TORTURE

The European Court of Human Rights has rejected  a request by 14 men to declare they  were tortured in Ireland by the authority of the British Government. This decision was made with  one judge disagreeing.

The United Nations in 1975 made a Declaration that it is our Human Right not to be subjected to torture, but added, " or to punishment or treatment  that is cruel, inhumane or degrading".

That  addition, helpful though it seems, made it possible for governments to admit they inflicted inhumane and degrading punishment, but to escape being internationally labelled torturers with whatever penalties, if any,  that might bring.  

The British government made use of this , admitting  cruel treatment in Ireland but not  torture. It reminded us of neighbours  who, when faced in court with, say, five  charges  are advised  to plead guilty to the smallest  one - which he or she did not do  -  in the hope of  avoiding a  guilty verdict  on  the larger ones , on which they would probably get a guilty verdict anyway.

 In 1971 a British government spokesperson said there was no torture unless the person who did it took pleasure in doing it. This principle, which seem like something out of a sexual morality pamphlet, enabled people like General Massu in France to say that while he favoured torturing prisoners  in the Algerian war of the nineteen fifties he regretted having to do it, so it was all right  - apart from that he offered little excuse for  his part  in the  military torturing of that war.  He could hardly have pleaded, as present-day governments do, that torture is all right  if it produces results. He and his colleagues succeeded in losing  the war. As torturers tend to do.

In 1997, a group called Christians Against Torture published a Report  in which they included Northern  Ireland under the heading of places where torture was done, even though the examples they quoted were less severe than what was  inflicted on the 14 Irish men whose application for a verdict recognising they were tortured  has been refused for the second time.

So on the one hand governments  have an excuse the UN  left open to them,  on the other  is the clear human belief that torture, as Chambers Dictionary puts it , is " the infliction of severe pain or mental suffering , especially as a punishment or as a means of persuading someone to give information". For the  millions of speakers of the English language that is what torture is - like pushing a prisoner out of a helicopter  - only inches above the ground - knowing that this will cause  unspeakable mental anguish for a prisoner who thinks he or she is about to be smashed to pieces for the family to take care of, if found. For the United Nations torture is one thing, cruel, inhumane, degrading treatment is another. But clearly "cruel, inhumane, degrading treatment" can be , and is,  severe  enough for even  the European Court of Human Rights to call it torture without offending their Grande Chambre up to which we are told  the Irish Government should  bring  the matter now.

Governments nowadays not  only excuse   torture but can publicly support its use in the future - if it produces "results". Sean Mac Bride was right when he called the extension of official torture in the world  an epidemic - that was more than half a century ago.

 As one of the 14 said, the European Community has refused  an opportunity to oppose governmental  torture . To help stop the epidemic.

 Brian Faulkner was the leading politician in Ireland's northeast who insisted on internment without trial in 1971.  The  war in Algeria,  fought  in the nineteen fifties, had provided a pattern of what happens when the military are given control over what would normally be police functions. The military in Algeria took control of police barracks, seized police files many of which were out of date, and acting upon these made many arrests and tortured many of the people arrested . The pattern  in N. Ireland was inevitably similar. Either Mr Faulkner knew what the consequences of his insistence on internment would be in a militarily controlled situation - or he did not. If he knew, then his insistence on internment was even more corrosive than we have ever admitted, insisting on a measure  whose consequences he knew  must  be disastrous. Internment  on military terms  did not mean just putting people in jail without trial or even charge - it meant torture as well for many of them. The Algerian experience was not ancient history, it was during Mr Faulkner's time. If in that case he did not know the consequences of what he insisted on, this  must be  incompetence or cynicism or both.  

The United Nations can at times be too anxious to satisfy some  people's  demands at  other people's expense.

In France  significant public discussion occurred - even among their military - about official French government torture. In 1972 Jules Roy who had begun his career in the military wrote a powerful condemnation of General Massu. Another French general, Bollardiere, condemned their official torturing and  engaged , to his cost,  in public dispute with  Massu about what their government was responsible for. 

There was no comparable dispute or public row in Ireland or Britain. Governments  successfully diverted the  argument, such as it was, away from the suffering of real people being really tortured on to the demands of "national security" and getting "results" and to the false distinction between torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment .

 Which unfortunately is much the same thing.

Saint Patrick's Day

May we have a very Happy March 17th., St. Patrick's Day.

Celebrating ,  thinking what kind of Ireland Patrick helped to create,  wondering what  kind of Ireland he came into in the first place.

We can manage the celebrating  without much bother, to the sight of  marching - or dancing - feet and the sound of pipes.  What kind of Ireland Patrick left us with when he departed to his reward,  we will be  reminded of that if we  go to church.

