Fergus Finlay: Three uncompromising women who delivered lasting change
Twin sisters and long-time campaigners Ann and Margaret Kennedy picketing Government Buildings about home help hours in 2012. Margaret has joined a select band of people honoured by the Church of England with a Langton Award for her work pursuing perpetrators of clerical abuse. Picture: Niall Carson/PA
Three remarkable women. I’ve known two of them for a couple of years, and one of them for a long time. They have a lot in common, in how they think and what they believe in. Each of them deserves a full biography.
I’ve believed all my life that the single most important characteristic in a politician is that you should know at a glance whose side they’ll be on in a battle. It can be the most challenging characteristic too — that’s why an awful lot of politicians spend as much time as possible trying to be on everyone’s side. Politicians of obvious conviction and clearly expressed values can have a harder time of it. They’re expected to trim and fudge if they want to get on.
Ivana Bacik doesn’t do that. I suspect she can’t. For as long as I’ve known her, she has been among the most forthright and honest politicians I know. She has been attacked and targeted precisely because of her honesty, and it may have prevented her election to the Dáil on a couple of occasions.
Now her time has come. Ireland, in a funny way, has come round to her way of thinking. Ivana was a leader — in thought and action — in virtually every campaign I’ve been involved in over the years. On family planning issues, women’s rights, divorce and the right to remarry, the equal rights of the LGBTQ community, the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, even the less controversial but difficult stuff like privacy rights — she never came to those issues late in the day.
She was there from the start — even when those issues inspired hate and loathing. She has stood up to abuse time and again in her life and career. She did it because she is passionate above all about getting rid of inequality. Again and again she has been proved right.
The issues of today are different, with the housing crisis at the top of a long list, but Ivana’s creativity, activism, and expertise can and will make a huge difference.
When people go to the polls in the Dublin Bay South by-election on Thursday next, they will recognise someone who can — and I believe will — add significant lustre to the Dáil for a long time to come.
Ann and Margaret Kennedy will never sit in the Dáil — it would be a better place if they did. But what they share with Ivana is a deep commitment to social justice and a determination to be heard. Even to make a nuisance of themselves if necessary
They’re twins, not quite but almost identical. They both suffer from a rare neuro-muscular degenerative disease, which has never been satisfactorily diagnosed but has nevertheless meant that they live with constant pain and are frequently in considerable distress. That has not prevented them from being among the feistiest and often funniest women I know.
Ann is a highly accomplished artist. In the past, she worked as a graphic artist on movies, including , where she invented some of the leading rabbits. She paints constantly and drives a small van — on which she has painted the words: “I love my bad attitude.”
In addition to the crippling symptoms she shares with Margaret, Ann copes with Asperger’s syndrome, diagnosed late in her adulthood. It means that she frequently lives a life of very high stress and is denied the peace she craves. But if you’d ever seen her artwork — when she doesn’t have canvas to hand, she paints the furniture or branches of trees — you’d know you were in the presence of a truly creative and talented mind.
Margaret is different, quieter, but every bit as determined. The reason I want to write about them this week is that the other day Margaret was presented with the Langton Award, a rare and highly prestigious award given by the Church of England to people who have rendered outstanding service.
The ceremony should have taken place in Lambeth Palace in London because this award is presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury to only a few special people. Margaret was chosen because of her work in the UK, although she is 100% Irish (you should hear the twins in front of the television when Ireland is playing rugby!).
Because of Covid, the award was presented instead by the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Michael Jackson, in the beautiful Protestant church in Greystones, at a really moving ceremony.
What did this woman do — this sick, disabled, woman whose sight and hearing are failing (as are Ann’s) — to deserve such a distinguished award? Margaret may not be as well known at home, but among survivors of clerical abuse in the UK she is, as the citation said, almost legendary.
She has founded two organisations, run by survivors of clerical abuse for other survivors (she and Ann both suffered sexual abuse themselves). She has enabled and empowered survivors. As one friend and survivor said in a letter she sent to the ceremony the other day, she has saved lives.
She has hunted down abusers and seen them brought to justice. She has contributed hugely to changes in safeguarding approaches in all the British churches and has written extensively about the need for reform. Her doctoral thesis is on the same subject and is unsparing about the tolerance of abuse. Like other Irish women and survivors, her influence on change has been immense.
But she is also a campaigner on disability rights, a life-long activist on every single aspect of social justice. She can no longer walk, her physical health is poor, and her pain levels high, but her spirit is undimmed. She is more determined than anyone I have ever met, despite the challenges she faces, to face the future as an independent woman.
Women like this — and it seems to be especially true of women — who have character and values, and who insist on speaking the truth as they see it, are often marginalised. They’re sometimes described as serial complainers, often labelled as troublesome. They’re never welcome in any bureaucratic setting.
But you know something? Reasonable people never changed anything. Reasonable people settle and compromise and the world remains essentially undisturbed.
Troublesome people demand change. They fight for change, sometimes for a lifetime. And sooner or later, as these three women have shown, they bring about lasting change.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
