Sarah Harte: The small things that went ignored were our biggest issues in the past

As 'Leathered' and 'Small Things like These' demonstrate, so much of what was visited on Ireland's children in the past has repercussions in the present, writes Sarah Harte

Anyone foreign watching the recent movie ‘Small Things Like These’ would quickly conclude that violence and Catholicism had been the defining elements of our national identity.

We’re waking up on a seismic day, wrecked from pulling all-nighters. As America is on high alert, I thought we’d look to the violence on our shores still reverberating down the generations.

Let’s say a foreigner looking to understand the Irish psyche watched the RTÉ 1 documentary Leathered about corporal punishment in Irish schools. Then, took in the new Cillian Murphy film Small Things Like These, centred on the local Magdalene Laundry home in a small town. 

They would conclude that violence and Catholicism had been defining elements of Irish national identity.

Last week, on John Downes’s powerful documentary Leathered, Cork poet Theo Dorgan and life-long film festival friend director Mick Hannigan described having 10 bells thumped out of them in Cork’s North Monastery school. Half-crowns were inserted into specially purposed leather straps for more effective punishment. 

As Theo Dorgan put it, they wondered each morning “what quantum of violence the day would contain”.

A parade of men from other schools related heads being bounced off blackboards, off desks, schoolboys being beaten with canes, straps, legs of chairs, tree branches, rubber hoses, and golf clubs.

Strangely, given the millions of children that passed through the school system, according to the Department of Education, only 108 allegations of violence were made between 1962 and 1982, when corporal punishment was finally outlawed. This points to seriously flawed record-keeping or a disturbingly narrow view of what constituted violence.

The film Small Things Like These is based on Clare Keegan’s award-winning book, adapted by renowned playwright Enda Walsh. 

In a good mood, I purchased sweets and water. When the credits rolled, I was flattened and, strikingly, nobody moved. We collectively sat in the beautiful Bantry cinema, various ages and nationalities, as Ravel’s ‘Pavane pour une infante défunte’ played, sitting with the violent past.

The landscape of 1980s New Ross in Wexford is recognisable to anyone of a certain age. People smoke inside, huddle up to blocky Superser heaters, and fall asleep in front of televisions to wake up to black and white fuzz crossing the screen. Women enjoy a glass of sherry. Kids gather around as mammy makes the Christmas pudding, hoping for a lick of the spoon. 

However, with the dark clouds of the 80s economic depression, there is poverty and constant money worries for coal merchant Bill Furlong, who has five daughters to feed. He is brilliantly played by Academy Award winner and Cork man Cillian Murphy.

Eileen Walsh as Eileen Furlong and Cillian Murphy as Bill Furlong in 'Small Things Like These'. She reminds him: 'If you want to get on, you stay on the right side of things. There are things you must ignore in life.' Picture: Enda Bowe/Lionsgate

English actress Emily Watson nails the character of the Mother Superior. The sense of menace in the mother-and-baby home is stomach-clenching. The clanging doors are locked, and hollow-eyed young women scrub floors or toil in the laundries. None of this is especially new to us. 

But what caught the eye in the end was the film’s dedication to the 56,000 women who spent time in these institutions between 1922 and 1998, when they last closed. It’s a stark reminder of the high number of women who were locked up and of how late in the day the institutions operated.

Where are all those babies born to those women now? It’s hard to imagine what it would be like for them if they chose to watch this beautiful film. A portal into Ireland’s recent past of near-universal religious practice, the Ireland depicted is like Stalinist Russia. 

'Stay on the right side'

One of the most striking things is the people’s passivity. In the mid-80s, there was a system of control in the town, and if you wanted to get on, this meant not treading on the toes of the Catholic Church.

Bill Furlong was born to a single mother who, through the kindness of a wealthy woman, did not suffer the fate of the Magdalenes. When he discovers disturbing things in the Magdalene home, he begins to query what is happening.

He sells coal to the Magdalene laundry, his daughters are educated in the adjacent convent, and his wife Eileen, played superbly by actress Eileen Walsh, reminds him: “If you want to get on, you stay on the right side of things. There are things you must ignore in life.”

This advice is seconded by a female publican who warns Bill of the hazards of crossing the Church. “Keep the enemy close, the bad dog with you, and the good dog will not bite.”

She adds: “Those nuns have a finger in every pie. Mind your family, Bill.”

The way of conforming to a systematic view of the world permeates every facet of life. The religious, economic, social, and political are mixed up. You’re either in or out; if you have doubts, you must pretend to be in.

Understanding why we accepted the Church’s unquestioned power and influence is not straightforward. On one level, our faithfulness could arguably be linked to a lack of money. By the time the British left, the coffers were bare after centuries of expert wealth extraction, and the choices were stark. 

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

Step forward the Church to fill the vacuum and consolidate its power in health, social welfare, and education. Not that Tory MP Robert Jenrick would agree with that analysis. 

In the run-up to losing last week’s Conservative leadership contest, he said that Britain’s former colonies should be thankful for the empire’s legacy. In Jenrick’s world, we owe the British a debt of gratitude for the inheritance they left us. It’s a safe bet that many of us would disagree Robeárd.

It’s unhelpful to oversimplify what happened. The Catholic Church provided hospitals, care homes, schools, orphanages, and homeless shelters countrywide when the State couldn’t afford to. Catholicism remains a philosophy with much to offer, with its sociopolitical aspect that speaks to community and social justice.

'The past is the present'

In the choppy waters of a grossly economically unequal world with all the moral dimensions that throws up, you question whether a functioning and robust civic morality ever replaced the religious and spiritual scaffolding for life. 

I mean, what has taken its place? A bit of yoga, sea swimming, a massage or some Reiki? Elon Musk’s ravings from the pulpit of X?

Nevertheless, there’s no ducking that Leathered and Small Things like These demonstrate the high cost of the Church’s care and the State’s woefully inadequate oversight of the same. 

So much of what was visited on children in the past has repercussions in the present in terms of life-long trauma to those who were failed and who now carry mental and physical scars.

It would be convenient to point the finger solely at the Catholic Church. But at the film’s opening, a Mercedes pulls up outside the home with a screech. A well-dressed mother drags her screaming daughter from the car and shoves her in the door. 

For many reasons, parents, teachers, doctors and minions of the State went along with the Church’s agenda.

Given that we are heading into an inquiry into historical sexual abuse in schools run by religious orders, it’s clear this chapter is far from over. A quote from American playwright Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night comes to mind.

Forget the past, James tells his wife, Mary. “Why?” she asks. “How can I? The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too. We all try to lie out of that, but life won’t let us.”