From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace

If only blogging had been invented in 1974.

That was the year that a certain consultant obstetrician took over in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda (just north of Dublin). If blogging were part of Irish culture then, a nurse in the hospital might have revealed what was going on. Blogging enables
whistle-blowers to bring out into the open what’s going on behind the scenes.

Blogging lets the powerless speak out. Potentially it is the greatest social audit ever invented. Blogs, and the community of bloggers, can hold the mighty to account and thereby prevent violence.

The papers and radio today are full of the story of what went wrong in one Irish hospital. I haven’t read Judge Maureen Handing Clark’s 300+ page report.

I’m glad I didn’t rush into blogging about it. Every hour another piece of the jigsaw has fallen into place. It reminds me so much of the Stephen Lawrence case.

Over the last few years a new term has entered the English language in the UK: institutionised racism. The London police (the Met) were found guilty of “institutionalised racism” by that enquiry report.

In a nutshell, “institutionalised racism” means that there is a system of racism that is so pervasive that the core issue is not racism by individuals, or even unconscious racism by a particular section. The whole culture, its systems, procedures, policies are so racist that no one sees what is going on.. No one intends to be racist but all collaborate in such a way that a racist outcome is inevitable. The London police force, indeed London and British society, are still grappling with the aftermath of Stephen Lawrence’s murder and its failure to bring his killers to justice.

So you can see perhaps why I remember Stephen Lawrence when I think about the women who had their wombs untimely and unnecessarily ripped out by a consultant who thought that what he was doing was OK.

That consultant in one Irish hospital was not an “evil” doctor, says the Judge. That shocked me. I thought of Doctor Shipman: he was also thought by some people to be a kindly doctor.

Institutionalised contraception perhaps?

Who was involved?

1 The consultant
2 Those who selected him for the job
3 Those who worked with him on a daily basis
4 Those who failed to notice that he didn’t report what he was doing

But also

5 Those who owned the hospital and set its culture
6 Those who let the consultants be a law unto themselves
7 Those who knew that the Irish ‘health’ system has professions in it who were beyond public scrutiny

What’s the point in trying to list everyone…

Why I failed to do my duty:

From 1955 – 68, I had a dentist in Limerick. He filled my teeth every time I went to him. He ruined my teeth, so that I’ve had to have every tooth rescued by a real dentist in Dublin in 1972. The dentist that caused my teeth, and the teeth of my brothers and sister, to suffer disastrously was Paddy MacPoland (or something like that). He was a good golfer, a captain of the club.

I have an uncle who was a dentist at the same time. He would not say a word against that other dentist, even thought he knew the damage MacP was doing. He would only hint that it might be a good idea to get a second opinion. He refused to say a bad word against him even in private.

Doctors and dentists never spoke against each other. It was part of their professional code. They conspired against their patients, systematically.

I knew this from the age of ten.

What did I do to protest against the power of the professions in Ireland? Nothing.

Who else has known about this culture of not questioning the consultant?

Every fucking one of us, I’m afraid. Including Mary Harney, the Minister.

No one thought such a culture could lead to one consultant running a one-man contraception service, contrary to the wishes of about 100 women in one small hospital on the east coast of Ireland.

The obvious questions now are :

(1) How do we know what’s going on in the other hospitals?

(2) What must we do now to prevent any element of the system from exercising undue influence? (And we must assume the profession of doctors are suspect because of their past behaviour.)

(3) How can we reward whistle-blowing so that it becomes a better thing to do than turn a blind eye to wrong doing?

The violence on Saturday came from one class in Irish society. This violence against women has come from the other end of the social spectrum.

Our Lady of Lourdes must be turning in her grave.

I keep coming back to a worry I have about the safety of my daughter.

I had a dream last night.

De Velera, Parnell, Wolfe Tone, Strongbow, Henry Joy MacCracken, Thomas Moore, Finn McCool, Clarke, Pearce, Carson, Craig… none of them were in it.

The Virgin Mary, Grace O’Malley, Kitty O’Shea, Judge Hardie Clarke… neither were they in my dream.

Lemass, Alex Ferguson, JJ Cale, the Beatles, Sonny & Cher, the Beechboys, St Patrick, Brian Boru… they were all missing.

Every way I turned there were more people with more ideas. In the end I was over whelmed. Drunk and dimmed by the effort to reach out to all.

It became a minor nightmare.

This is the real dream.

