Limerick's Fearsome Ferocity
Christmas day came and the usual group of idiots went swimming in freezing water, knowing they'd be on the TV news because there's no real news at Christmas. And the Pope, as usual, gave his seasonal blessing and he got his regular spot. What was unusual was the news of a riot in Limerick on Christmas Eve, with windows smashed, shops looted and a Libyan caught up in the fighting, stabbed and killed.
Over the next couple of weeks everyone knew about the Libyan being stabbed in the course of the riot, because they read and heard about the "orgy of violence" and the "inter-family feuds" and the "protection rackets" and "violent Limerick". The subs in the Sunday Press apparently could not decide whether the headline should be "The City Of Limerick Is Out Of Control" or "The Outrage" or ''The Fearsome Festive Ferocity". So they used all three on the one story.
Trouble is, there was no riot. And Limerick's fearsome ferocity was no greater than it has been since the Danes came up the Shannon in their long boats and established a settlement on an island at a bend in the river. Just a different kind of ferocity.
Way back it was a market town. Initially the industries that developed were related to agriculture - Matterson's, Shaw's and O'Mara's in bacon curing, Cleeve's in condensed milk and sweets, Ranks in flour. Peter Tait came from Scotland in the 1860s and set up the first mass-produced clothing factory, selling uniforms to both sides in the American civil war. A number of craft workers from 'the city went to Russia in 1891 to build factories. Then there was wagon building for the railways and later the Ardnacrusha power station, a cement factory. No great shakes, but enough to make a small city of Limerick, spreading out into narrow streets at the bend in the Shannon.
Limerick was a tight city, conservative, overwhelmingly Catholic, parochial, intensely religious. And that didn't happen because there was something in the air. From the middle of the last century two Catholic orders bore the burden of catering for the different needs of the citizens. The Jesuits set up Crescent College at the southern end of O'Connell Street. It educated the scions of the middle class merchants living across the river in the big houses off the Ennis Road. It turned out well groomed lads for the professions and made no apologies for acting as the educational and moral mould for an elite class. In the church attached to the college all classes were welcome to attend Mass - but there was a red rope across the aisle and a separate doorway through which access to the sunny side of the rope was strictly limited.
The Redemptorists, operating out of Mount St. Alphonsus church concentrated on the working class. In 1868 they set up the Confraternity, a rigidly structured and ruthlessly policed organisation which gained the city a reputation for bigotry and conservatism. There were confraternities in other towns and cities in the country but Limerick's was the real thing - and Limerick became known as The Confraternity City.
In theory a confraternity is an association of Catholics who meet regularly to partake in a religious ceremony which consists of a Rosary, a sermon and Benediction an unremarkable religious ritual. In Limerick it was something else.
In 1904 the then Director of Limerick's Holy Family Confraternity, a Fr Creagh, led a pogrom against the Jews in the city - about 150 of them, most of whom lived around what is now Wolfe Tone Street, once referred to as "Little Jerusalem". Fr Creagh said,
"The Jews are a curse to Limerick and if I have the means of driving them out I shall have accomplished one good thing in my life."
Creagh was denounced by the Bishop of Limerick, but after the Jews had been driven out the 6,000 members of the confraternity passed a motion of "fullest confidence in his views."
An insight into how a priest on a mission of evil could so successfully hold the loyalty of thousands of working class people, even in the face of opposition from the bishop, can be had in the writings of Fr James Cleary, a Director of the Holy Family Confraternity in Limerick in the 1920s. In 1932 Fr Cleary wrote a book, Confraternity Work And Its Problems, a manual for other priests anxious to repeat the success of the Limerick confraternity. The book received the imprimatur of the heirarchy. (All words in quotation marks are Fr Cleary's)
The confraternity was set up on military lines. The supreme authority was the Spiritual Director. There were three "divisions" of men which met weekly on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and a boys' division which met on Fridays. (Women could form confraternities, but the Holy Family was exclusively male.)
The divisions were composed of "sections". Each section had a prefect and a sub-prefect. There were also "orderlies", a species of NCO. All of these wore badges of office - makeshift and variable emblems, usually ribbons. (Instead of ribbons, Fr Cleary favoured brass chains for prefects.) All confraternity members wore ribbons and medals, but the officials' ribbons would be of a different colour to set them apart and give them status.
The prefects were used to police the members - but first the prefects had to be policed. All prefects had to "give an account of their stewardship to the Director" on a regular basis. "Besides applying a remedy to present evils, it keeps the prefects alert and attentive to their duties; for whenever they become careless they know that they have to face an interview with the Director, which will put them to shame."
Prefects who weren't up to the job or who were slacking were ruthlessly discarded. First the Director should "use all possible circumlution, and employ the softest of words in telling a man that you intend to replace him." But what if "your intended victim refuses to take the hint?" Some prefects might "cling on to their little authority."
