MOTHERS AND BABIES TESTIMONY - "GOVERNING IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE IRISH PEOPLE!"

Yesterday, RTE Parliamentary TV summarised the history and rationale of the movement for Irish Independence as the fulfilment of the centuries-old aspiration for the Irish people to govern themselves so as to pursue the best interests of Ireland and the Irish people. It is of course a long and complex story. Centuries of oppression, exploitation and indeed betrayal followed by the functioning of a very imperfect polity. One hundred years on, we are still debating the methods and the events that brought the Irish State into being. “A terrible beauty is born”. The costs to us and to our opponents was very high. Was it necessary to have recourse to physical force? Did the independent Ireland which emerged justify the shedding of a single drop of blood, the loss of a single life? In truth, much blood was shed and a great many lives were lost, but did the process lead to a genuine independence? Did Ireland say goodbye to British rule, only to replace it by Rome rule and now by the overwhelming power and influence of US led globalisation and the extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic outlook of the post Second World War European Union? Are Irish people still really in control of their own destiny? Is Ireland governed for the good and the interests of all the people of Ireland? Clearly in the case of abortion and the Repeal of the Eighth, the Irish people and the Irish state did not abide by their own laws and chose to disrespect the rights to life of hundreds, thousands (nobody knows how many) Irish citizens as yet unborn and all their future descendants. The hideous brutality with which this subterfuge was executed and allegedly voted for would have made our former British masters blush and led the Nazi and Holocaust-driven leaders of the Third Reich to express both surprise and satisfaction! It did NOT take long for the Irish to settle into killing their own progeny and the descendants of that Progeny. But glaring and awful as that step was, it was by no means the only example of the rights of Irish people being overlooked and destroyed under the feet of Irish people or, in this case, by Irish legislators. The Commission of Inquiry into the Mother and Babies scandal has barely reported. Its work is monumental – over three thousand pages – but already the Government want to destroy the oral testimony given by survivors to the Commission. That can NOT be in the interests of Irish people governing themselves for the good of all the people of Ireland! No wonder the survivors are dismayed and feel betrayed – to have come so far, so painfully and so painstakingly and NOT even to have a single glorious day in the sun, but to be swept aside and confined to the cobwebs of History. All those involved, all those responsible can manage and are capable of better than that regardless of vacuous theories of parliamentary rule and precedents. Ireland got rid of the tyranny of Cromwell and Westminster for just those reasons! 

Maurice James, Barrister at Law, International Relations Consultant