Which leaves the question - maybe the most important question of all - what  kind of Ireland did Patrick come to when he was  dragged here unwillingly, having to  escape from us by his  adventurousness and probably a few safe houses along the east coast ?  Whatever he thought of us then, he  came back to Ireland because he believed   these Celtic people were too precious  not to believe in the One God he believed in.

The Ireland Patrick had been dragged into was a structured and naturally developed society. The Celts had been one of the most powerful  people in Europe, challenging Greek and Roman,  so powerful that Julius Caesar had to kill a million of them in an eight year campaign to get his troops to invading  distance of Britain - a campaign glorified until recently by educationalists who might have known better.  Patrick learned so much  about our people's laws, customs and history that he and his followers  collected the laws, listened to the oral histories of the people and wrote  down both - of course they put in Christian bits and removed some non-Christian bits but Irish laws, oral history and customs that had been  passed on through generations survived. The laws were more humane than, for example,  those of Hammurabi  that are reflected in the Mosaic laws and were concerned with everyday living from royalty to bee-keeping, from ill-doing to the care and maintenance of invalids.  The Celts put great value on remembering rather than writing, cultivating memory as enthusiastically in their day as we are de-skilling ourselves of it in ours. At Festival times they reminded each other of what their laws were, decided who was keeping them and who was not, who should be leaders  and what should be done  about  all of this.  It was a very sophisticated law system within which there were families recognised as skilled in law, medicine, spirituality.

Patrick left two letters  that give us a glance - an annoyingly slight glance - into his life experiences, making little of himself but proud of his converts, fiercely angry with  a wretched man called Coroticus  who captured and sold some of them, and Patrick himself paying money  for permission to cross  borders between one clan territory and another in his campaign of conversion. In one of the letters he called us a barbarian race, although  we had laws and customs and social organisation that influenced every part of our lives. His trouble was that he  had been  brought up in a culture obsessed with the idea that there  must be  a perfect man, woman and  society and your governors   knew what shape these all were , so  everyone had better be pushed into that mould or perish. The Irish system and belief, though, arose up from the land  and the people on it, morality was based upon what nature and neighbours need, or need to avoid,  more concerned with restoring the dignity of a person offended than  with punishing the offender.

Patrick  respected  the Irish landscape too, so  he and his followers gradually nudged their way past the Druids - the ancient intellectuals in Celtic Europe  and Ireland - and treated our mountains and  wells and growing things as sacred, just as the Druids had done. Our reverence for the mountains and the wells and the healing  herbs still has a pleasant  mingling of Christian and Druid in it.

But all was not sacred, all was not a gentle passing of the religious , spiritual baton from Druid to Priest in ancient Ireland. There were conflicts before and after, but  less religious bloodletting than we might expect.  Ireland had its internal and external battles before  and  after Patrick. Because the people  relied more on memory than writing, what happened in Ireland was recorded by people in their remembered stories  passed down  generation by generation, stories of their history, real and imagined but always with truth embedded in it. Patrick's  followers in years after him wrote down the laws  with their exact directions for communal life and the folk stories with their particular and precious form of truth. 

The folk memory of Irish battles long ago was  just as valid an echo  of  past realities in Ireland as Homer's stories or Biblical stories were for their generations.

For that thought one of the people we can thank is Sean Mc Mahon who among his many wonderful books wrote one  entitled  " Battles Fought on Irish Soil -  A Complete  Account" (Londubh Books, Dublin 2010). This book includes a short account of the pre-Christian, folk-remembered,  two battles  of Moytura  and the Battle at the Ford. Patrick, if he had an ear to hear, would have spent lonely times hearing these stories around someone's fireside just as the Greeks learned their old stories around theirs. Sean Mac Mahon writes : " The earliest orally preserved belief was in a series of magical invasions, with each indigenous people falling victim to or being enslaved by successive new -comers. This may indeed describe in folk memory the reality of the country's past. As such it is as tenable a lore as Homer's Iliad was of  Ionian battles long ago......".  Patrick would have experienced the value and the beauty , the dangers and the faults but in both he  saw what he believed his God would find  enriching and redeemable. And so, not because  he is a world renowned saint, but because he learned what the Irish race is about , he reverenced our past while he  tried to mould our future.

And by the way, when he said we were a barbarous race he was using that awful word because of the culture in which he was reared.  The Greeks and Romans - and many people whom they invaded - called people who  did not speak their language barbarians, no matter how civilised they were  - they said they could only talk bar-bar-bar.  Like some Agatha Christie characters  equipped only with English stepping  off a bus in Delhi hearing  what,  in their unknowing ,  sounds to them like a babble of voices,  bar-bar-bar, from people whose language is a  thousand years older than their own.