There had to be an answer, as "a section must not be sacrificed to the fear of causing pain to one man." The answer was an annual general resignation of prefects, all of whom would hand back their brass chains together. The "victims" would not be reappointed. This "not only supplies the Director with a means of getting rid of useless prefects, but it has a wonderful effect in keeping all the prefects on their mettle ... it has, usually, scarcely any bad effects; for even those who have been deposed soon recover from the disappointment, imagining that their deposition will be attributed by the other members to age or infirm health, or to the pressing claims of work or business. And even should they, through vexation, abandon the confraternity, the confraternity will manage pretty well without them."
The new prefects would be solemnly presented with their brass chains and all would return to their seats and sing "Happy We Who Thus United".
In 1925 the average weekly attendance at the Holy Family Confraternity was 3,230 men and 900 boys. There were attractions in membership. First, the simple fact that the confraternity was recognised by the church as a higher stage of commitment to one's religion. Then, the Redemptorists, men of education, had a world view, an explanation of life's vicissitudes which people with limited lives could respect.
There were practical benefits in that whole areas of the church would be set aside for members during special occasions such as Retreats.
"It is essential that arrangements be made to ensure that all the members be provided with the best seats in the church, and that they possess at all times first claim to make their confessions."
Priests hearing confessions could be asked "to hear the confessions of those only who can prove membership by presenting tickets." Sermons were delivered with a fervour which was deliberately geared towards attracting an audience. "Men come to the confraternity meeting freely, they come to hear something special, to be entertained; for them moralizing would be, generally, out of place."
Not least of the spurs to membership was the grimness of working class life, the insecurity, the fears, and the confraternity provided stability and succour to thousands albeit at the price of passivity and manipulation.
There was also the not insignificant status which went with the ribbon and medal. And for workers employed in family firms, personalised, paternal and perhaps owned by staunch Catholics who preferred their workforce passive and respectable, there were no gains in rocking the confraternity boat and possibly some to be had in rowing it.
Pride of membership was ruthlessly exploited by the Director. Applicants would have to attend on probation for three months before being allowed wear a ribbon. "Consecration (into membership) should be looked forward to as a favour to be appreciated and the more difficult - within reasonable limits - its attainment, the more it will be valued."
The ritual was cynically given an air of mysticism which the Directors did not themselves share. "The ceremony of consecrating new members should be carried out with as much solemnity as possible. It is surprising that some priests do not at all realize the value of solemnity in such ceremonies, and their power to impress the minds of ordinary lay folk."
Once in, the member must attend every week and receive monthly communion at a ceremony with his fellow members. Prefects kept a precise list of those attending and absence brought rebuke and the possibility of the shame of expulsion. Before meetings the director would walk through the church, select a section at random and ostentatiously look down the row of members. This "look into a section will give it a spur; it will affect even the absent, for those who are present will speak of it afterwards, and those who are absent will imagine that their absence has been remarked by the Director."
The Director, and the way he might look at you.
At least quarterly the Director would examine the record book and choose wayward members who needed discipline. A printed "warning" notice would be filled in and sent to the member. If this had no effect a printed "summons" was sent. An "s" was then inserted after the member's name in the record book. If the member answered the summons and gave a satisfactory explanation the letter "A" was then written after his name. A refusal to attend or an unsatisfactory explanation of your conduct got you a "U".
Wayward members would be visited, but not "in their place of work, especially in large workshops, for men nowadays often bitterly resent such public visits." The home was preferred: "One great advantage of visiting a negligent member in his home is that his wife and family are thereby led to use their influence to induce him to attend the confraternity regularly."
When all else fails, "the weapon of expulsion is a most potent one . . . the object aimed at in expulsion is not merely the getting rid of useless members, but also the necessity of giving the other members a salutary lesson as to the serious results of negligence in observing their duties." In the first 60 years of the Holy Family Confraternity expulsions ran at an average of over a hundred per year.
Wayward members were not allowed to resign, as the Director preferred to "make a virtue of necessity, and formally expel them, for the sake at least of the lesson thereby conveyed to the other members." On one occasion a Director culled from the record book the names of 460 men who had been negligent over the previous year. There was a mass expulsion. The shock effect was such that weekly attendance immediately increased by 700.
About a third of those members expelled would return within a year, but it was standard practice that they would initially be refused readmission and be told to apply again in a month's time - deliberately increasing anxiety. On applying the second time they would be readmitted but would not be allowed wear their ribbon and medal for two or three months.
The product of this mixture of intimidation, hellfire speechifying and social regimentation was a solid bloc of several thousand (a claimed membership in the 1950s and 1960s of 10,000) pliable men who, with their families, made up a substantial proportion of what was then a population of about 50,000. There were campaigns against "immoral" films and books and against atheistic communism.
