One of sad side issues with the Magdalene laundry camps were the apparent collusion by all and sundry. The Gardai appear to have acted as enforcers for the nuns even where there was no criminal/court angle. It appears there were individual gardai that turned a blind eye and gave them a chance to get "the boat to England". Will there be an apology?
The senior officer on duty promised that he would “send the car out there straight away”, but then told his subordinates “Ah, we’ll just have a cup of tea first. We’ll let the girls make the boat” to Britain which was due to leave Cork docks shortly.
Not every one stood idly by. Hail to Jemmy Gunnery!
One of sad side issues with the Magdalene laundry camps were the apparent collusion by all and sundry. The Gardai appear to have acted as enforcers for the nuns ever where there was no criminal/court angle. It appears there were individual gardai that turned a blind eye and gave them a chance to get "the boat to England". Will there be an apology?
Not news to those of us old enough to remember.
The stories are shocking and barbaric as been told by Josephine Meade on Morning Ireland now, forced to work, all her siblings taken away, hair cut short and her name changed. Everybody knew and the powers that be are still sweeping and looking for carpets.
The report I believe is due out today and was headed by Martin MacAlease (now retired) but no minister will launch the report, or will commend this report to the house. We do not even know how many women were incarcerated as the religious orders wont give the info.
Another sad chapter of Ireland unable to run matters in a just or humane way.
But the majority of Irish people complied. It is farcical that the church alone be scapegoated here. Apologies are surely due from the minister for justice et al?
If there is one aspect of the Magdalene Laundries criminality that cries out for an apology by the Irish State, it is the way the Irish State suspended the rule of law for decades in order to allow the kidnappers to do exactly what they wanted with their captives.
But be careful: the fact that the State complied with the criminality of senior (and junior) people in the Church does absolutely nothing to exonerate the Church from that criminality.
It's not even a mitigating factor.
Shameful episode, we can rightly blame the church, but everyone else stood idly by and let it happen.
So did the German people in the 30's. And their excuses were that they 'didn't know'. And there was a Gestapo abroad in Ireland too just as there was in Germany.
They are still around too some of the remnants. There's an ancient old nutter who posted around these parts who took it on himself to wander around Irish bars near Holloway Road in London just a few years back trying to dig up dirt on a former inmate of the residential homes that he and his equally insane old Ultra mates could use to discredit the man.
This is a shame on all the Country.
hung our heads in shame too.
In my opinion, the "but" is inappropriate.
And the word "everyone" is open to misunderstanding. Those who didn't cooperate (there were some) could look forward to ostracisation, ridicule, being robbed of their career and ultimately emigration.
It would be like blaming the German post office for the actions of the Gestapo. We had a Gestapo alright and ever since McQuaid founded his spying ring among lay orders in the Irish civil service we have had a de facto Ultra catholic Gestapo in operation in Ireland.
Thankfully now diminished by the ultimate leveller- decrepitude. But make no mistake about it there are still elements visible in at least two Government civil service departments I know of who are busy trying to machine gun deflection around so that the vileness of this Gestapo in Irish social affairs remains unchallenged.
I have a dream that someday i shall see Nuns and Bankers in handcuffs outside the high court , as i said, its a dream.
I'd just like to see catholics do what it says on their tin. And throw their weirdos overboard as per the instructions in their bible- tied to a large boulder.
Funny how that bit of the bible keeps being missed. Odd for such an apparently well-thumbed book.
Maybe Toland, everyone does I suppose mean everyone, and there was a few like the odd Guard quoted in the OP, that let some of the poor "escapees" get to the boat.
A lot of the general public (and your right not all) knew what was going on, and then piously looked down on these women.
Can we throw in a few bishops and unchristian brothers?
The majority, I believe, just went on with their lives and thought little of what was happening. If they did think about it, they probably felt that the nuns were providing a public service. I'm not sure that most people under the age of 50 can quite understand how different public morality used to be.
What a kip of a country we live in .Almost ashamed to be Irish .
Throw the muppets as far as you like as far as I'm concerned. I'd have had Seanie Brady and his mob fired from a cannon off the Cliffs of Moher years ago.
It is amazing after all the abuse inquiries, corruption of the state, deflection and relieving the citizens of the state of billions in property and cash down the centuries that this same cult still has its doors open for business.
I'd not sure whether to commend them for their ability to con people or condemn the Irish people for being as thick as two short planks when it comes to offering up their wallets and social policies to a gang of outrageous chancers in frocks.
My point is that saying "everyone" dishonours those who tried and failed to resist this subversion of democracy.
Irish society was sick at the time, but it contained some healthy people, who were treated in the standard fashion for "troublemakers".
The method was simple and unrelenting: they were deprived of any platform to make their complaints and implacably hunted out of the country.