The wiffe is away, abroad in London. I am in charge of the child. Responsible like.

So, as soon as I have her down, I put on my coat and face the chilling north wind all the way down to the pub in Douglas, the same pub in which I was talking to Marcin from Krakov.
Marcin was there, still propped up against the bar with a pint in front of him.

How you doin Mani?

Marcin still hasn’t got the hang of Irish Os. I guess they don’t have a lot of Os in Poland.

OK man. Actually wrecked. I’ve been blogging.

Christ, you must be raking it in. The old emmigrants remittances I suppose. Don’t you know it’s work-life balance day today.

He looked at me as if I’d lost my balance.

Is that the thing about taking all your holidays or cutting back on the third job? We Poles have enough balance already. I’ll have another pint of that balance Joe…

He really gets through the stuff. I guess all emmigrants do the same.

Hit me. I’ll have a pint of that vodka myself.

He smiled. What were you doing in the bog?

I was blogging you eejit. She away and I have loads of time or I had loads of time before I started. Now it’s all gone.

Go on…

I put the child down and went straight into the office. You remember I told you how blogs work: you write something in a kinda website and you might get a comment or two and then you write some more. Simple really.

Well it’s not really that simple. First I had to read the latest blogs from champagnenroses, jl pagano (though I can’t believe that’s his real name), blank paige, kaz, her friend with the image of the Simpsons, the Curly K woman, the Disillusioned Lefties, one Red Mum, with all her photos…

I needed a drink, badly. He’s a good listener and he’s learning English. So he needs to listen.

Then there was Damien Mulley and the Irish Republicans to read.

Yes, I like to leave comment on blogs. So when I find something to say I write it and then I forget where I’ve been. So I can never be sure whether someone has replied to me. This means I have to go through the whole lot every day.

The engineer from Krakov was looking puzzled.

I thought you were for this worklike balance thing? This sounds like Kafka in a labyrinth.

Ah, that’s not the half of it. You see every time I go trawling back over my old blogmates I go off on new tangents. They have hyperlinks and have to see where some of them lead. So I find myself reading people I didn’t know existed.

Tonight I started at 7 and now it’s 1230 and I haven’t stopped yet.

I remember someone who was like that all the time. He’s buy a round; then he’d wait for his pint in return and in between he’d go drink with a couple of others on his way to the bog. We had a name for him.

You say “Addicted”? That’s it. He was fuckin addicted. Fuckin fucked if you ask me.

Marcin’s English is coming on nicely.

Marcin, I can’t even remember how many places I’ve been, how many comments I’ve left, who I’ve picked a fight with and who my allies are. I’m a loose cannon, lost in what they call the blogosphere.

Come here man. You need more balance. It sounds as if you don’t know where you are going.

Look I even had the Provos, or one of their sort, on my blog this evening. I even wrote something to them. The worst thing is that this is exactly what I vowed I wouldn’t do. I came back to Ireland to have a family life, to see my mother, my sisters-in-law, my brothers, even my sister. I came back so that I could have quality time with my daughter. Now I’m a fuckin politico again.

He frowned. Downed the last drop and I called for another. My own pint had hardly moved. It was my tongue that was out of control.

I’m back where I started in Dublin in the early 70s. Fighting against bloody nationalism. Fighting against Rome, Maynooth. Fighting Fire. (Anyone remember the Fire Report?) Only this time, I’m doing it rather than the washing up. The feckin kitchen was full of half empty bottles of formula.

Listen, said Marcin, putting his right hand on my left shoulder. Listen to me. Listen to Marcin. You have to let go. All those people, they have to fight. You don’t. You’re too old for fighting against stuff. You aren’t against anything. You are the only man I know who is for this balance thing. Hold on to that. Think about what you’re for.

What I’m for, I interrupted. I’m for burning. I’m blogged out. It’s too bloody addictive. The last time I remember being like this was when I got into scrabble on the internet. I was so bloody depressed that I use to spend hours playing Scrabble… hours and hours of ten minute games. I had a ranking, a rating and everytime I’d get to the end of a game, I’d play just one more. Just like only one more blog.

What about a group? Isn’t it good to be in a group with others who have the same problems.

Oh, yea. A blogging group, we could blog to each other about our blogging addictions.

That was the first time I smiled.

Oh it was a dream. But was it really a dream? Did I really go out leaving the child alone, home alone?

Did I go drinking to recover from blogging, or did I go blogging to stay out of the pub?