MAGDALENES

The recent Mc Aleese Report on Magdalene Laundries may  possibly - but not probably - lead to further reports on how women , and children, and men, have been treated in the past and are being treated at present.
Do people remember that in Belfast rope works the  noise of the machines was so intense that women left the factory deafened for life? Or that women in domestic service had their names changed for  their employers' convenience  ? Or that in the linen mills women worked in bare feet in appalling conditions some of them returning to work  within days of childbirth, some suckling their children at the mill gates , the child in the arms of  another child of the family ? That a good mill employer was one who gave workers a bowl of porridge, which the workers  paid for, in the mornings after a couple of hours work? That women in tobacco factories were exposed to what we now try to get people to avoid ? That  our match factories filled women's lungs  with phosphorus or that the men working in the holds of ships breathed in asbestos which killed many of them ? Is there any report coming about what "hard labour" meant when a judge  handed down that sentence to women as well as men ?
The linen was beautiful and graced many a beautiful table and altar; the ships' tackle and cargoes made some people rich, the tobacco gave many an hour's pleasure , the judge went to lunch satisfied with a good job done.
Some reports then ?

21.2.13.

New Pope 13.2.13.

The election of the  new Pope will cause  excitement in places high and low. In high places because governments have an interest in 1)getting the “right” person into the position and 2) keeping the “wrong” one out. The words right and wrong being of course in the sense governments mean by the words – what profits them and hurts their opponents. Their interest in morals or ideas like truth, freedom, happiness is self serving.

For a long time  some governments were anxious to have a Pope who would aid their struggle against communism. Getting one was easy, and using the resources of the Catholic church ,  material, intellectual and spiritual , was easy also. So that got done. Then governments need prominent  people who either will not oppose their wars or will approve  them   “in certain circumstances”.  That gets done too.

Keeping the wrong one out of prominent positions including papacy is not all that difficult because   often churches have been , not a loyal opposition, but a supporter of government policies.  Cardinal Basil Hume had a notable – and public –disagreement with one of his senior clergy because that man campaigned against nuclear deterrents in Britain and the Cardinal was in favour of nuclear deterrents in Britain and the US. Getting popes and cardinals on side has been an important – and for churches damaging –  part  of the policy of governments.

Now there are  changes . Trade with China means  governments  have to be more diplomatic, because  China will be  the hub of the most massive trade possibilities the world has ever known. And the policy of making the US,  France , Britain  or NATO the police of the world with sole right to nuclear arms is not going to work as the Koreans and others are showing. Crude anticommunism and crude forceful control are  just too crude nowadays.

Also, if the new Pope proposes or encourages or even permits   new church attitudes to divorce, abortion etc. – a very delicate but not impossible task – this could please a lot of governments,  but taking a traditional stance on such things need not matter much to them because more and more people will probably swing over to  a more “liberal” side anyway.

So what will decide how the election will go ? The truth is we don’t know because we don’t   get enough information about who is influencing whom.  What we do know is that it is  difficult for a  Pope to have a free hand surrounded by so many arrangers, influencers, advocates and civil servants. The passage of a suggestion from the Pope’s desk going round the departments and back again can often result in a somewhat different suggestion landing  on the Pope’s desk  for his signature.

And none of the papal gifts, human or divine, will necessarily  cope with that successfully .

So really  what perhaps we should be asking is – who will the civil servants be?

5.2.13
So they found poor King Richard the Third under a carpark. That is not only interesting for the rest of us but it's a great achievemeht for those who did it. Poor Dickey , he was one of the victims of a very sophisticated propagandist, William Shakespeare who led us to believe he was a ripe villain whose victims included helpless children. For some reason  we have never quite understood there are always good people who don't like that kind of thing and so a society gets formed , as in the case of Richard the Third, to restore the good name of the man we used to refer to in school as Dickey Trio ( Richard the Second being Dickey Duo). In Shakespeare's day theatre was as much an instrument of propaganda as it is today - theatre on the boards or on TV or radio -and  Shakespeare had to trim his sails to suit the prevailing political wind. But in his day the penalties for saying the wrong thing were a lot worse than now. Heads  did literally roll and if you were lucky enough to avoid that, you could find yourself without job or reputation and with very little help from anyone apart from those willing to help behindbacks. People argue still about what side was William on, religiously or politically, even  was  he a Catholic or what. Actually he was  a man of his time, with ideas swirling around his head which included  handed-down myths and stories from history and from religious beliefs and superstitions and political propaganda. The strange thing is not that he appears one thing now and another again but that he made such a wondrous job of what he knew and experienced and what other people said other people experienced. In school we relished stories of villainy - Cicero's speech against a rascal called Verres was a delight amid otherwise encircling gloom and Richard the Third was much more appealing that either Romeo or Juliet. So it is likely that some of us at least will feel disappointed  that Dickey Trio is being honoured at last and may turn out to be quite a reasonable fellow after all.
One uneasy thought though. There was a time when people who wanted to portray someone as wicked would give that person some physical difference as if physical difference, a limp, a less  appealing face or whatever had to be accompanied by mental or spiritual defect. That existed well into our own times and is only disappearing now. And was it Laurence Olivier  who emphasised Richard's  supposed villainy by acting him with distorted physical features as well?
Historical narrative  works two ways of course - Shakespeare was not the only one to portray Dickey Trio as a hopelessly wretched villain - he seems to have taken  that picture of him from Thomas More - variously called Saint Thomas More or Sir Thomas More depending on your point of view . More is looked on by some as a saint,has been for many a day, but people like  Hilary Mantel  have now painted a different picture and made him look like someone who greatly approved of and caused other people to be tortured.
So the lesson seems to be , if you are really keen to separate historical or theatrical wheat from chaff, truth from fiction, propaganda from truth, well, it can be done. Certainly. It may however take a long time until you can persuade the archeologists to dig up a carpark  or scholars to blow the dust of some of their long neglected tomes.