The Cedar Lounge Revolution

I’m hesitant in dealing with Waters latest thoughts, particularly in terms of the context he seeks to frame them in, but…

Waters takes the report on child abuse in institutions released this week to offer a remarkable thesis which goes a bit like this…

Reserving to itself vast resources of power, the State tends towards evil. It cannot really be “good”, and even with eternal watchfulness and openness does well to avoid outright corruption,

I’m always dubious about applying such absolutes to human generated processes. The idea that it is any more than a tool, or construct seems to me to be a fundamental misunderstanding of its nature. The idea that ‘vast resources of power’ per se means a tendency to ‘evil’, however we define the latter term is an intriguing one, but only so much so. Let’s consider that the Irish “State” is less complex than – say – that in Sweden, or the United Kingdom or indeed Germany. It’s sphere of influence is lesser, it’s tendency to sub-contract, or more usually ignore, so much greater. But there are other problems too. It’s not in the more highly regulated Nordic states that we see endemic corruption, and yes, I’m taking the term entirely literally whereas he may be using it in a more metaphorical sense. But what alternative does one have when he throws around concepts with little or no definition? By contrast it is the societies where state like structures have atrophied or disappeared entirely which are most clearly ‘corrupt’. And even if we consider it on a larger state/smaller state axis one can see that more highly regulated/regulatory states fare better, at least according to that not entirely convincing source of Transparency International.

So, one wonders what basis Waters has for his assertions, if any?

He then shifts to the Ryan report which he argues:

…describes a wholesale State-driven system of child abuse. The Catholic Church was up to its dog-collar in it, but with the collusion of the Department of Education, An Garda Síochána and the courts.

I’m sorry, but I find this thesis entirely unconvincing. The Irish State, as I’ve noted before, must carry full co-responsibility for what happened, but it wasn’t from any excess of application of its ‘vast’ resources of power. Quite the opposite. It was a state which conveniently for itself didn’t believe the state had any role in engaging on any level with the institutions given responsibility to do so. And effectively the systems within which these abuses occurred were privatised.

Let’s look at the report summary again [again, available on the IT website]:

The Department of Education had legal responsibility under the Children Act 1908 for all children
committed to the Industrial and Reformatory Schools. The Minister had the power to grant and
withdraw certification, and when certified the institution had to accept the Rules and Regulations
set out by the Department. They defined the standards that were acceptable for accommodation,
clothing, diet, instruction, training, visits by family and home visits, and the time of discharge. The
Department’s inspectors had the duty of ensuring these regulations were complied with.

The Minister also determined the amount of money paid for the upkeep of the children. The
amount was negotiated periodically with the Congregations.

It continues:

The Department had too little information because the inspections were too few and too limited in
scope. If the Department had been in possession of better information about the Schools, it would
have been in a stronger position to exercise control. The officials were aware that abuse occurred
in the Schools and they knew the education was inadequate and the industrial training was
outdated.
The Department of Education should have exercised more of its ample legal powers over the
Schools in the interests of the children. The power to remove a Manager given to the Department
in 1941 should have been exercised or even threatened on more than the handful of occasions
when it was invoked, which would have emphasised the State’s right to intervene on behalf of
children in its care.

Does this sound like a state which was pursuing its powers to their fullest extent? Or how would he explain this?

The Department was lacking in ideas about policy. It made no attempt to impose changes that
would have improved the lot of the detained children. Indeed, it never thought about changing
the system.
The failures by the Department that are catalogued in the chapters on the schools can also be
seen as tacit acknowledgment by the State of the ascendancy of the Congregations and their
ownership of the system. The Departments’ Secretary General, at a public hearing, told the
Investigation Committee that the Department had shown a ‘very significant deference’ towards
the religious Congregations. This deference impeded change, and it took an independent
intervention in the form of the Kennedy Report in 1970 to dismantle a long out-dated system.