We think of Patrick not just because of  what we  became after him,  but  because it helps us understand  what we were before he  even  got here.

(Reminder note about some of the ancient Irish laws : Bees - when you start keeping bees you give four nearest neighbours pledges against their doing any harm. After three years without complaints the neighbours each get a swarm of bees and become  beekeepers themselves if they want to.

Invalids: If you injure someone he or she is to be tended at home but if after nine days is still not recovered you are liable for maintenance , lodging and medical expenses.

There are complications and variations in the laws, so  "A Guide To Early Irish Law"  by Fergus Kelly , first published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies  in 1988 and later reprinted, will help.)

International Women's Day

Former  President of Ireland  Mary Mc Aleese made a strong statement for International Women's Day about the Catholic Church and its official attitude to women.

The R. Catholic Church was and to an extent still is one of the most influential  bodies in the world. It should be forward in recognising human rights, dignity and potential.  Both Men and Women  should be - by right - in every place at every level in the Church where decisions are made. Religious  belief decisions, financial decisions, all decisions.

Both  men and women  should  be  at every level in all the churches'  work of creating and sharing  their  service to all people , including the work of all the "holy orders" of the church from  caretaker to priesthood and wherever leadership is to be. No question. Either we want the divine gifts of all our people to be  shared and enjoyed by all of us or we don't. If we do, let us get on with it.

In a sense we have been getting on with it for a long while.  Crab-like, believe it or not.

 Look at this for instance:

There were  times and places in which women were not allowed to sing in church - and some powerful people did some weird  things to make sure they wouldn't.  Then some genius got the great idea of having a window in a wall between choir and  everybody else so women could sing their hearts out through that. Then another great idea arrived,  that women could come forward  and let's hear the beautiful  voices in full glory - but in a balcony so as not to be looked at and maybe distract one and all. 

When the ancestors of us ordinary folk  were granted seats in church - and it took a while  for them to get that far  - it was decided eventually that standing together, men and women,  and therefore mingling, was not prim and proper at worship, so women should be  on one side of the congregation and men on the other.  Unmingling as it were.

In many parts of Ireland for centuries our ancestors had to worship in the open air, and then, when by leave of landlords and suchlike, churches were  built, they had  standing room  only, so a lot of mingling occurred. For some reason de-minglification lasted rather long in Ireland, right through half the lifetimes of us very elderly folk but now women can sit more or less where they like. Not usually in the sanctuary of course.  

Meanwhile  the approach - at crablike pace - of women towards equal place nearby  our altars was going on. Women were eventually allowed to read the sacred Books - the Bible - to our congregations, but only "if there was no suitable man available" and only outside the altar area, the sanctuary. Inch by inch however this unstoppable journey  step by step was happening. Then we took away the rails separating congregation from priest and  so women  now read happily from The Books and assist the priest in some acts of worship - inside the sanctuary.

It all took such a long, long time. But, then, it took a long time for women to make their slow approaches into the law courts and towards the judge's  benches. A long time for women  even to get voting, or into universities , longer still to get into representational politics, upwards even in trades unions, years and years, step by step, hurt by hurt. It took a long time for such a  slow step by step  movement to bring women into decision-making in business  and  into sharing all their genius in  literature.

So what did the Church do that everybody else was not doing in this unwillingness to invite  women to where they were needed as much as - sometimes more than - anyone else?  Trouble with the churches is that we expect better of them. More concern for human dignity, more concern for human rights, more concern - even if only for our own churchy reasons - for enriching ourselves with the wit and wisdom not of some members of our  churches but of all of them.

So the slow movement of women towards the altar in the R. Catholic church has been step by weary step. It's a pity the end point of this pilgrimage is not being hastened by  discussion and consent among  all of us rather than  just giving in to the inevitability of a place  for women at the altar as priests, an ending that people in high places tried to prevent and people in  humble places are going to make real.

Dr Mary Mc Aleese talked , as well she might, of officialdom in terms of misogyny.

But there is another element - fear.  Fear of what is to come -- whatever will it be?

I hesitate to do it but I will do it nevertheless, some might call it my dream, others  my nightmare, but I prefer to call it my harmless dream. The journey of women towards the sanctuary in our Church has been long and is still unfinished ....yet.......because of  a  future feared rather than a future faced........but future has its own inevitabilities.........

So imagine .  It is Christmas Day ... approaching noon.....St Peter's Square, tens of thousands of people waiting for the Pope to bless the city and the world,  blessing Urbi et Orbi..... murmurings swell , then die away as the clocks chime.... the Pope  comes out on the balcony , the cheers ....the silence. ....the silence of expectancy....what will  the pope say to enliven our faith and hope......"

