796 children buried in Septic Tank in Galway - ### Mod Warning in 1st Post

People should remember that in this era Fianna Fail dictated Irish politics and this was the vision of Ireland they wanted, Fianna Fail controlled Ireland almost uninterrupted from 1932 to 1973 and for over 40 years this was DeValera's vision with full control from the Church and an extremely backwards inward looking conservative insular society. While not defending the Church I would like the remind people that the blame must be shared with Fianna Fail the party of power who oversaw these human rights abuses. People say the state, but the truth is their was no state in Ireland at the time but rather as good as a one-party system like you'd find in North Korea today.

The only times Ireland has found liberalism is when Fine Gael and Labour came to power and they have been responsible for changing Ireland into a fairer more egalitarian country. They introduced Divorce, introduced state run health care and removed the Churches influence over healthcare. This Government has introduced protection for the mother allowing Abortion in limited circumstances. They will bring in Gay-Marriage next year also.

The Church and State vis-a-vis Fianna Fail are responsible for this. Who can blame the Unionists in the North for fearing people down here and it is a case of Dublin Rule was certainly Rome Rule all along.

SpaceTime wrote: »

Bizarrely enough we'd nearly default FF government for decades despite the fact that we'd the most wide-open proportional representation system in the world!

It was some feat to have had single party governments never mind one party in charge for so long.

It says an awful lot about just how conformist and conservative society was in those days.

There was also massive voting corruption and voter intimidation, and this a story from both sides of my family my fathers being strong Fine Gael and my Mothers from the Fianna Fail party. My grand-mother (FG side of family) told me stories before she died of how the Civil War continued for along time after it officially ended. Her family were pro-treaty supporters and were intimidated and prevented from voting at gun point throughout the 1930's and such political gerymandering and fraud continued up until the early 1950s. My grand-aunt (fathers side of the family) died in Child birth because the state Doctor was prevented from traveling to assist my great grand-mother in child-birth by these people and this was just a few months before the outbreak of WWII in 1939, many years after the Civil War battles ended.

The Blueshirt movement was established in the 1930's to protect ordinary decent people from Fianna Fail and their armed thugs masquerading as the the IRA.

Alot of what really happened in the past was conveniently censored out of the school books by successive FF governments and due to time alot has been forgotten but now in my family only oral tradition remains. I had what I knew to be my grand-uncle (mother side of my family FF'ers) who died in 2003 and 2 weeks before he died I discovered he was actually my step uncle in that he was born out of wedlock to my grandmother and he was instead reared by his grandmother and it was seen as some sort of shame. The familys solution at the time was to cry rape which somehow made it less shameful and the father of the child served time in Cork prison for what was most likely not rape at all. The reason the child was allowed to be kept was the family were card carrying members of the party (FF) and my grandmother (18 years) was then hastily married to my grandfather who was ex-IRA and party stalwart despite he being over 40 years older than her. She had 6 children with him and he died in 1969 when she was still quiet a young woman. This was an arranged marriage and the illegitimate son was reared by his grandmother who was still quite young and he was passed of as her youngest child and that him and his mother were brother and sister. Talk about confusion and stupidity.

Ireland back then was a scary place and there was a lot of evil being perpetrated against the most very weak and vulnerable in our society. My own mother today is in her 60's and displays all the symptoms of this ignorance and threw a complete fit when I myself dated a single mother a while back as if she was dirt despite she being from a far upper-class family to mine and having a professional job and she had left her partner as he had become an alcoholic. Decades of brainwashing can not be removed I suppose and she went and voted FF two weeks ago so what I can I say only that I love her as she is my mother but she isn't too bright at all.