And its conclusion is very clear:

2. The deferential and submissive attitude of the Department of Education towards the
Congregations compromised its ability to carry out its statutory duty of inspection and
monitoring of the schools. The Reformatory and Industrial Schools Section of the
Department was accorded a low status within the Department and generally saw itself as
facilitating the Congregations and the Resident Managers.

And continues:

The system of inspection by the Department of Education was fundamentally flawed and
incapable of being effective.
The Inspector was not supported by a regulatory authority with the power to insist on changes
being made.
There were no uniform, objective standards of care applicable to all institutions on which the
inspections could be based.
The Inspector’s position was compromised by lack of independence from the Department.
Inspections were limited to the standard of physical care of the children and did not extend to their
emotional needs. The type of inspection carried out made it difficult to ascertain the emotional
state of the children.
The statutory obligation to inspect more than 50 residential schools was too much for one person.
Inspections were not random or unannounced: School Managers were alerted in advance that an
inspection was due. As a result, the Inspector did not get an accurate picture of conditions in
the schools.
The Inspector did not ensure that punishment books were kept and made available for inspection
even though they were required by the regulations.
The Inspector rarely spoke to the children in the institutions.

The State failed not because it was a State but because it didn’t even fulfill its own responsibilities and obligations. It failed in the worst possible way it could. It left undefended those who depended upon it utterly for their safety and well-being. And it did it year after year. Decade after decade.

9. The Rules and Regulations governing the use of corporal punishment were disregarded
with the knowledge of the Department of Education.
The legislation and the Department of Education guidelines were unambiguous in the restrictions
placed on corporal punishment. These limits however, were not observed in any of the schools
investigated. Complaints of physical abuse were frequent enough for the Department of Education
to be aware that they referred to more than acts of sporadic violence by some individuals. The
Department knew that violence and beatings were endemic within the system itself.

The State refused even to countenance the idea that anything was wrong.

13. Complaints by parents and others made to the Department were not properly investigated.
Punishments outside the permitted guidelines were ignored and even condoned by the
Department of Education. The Department did not apply the standards in the rules and their own
guidelines when investigating complaints but sought to protect and defend the religious
Congregations and the schools.

But this isn’t true of all States. Not all states have had this endemic problem. We can look at the entirely problematic history of social care in the UK and further afield and see that this news – even despite their own instances of appalling abuse – is regarded as almost sui generis.

Which makes his following assertion simply wrong.

State-run systems operate on a reflex impulse of denial, at the heart of which is a knot of ideological rationalisation called upon by each component to justify its own role.

This idea that ’state-run systems operate on a reflex impulse of denial’ is empty rhetoric. What does it mean? What could it mean? Is the NHS a ‘reflex impulse of denial’? Does that seem likely when even the Conservatives are lining up to attest to its centrality in British society?

Privatise our police, our health services and whatever and precisely the same outcome, if not indeed worse would have happened. Not because of some intrinsic malfeasance on the part of privatised bodies (although ideologically and rationally I’m dubious about their utility in such contexts…not least because I suspect profit motives are simply inapplicable in broad societal structures like those). But because the problem lay with a lack of regulation on the part of the state, because this state had an intrinsic aspect to it that allowed such abuses to occur.

But of course the true vacuity of the argument is demonstrated by his not suggesting an alternative. It is reminiscent of a sort of ’shit happens’ approach. Which it can, but doesn’t mean that all and every step should be taken to prevent it happening.

In the case of the horrors set forth in the Ryan report, the dominant ideological proposition was that troublesome children were a threat to public order, so any means were justifiable in their subjugation. Such children were beyond the human embrace.

There he is correct. But he’s ignoring the basic central truth about all of this, which makes all the cant about the ‘State’ entirely irrelevant.

