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The 'social norm' at play - and the one Micheal Martin will NOT talk about today in his speech - was: if you speak up against the Church and the State on this issue they will destroy you. People who tried were sacked and forced to emigrate. State violence and fear kept people in
line. It is utterly disgusting for Martin to claim otherwise - which is what he will do today in his speech. Successive government made no bones about the coercive element of emigration - either tow the line or fuck off elsewhere. 'Social norm'... as if that wasn't enforced by
the courts and civil service and the church itself - Martin trying to make out that Ireland from the 1920s to the 1990s was a commune where all decisions were made with jazz hands and consensus. The state, Church, Courts, and Civil Service ENFORCED what THEY considered to be
social norms and woe to those that tried to do otherwise. And they still do today.
I mean, have we forgotten Garda Maurice McCabe already? And that started off as about speeding tickets. What do you think would happen to anyone who tried to shut down a multi-million pound operation such as the mother and baby homes? Social norm my arse. Fear was the blood that
kept it alive. Fear of the state and what it could do to you - when the state was the church and the church was the state.
For those interested, Dr. Sinead Pembroke has researched and written on this issue - the coercive nature of the institutions - such as here - https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/dear-enda-parents-sent-children-to-industrial-schools-because-a-court-compelled-them-or-because-they-had-no-choice-3278941-Mar2017/
