The harder they come...

How will we remember these times? Not, I now suspect, for the bad weather and worse temper we are saddled with in 2002. No, I now think it will be for the relentless unpicking, one by one, of the controlling totems of our society: politicians, priests, poltroons and police. Not one dose of salts, but many.

We’ve learned so much. Or rather, so much of what we knew has been liberated.

It continues apace. Most recently, I am struck by the fate of Father Gerard McGinnity. Almost a lifetime ago he was senior dean in the pontifical university in St. Patrick’s College Maynooth. Six seminarians in the college went to him in 1983-4 to complain about the behaviour of Monsignor Michel Ledwith, the college president, towards their younger colleagues. What followed has been detailed by Gerard McGinnity and Patsy McGarry in the Irish Times.

Ledwith was a front-runner to be appointed Bishop of Ferns in Wexford, but McGinnity was asked for his opinion, and gave it truthfully. Rather than the allegations being taken seriously, McGinnity was removed from his post at the insistence of the other bishops. An apparently distressed Cardinal Thomas O Fiaich was the don sent to, as it were, kiss his cheek.

McGinnity was screwed, sentenced to an internal exile philosophically comparable to that which befell dissidents in the former Soviet Union, if not as harsh in terms of comforts. He was sent to Portadown.

Well, actually it was a rural parish near Portadown. Subsequently he was sent to a secondary school in Armagh as dean of discipline (this guy has a PhD in theology from Trinity College!) and finally to the parish of Knockbridge in Louth.

Meanwhile Ledwith remained in his position until 1995 when, after other allegations and settlements were made, he abruptly decamped from Maynooth to the west coast of the United States. All the while, the bishops engaged in the same obfuscation and foot-dragging that has characterised their response to other revelations.

This is how it is.

Take 2: As we scan the news this August, we note the victory of Frank Shortt in the Court of Criminal Appeal. He served a three-year sentence for knowingly allowing his premises to be used for the sale of drugs. In issuing only the second miscarriage of justice certificate in the history of the State, Mr Justice Hardiman pulls no punches. His decision says that two Garda witnesses in the case ‘consciously and deliberately’ invented evidence. An innocent man was framed and wound up with a sentence of three years! The injustice is beyond words.

But these are just a starter pack. The police force in Donegal is to face further investigation under the Morris Inquiry. This will examine the Shortt case and the McBreary case, another instance in which it is alleged that innocent people, in this case a whole family, were hounded and harassed, and that evidence was falsified and the course of justice perverted. There’s more, including allegations that explosives were planted in Northern Ireland.

The Minister for Justice Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell is very concerned at the court’s findings in the Shortt case. Obviously, he wants to make sure there is as little damage to the public perception of the Gardai as possible.

But this is the same Minister who recently called for a doubling in convictions for drug offences. Perhaps he means catching major drug importers, but I doubt it. I think he made that statement in a bullish mood, and as part of a general ‘hard on crime hard on the causes of crime’ approach.

It’s a management thing – set targets and demand that they’re met.

Is he forgetting that this is precisely the kind of impulse that germinated the great injustice done to Frank Shortt? As Jim Cusack reported in the Irish Times, certain members of the police wanted to be seen to be active and successful against the rave scene and the widespread use of ecstasy. That was the hue and cry of the time and, perverse though their delivery of the management’s aim was, their persecution of Frank Shortt arose from their (unhealthy) eagerness to please and to deliver.

The Minister might also reflect on the experience of motorists in Ireland – there is always an outburst of Garda activity close to the end of any month as they fill their quota. But what does it achieve? Has it made the roads any safer?

Meanwhile, as ordinary citizens have been reporting for several years, crime has been on the increase, and particularly violent crime.

So, what connects all these things?

The behaviours we have been hearing of only happen because of the culture and environment of the organisations involved. This is the water in which the fish swim.

The Catholic clergy and the police share many things, a culture of secrecy, a lack of accountability, a feeling that members are above the law. They suffer from too many bosses and too few leaders. The difference, by the way, according to the American management theorist William Glasser, is that a boss drives, but a leader leads, a boss relies on authority whereas a leader relies on co-operation, and a boss creates fear whereas a leader creates confidence.

There is, of course, a final worry, and one that may well have some substance. It is that, as happened with the clerical abuse cases of the past, once one injustice is in the open, other people will begin to come forward to tell their stories.

The Hog