And the pope, arms upraised begins to speak in welcome and prayers..

And the Pope's first words are :

"My husband and  I........ "

ULSTER SCOTS, LANGUAGE OR DIALECT?

One of my clerical colleagues told me a story.  A good story, short, beautifully told. About two youngsters in North Antrim  mitching  from school.  They had their day out but wanted to get back into school before closing time. On their way back  one of them fell into a ditch. My friend told the story  so well that when  I met him in North Antrim  I  would ask him to tell the story again. Being a Belfast yin I could not tell it the way he did.  All I could say that sounded even like it was the end of the story where  the youngster who hadn't  fallen into the ditch rushed up to the school to tell about the accident. He goes into the classroom all excited and says , "........Hey  Maister, wee Johnny hae couped i ' the sheugh an' he's up  tae the houghs in glaur...."

Local dialect like that is better  spoken than in print. But some writers have  made a  brave attempt to write in it. Paidric Gregory  an architect of many churches in Ireland and abroad, and a composer of many verses in homely local dialect was one.   About the same time as my clerical colleague was telling me his story Gregory  was publishing a book in Belfast called "Ulster Ballads" (published  by Mullans, Belfast, in 1959).  One of the ballads was entitled , "What I Heard in a Country Grocery Store:

Ach, how're ye Rab, Troth I'm wet clane thro'

God knows  'twas a tarr'ble dhreep o' a day.

Gi'es a half-yin o' yella whuskey - nate !

I'll need it tae help me up 'Vogie Brae.......

Professor Estyn Evans of Queen's University ,  Chairman of the Committee on Ulster Folklife and Traditions wrote a  Preface to Gregory's  book :  "Here the reader will find the lore and the wisdom of past ages distilled in verse , flavoured with the tang of a strong regional tongue and shot through with quiet  humour.  Whatever the subjects , the folklorist and the student of dialect will find in these poems material of value to them".

Another  author writing in Ulster Scots and not widely known now was Archibald Mc Ilroy, who also lived in Belfast. One of his books was a collection of short studies entitled  "The Humour of Druid's Island", published in 1902 also by Mullans.  The Druid's Island of Mc Ilroy's imagination was set in County Fermanagh.  One of his Druid's Island characters, Geordie , refuses to have  chloroform  in his leg operation :  "........ a  intent' tae watch what goes on. Why man, ye micht hae leg an' a' awa' wi' ye whun a got waukin't up".   Mc Ilroy writes in the Preface to this collection : " We  in Ulster are very proud of our unique dialect...We have a supreme contempt for poor creatures who have nothing to fall back upon but the pure English tongue".  

For many of us the  Scots dialect probably means  Robbie Burns but  in recent years there has been  a reaching out towards  a more extensive audience  in  Scotland and Ireland .

In 1992 The Saltire Society - an association founded in 1936 to promote aspects of Scottish culture and development - published  "Tales Frae the Odyssey O Homer Owerset  Intil  Scots"  by William Neill.  In his  Introduction ('A  Ward Anent This Buik' ) William Neill remarks that these tales    "... hae been telt tae the auncient Greeks lang afor... scrievit doun ..... " and makes a vigorous defence against the idea that  "...Scots is no a leid (language)but a 'mere dialect'.....".

You  can see in Neill's book his resentment against, as he puts it,  the  "cockapennies  ettlin (trying) tae yird (bury) "  Scots as a dialect rather than a language.  

Dialects are not languages but develop within  languages, sometimes because of mingling , sometimes because of isolation.  The Irish language has Ulster, Connaught and Munster dialects;  English has dialects in Scotland and England,  other European countries have  standard language and local patois.   Sometimes local dialect is indeed looked down on for instance  it took a long time for the BBC  to allow  local dialects  to be spoken in its programmes. But we need not be too hard on them for that because even after the great French Revolution the new regime tried to standardise the French  language by the elimination of local dialects, so  that  is what  "cockapennies " of whatever nationality do.

Coisceim , producer of beautiful Irish Language books of many shapes, titles and sizes, published a few years ago a guide to  words, phrases and usages of Ullans,  Ulster Scots.

Whether a  particular way of speech like this is a  language or  a dialect  is often , and sometimes hotly, disputed. One of the dangers of trying to promote a dialect into a language is that, in the  haste to  do it,  we may end up with little more than the  existing dominant language spoken or written with too much of  the same with local variations and in  different spelling  and accent and saying this is a language in its own right.    

And that does nobody's dignity  - or enjoyment  - much good.

Ulster Scots deserves a better fate than that. But for political reasons there's a danger of it.