He refuses to engage with the essential convergence of ideology and convenience between Church and State. The latter completely in thrall, and opportunistically willing to dump social problems be they educational, health or welfare related, onto the former. It was also willing to use a sort of sub-corporatist line where the Church could ”… do the job”. The latter jealous of its societal power and unwilling to cede anything to even the faintly invigorated state of the mid to latter part of the 20th century other than under the fracturing impacts of declining vocations, rocketing costs and a diminishing societal power due to various reasons not limited to a general liberalisation. Because let’s be clear. If those impacts hadn’t occurred our educational systems – as we can see from reading between the lines in reports such as this – would remain dominated by the religious in the context of a state which didn’t want to pay the costs of state education.

He continues (and later drags in his own hobby horse, something which so profoundly distorts his judgement it is now all but impossible to take anything he says with any degree of seriousness, and it is only the egregiousness of the analysis that makes it necessary to critique – and BTW his analysis as regards the way in which men are treated in some contexts where families disintegate isn’t entirely wrong either but his means of bringing our attention to it is massively counter-productive):

Once the State closes ranks around any breaking of the law, the illegality creates a new dispensation, a new constitution that nullifies the old. The wider society knew that decency had been abandoned, but the corruption of State power unleashed a deadly concoction of fear, contrived scepticism, powerlessness and impatience with anyone insisting that something evil was happening. It takes great courage to challenge people with powers to snatch children and incarcerate them in state gulags, and so the popular perspective on these by-no-means-secret obscenities was expressed in lame and guilty jokes.

But the state didn’t ‘close ranks about the breaking of the law’. It accepted almost unquestioningly the bona fides of the Church. It rendered spiritual and temporal power to the latter. Where there was evident abuse it walked away. Because that too was fundamental to this sub-corporatist approach. The state believed it had no business involving itself in such matters, that this was within the sphere of the Church. And it did this with respect to this particular issue as it did in a more public way during the Mother and Child controversy in relation to both the Church and the medical profession. Another instance where religion and economics entwined in the most pernicious fashion possible.

And why? Because it was ideologically in keeping with the supposed centrality of the religion to Irish life, it incurred no cost to the state. It avoided confrontation. It was easier. It was, as ever, fundamentally about class and power and it was all in the name of received laissez faire economics filtered through sub-corporatist/religious approaches to the organisation of society.

But he knows, one presumes, that only be establishing clear guidelines within state institutions such as the Gardaí and the Department of Education with parallel reporting structures that would have independent autonomy and authority and a proper regimen of regulation and oversight at all stages would it be possible to mitigate against the crimes that were committed. And that requires not less state intervention, but more of it. Considerably more (and even were these functions subcontracted to third parties it would still necessitate greater interventions).

And none of this, none of this, has anything to do with his cod-philosophical anti-statism which explicitly by ignoring their centrality to this lets the Church wriggle off the hook (consider that his only thoughts on their guilt is the reference quoted above ‘The Catholic Church was up to its dog-collar in it’ – remarkable for a piece just over 850 words). Nothing. It’s the absolute opposite. It’s a state which criminally refused (and refuses) to live up to its constitution and its responsibility. A state which criminally allowed itself to become the instrument of a religion that continually rewrote the rules for itself as it simultaneously demanded the most exacting standards for others. And if we look at the range of services that this state provide it is clear that as regards the issue of the state the sin was not of commission, but of omission.

And that’s still no excuse.

One hopes that John Waters takes a moment to look across the page on which his piece is printed at the concluding paragraph of Mary Raferty’s piece on the deal made by the State with the religious which limited liability in abuse cases…

When protecting their own (usually financial) interests, the religious orders displayed a zeal and even ferocity notably absent from their attempts down the years to control the criminal battery, assault and rape perpetrated by their member Brothers, priests and nuns against small children.

…

What this underlines is the vulnerability of a State which owns and controls so little of its vital social infrastructure. For as long as several of our key hospitals, and the majority of our schools, remain in the possession of religious orders, we will continue to be vulnerable to the naked self-interest of nuns, priests and Brothers who have now been so thoroughly discredited by the Ryan report.