ukraine in opposing the U.S.-backed Kiev junta.
Minneapolis, MN – A highly visible anti-war protest was held in Minneapolis May 17, with over 120 people joining the demonstration.
The protest was called to be part of a national round of local anti-war and anti-drone protests during the months of April and May. The Minnesota Peace Action Coalition (MPAC) initiated planning for the event.
The May 17 protest was organized under the call of ‘Stop the wars – Ground the drones’, with the additional slogans of: Zero troops in Afghanistan; ground all military and surveillance drones; end drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia; for a full employment peace economy, not more war; no new wars – hot or cold; and U.S. hands off Syria, Ukraine, Korea, Venezuela, Palestine and everywhere.
In the final days before the protest, as the crisis in Ukraine reached a new and dangerous level, the International Action Center, United National Antiwar Coalition and other organizations issued a call for local protests May 9 – 26 against U.S. intervention in Ukraine.
MPAC, which in the initial call for the protest included the anti-intervention demand on Ukraine, endorsed the national call for anti-war actions on Ukraine and listed the May 17 event as one of the actions being held around the country to speak out against the danger of yet another war.
Signs and speakers at the protest spoke to the demand against intervention in Ukraine and against a new cold war with Russia.
The Minneapolis protest gathered at the very busy corner of Hiawatha Avenue and Lake Street. After 45 minutes of holding signs and banners, there was a march to Walker Community Church for an indoor rally.
A statement issued by organizers said in part, “Since 2004, over 2500 people have been killed by U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan. In Afghanistan, drone attacks are increasing and the U.S. government plans to keep thousands of troops and drones in Afghanistan for years to come. U.S. drone strikes are commonplace in Yemen and elsewhere.”
The statement goes on to say, “The endless series of U.S. wars and interventions continues, including increasing military aid, expanding U.S. bases around the world and internal meddling in other countries through economic pressures overseen by agencies such as International Monetary Fund and World Bank.”
At the rally a member of MPAC also warned that the U.S. was preparing military intervention in Nigeria in the name of saving kidnapped schoolgirls.
“The U.S. military does not intervene to help people, the U.S. military intervenes in the interests of corporations and profits, not people,” said the MPAC member.
The planning for the May 17 protest was initiated by MPAC and endorsed by a broad range of organizations, including, AFSCME Local 3800, Alliant Action, Anti-War Committee, Coalition for Palestinian Rights, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Mayday Books, Military Families Speak Out (MN chapter), Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, Peace and Justice Committee of Sacred Heart Church (St. Paul), Peacemakers of Carondelet Village, PeaceMakers of Macalester Plymouth United Church, St. Joan of Arc Church, Socialist Action, Students for a Democratic Society (UMN), Twin Cities Peace Campaign, Veterans for Peace, Welfare Rights Committee, Women Against Military Madness, Workers International League and others.