I still remember my skin crawling when Tony Blair apologised for the Great Famine. Now, as then, I could not help but feel the act to be mawkish symbolism. Though I am in the minority. It was a well received apology. The devastation of that famine cannot be overstated. And that efforts to ameliorate were minimal is uncontested. Blair was head of the government of the nation who had to power to relieve, but chose not to. That the famine occurred over 150 years ago, is considered immaterial as the entity known as the UK still exists.
That is how we look at the world. We have divided ourselves into nations. And there are rules to being a nation. Everything your nation has ever done, is doing or will ever do is your responsibility. Everything our nation does is our business and we’ll only take responsibility for those acts we choose to take responsibility for. We expect and demand shame and pleas of contrition from others. We carefully educate our young to only see what is commendable about us.
In the last few years the head of government in our nation has had to make various apologies for how our nation treated its most vulnerable citizens. It is the closest we’ve gotten to admitting that the imagined nation created for the consumption and indoctrination of our children is wildly different from the nation that exists in reality.
We only exist as this nation because we have taught our children that this nation exists. We only exist because for generations we have taught our children that we exist. And this belief is bone deep. It is unshakable. It is an integral part of our core identity. We are Irish. We exist because we have always existed. We exist because being Irish is better than not being Irish. We are Irish because our ancestors are Irish. We are Irish and proud to be Irish. We exist because we have taught ourselves to exist. We are this nation and no other. We are this nation because we are proud to be this nation.
How then do we integrate shame into this self-perpetuating identity of exceptionalism and pride? The dead generations (and not so dead generations) that took a nation and forged from it a state, stand now accused and found guilty of callous cruelty. Not the personal cruelty, confined to home and hearth, but a cruelty made into custom and law. A cruelty of intellectual and material poverty. A cruelty of devotion to virginity and faith. A cruelty of rigid conformity and hypocrisy. A cruelty of gender and class.
A cruelty that only idealism and patriotism can fester.
How do we weld shame onto pride? How do we conjoin identity and reality?
And worse, so much worse, is the money. We might forgive the dead and not so dead generations for their wanton obedience to a vicious ideology. We could patronise them for their naivety and simplicity. Even excuse them for being in the inescapable clutches of an all pervading custom of hate. But the money.
This was not simple idealism. This was profit. This was not punishment and rehabilitation and salutary lesson. This was profit. Babies were sold. Hair was sold. Labour was sold. This was profit.
In this more enlightened age we understand the power of faith. It can animate those in its power to acts of unimaginable callousness. Many of those who imprisoned pregnant women, took their children and forced them to work probably believed that this was the right thing to do. I imagine it is easy to hate women, especially sexually active women, if one is taught to hate women, especially sexually active women and with a particular vehemence, sexually active women who aren’t married. And why would one even ask about the boys and men who got these women pregnant when one is taught to hate sexually women and only sexually active women?
With the correct interventions and therapies, one could possibly counsel this hate away. One could learn to forgive these poor souls lost in their hateful faith. But the money. The money. The money. They sold babies, hair and other people’s labour.
How do teach ourselves the shame we expect other nations, other states, to feel? Do we just leave it to the Taoiseach du jour to apologise and the taxpayer to give inadequate compensation? How do we teach the shame of our nation colluding in the kidnapping and selling of babies?
