Building the republic from Heaven Downwards

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT A TRULY CATHOLIC SOCIETY MIGHT LOOK LIKE STUDY 1950S IRELAND.
The Republic of Ireland in the 1950s was ninty-eight per cent Roman Catholic and rising. There was no inti-clericalism against which it had to struggle, unlike France or Spain. There was no Communism, either in the form of Stalinism as in Poland, Croatia, or Hungary or Eurocommunism as in Italy. There was no Protestantism to speak of, as they were on the retreat for well over a hundred years by this time, and no letargy as in Britain. Ninty-eight per cent of the population went to mass on Sundays. Catholic doctrine was written into the constitution of the country. The controlled all the primary schools, all the fee paying secondtary schools, the universities - with the exception of one, Trinity College, which they made it a mortal sin to attend. The controlled the hospitals so that no termination of pregancy was possible or any form of birth controlled was allowed. They controlled the orphanges which allowed them to take infant from their mothers and sell them to Catholic abroad. They controlled mother and baby homes  Through pressures from lay Catholic organisation like the      

HAMMERSMITH IRISH CULTURAL CENTRE

Most of these  pictures belong to my now well know theme - the forgotten Irish migrants of the 50s and 60s. People seem to like them, but I am struggling to move away from merely recording the emigrating process towards trying to create images that say something about what it meant to the individuals involved. Migrants arrive in a developed society - hence one looking for labour - from one that is only setting out on that path, and therefore getting rid of its surplus labour. Those that remain at home benefit from the assets the departing are forced to leave behind, as well as from the remittances they send back. This continues until such time as some kind of economic equilibrium between the two societies is reached. It is a harsh process, but it is currently happening all over the world. Better to recognise the process than pretend it didn't happen, or that it is not still happening to other societies.

What is the above picture Murphy's Men about? Well most Irishmen came from a society where women were not then tolerated in pubs (except in discreet little side rooms known as the' snug' ), while in Britain women had won important freedoms during the WWII, as they increasingly took on male roles that had  been previously done by the men now fighting in the war.  There was nothing, therefore  unusual about seeing them in bars. In many of the pubs, though it is often commented upon adversly by writers like Donal MacAmlaigh. . in the rougher areas of London, women of a certain sort frequented the public bars - see the painter Edward Ardizzone's celebration of  'floozies' - and their tawdry glamour threw the otherwise very macho Irishmen into some embarrassment and they were forced to take refuge in their drinks.

Very enjoyable opening to the exhibition, well covered by local papers. An old acquaintance who was a regular at a poetry and folksong club I used to run in London's Camden Town in the late 1960s, Daniel Clery, turned up out of the blue. He had come all the way from Chicago and sang two songs to the assembled gathering which, I swear, brought tears to the eyes of many in the room. We hadn't seen each other in over forty years - but the decades melted away except for the indelible lines etched our faces.

Holyhead 1960

HALF LIVES
About ten years ago, when the Irish Celtic Tiger was distracting everyone by his antics, I decided to create a series of paintings about the grim period that proceeded it, which I thought we were in danger of forgetting. As well as living through these straited years, and emigrating myself, I had taught Irish (and British and European history) and I was acutely aware of how little there was written about that third of the Irish nation who departed - and of what there was, how lop-sided the coverage often was, being viewed exclusively from the British side of the water or the Irish side. My pictures, I hope, may do a little to redress this, but they stand as a pictorial marker of a forgotton people.

One of the problems of economic emigrants is that they grow up in one culture, learn its values and outlook, and then have to spend the second half of their lives in a society that has a totally different set of values. The emigrant culture they brought with them was a pre-industrial social one - rural and religious, male dominated with a proclivity towards physical force action, and clientship - and the society they entered was mainly secular, industrial and urban, rule bound with more equal gender relations. If these man and women are to succeed and flourish, they have to learn the new values of modernity, and this is not an easy task in mid life. It is often especially hard since they are saddled with a number of anti-adaptive attitudes and injunctions before they leave. The Church tells them that above all they must never lose their faith: never adapt! Patriots of all shades tell them:, 'don't forget where ere you roam that you're an Irishman' (sic) in its mildest, sentimental form, but are just as likely to accuse them of selfishly betraying the country as with Fanny Parnell's poem :' Let go the wretched emigrant, not such as him we need'. But it is these traditional values that have forced them to emigrate in the first place; and their abandonment in the last couple of decades that made the Celtic Tiger possible. And there is still a long way to go to create a modern Ireland.