The Redemptorists had quite a thing about sex and the sexes. For instance, while Fr Cleary recommended that male prefects should be interviewed on their own he made it an "inviolable rule" that in a women's confraternity the priest should not be alone with the female prefect on such occasions, that she be accompanied by her sub-prefect. The sexes were always rigidly segregated and orderlies would be stationed "to exclude women from the men's meetings." Fr Cleary's explanation of this rigidity was that women would muck up the men's confraternities because of their "greediness for spiritual benefits."
The Jesuits had a somewhat snobbish attitude to the activities of the Redemptorists' obsessions ("Sex and property - take away the Sixth and Ninth Commandments and the whole thing collapses," one Limerick Jesuit is known to have remarked). However, it all held together nicely. The middle classes prospered and the working class found succour in the ecstacy of religious fervour. And Limerick city was not a nice place to be if you had a mind of your own.
The experience of Limerick demonstrates in microcosm the massive effects of the Great U-Turn of the late 1950s, when there was an admission that native capital had run out of steam and out of markets and the old economic protectionism was dumped. Foreign capital was enticed in and Limerick had first the industrial estate at Shannon and later at Raheen, Southill, Moyross. The economic change demanded a social change and the tumult of the 1960s literally and metaphorically reshaped Limerick city.
In 1969 an ESRI report would describe the 1960s as "the most successful decade in the recorded economic history of Ireland." In the period 1954-61 the national annual average of strike days was 143,750. In the period 1964-71 it would be 586,000, as workers' militancy was aroused by the boom. There was a large increase in membership of trade unions.
The compact physical and social structure of Limerick had facilitated the growth of the confraternity. Now workers were travelling out to industrial estates, working overtime, working shifts - and the rhythmic routine of the confraternity meetings, which Fr Cleary had emphasised must always be held on the same day of the week and at the same time (it was better, he said, to cancel a meeting rather than change the day, lest the pattern be disturbed) - was shattered.
The population was no longer held together in the same streets, generation after generation; now there were thousands from different areas clustered on the new housing estates. The social atmosphere changed - television, reforms in education, the era of social conscience. And the Vatican Council was probing at the rituals and traditions of Catholicism itself. Young women were working and earning and had spending power and so the dank pubs brightened into lounge bars and another social pattern was broken. Religion, sex, politics, war, housing, entertainment - attitudes to just about everything were changing. The Holy Family Confraternity began to wane. The claimed membership was now down to 5,000. Apart from the change in attitudes there was just so much else to do.
There were some efforts to arrest the decline. A determined and energetic priest, Fr Vincent Kavanagh, took over as Director. Retreats were jazzed up - the trendy new question and answer style became known as "Soultrek" - but that didn't last long.
By 1974 Jim Kemmy could campaign for contraception rights and still be elected to the City Council. By 1975 a family planning service had started in the Confraternity City.
May 1976, and Richard Woulfe, Limerick's city solicitor, prepared a report on malicious damage for the City Council. It showed that the estimate for malicious damage in 1965 had been £1,600. By 1974 this had risen to £28,500. And, he pointed out, the estimate for 1976 was £115,000 - that is, seventy-two times greater than the 1965 estimate.
The then Mayor, Thady Coughlan, set up an Action Committee with a brief to assess the problem of juvenile delinquency in the city and prepare a plan to meet the problem. The Action Committee, and the Representative Committee to which it would report, were drawn from several walks of life - including teachers, gardai, residents, social workers and the clergy.
The report, presented three months later, proved comprehensive, insightful and to have a thorough grasp of the issue.
It identified two groups of young people indulging in anti-social behaviour which it termed the Chronic Delinquent and the Casual Delinquent. The former came from homes which had the familiar range of problems: poverty, unemployment, very large families, drinking, violence in
the home, overcrowding - it concluded, "That the boy or girl raised in such a home will develop anti-social tendencies is almost inevitable. Those who do not, display in our opinion, almost as much moral fortitude as would be required of a saint."
The other category, the Casual Delinquent, came from all levels of society and again the report's outlining of causes is familiar: lack of supervision, lack of social facilities, a palpable decline in general standards of conduct in society. The report also pointed to an obvious cause of an increase in crime - one which is somehow overlooked by many who make pronouncements on the issue: it is simply "The wide availability of things to steal."
In 1982, between January and November, there were 969 cars stolen in Limerick. The reason that figures were much smaller in bygone years is simply that there just weren't that many cars around. Similarly, a City Council meeting on January 10 of this year noted the large number of streetlights in Moyross estate in which bulbs had been smashed. The reason this didn't happen in the past is that Moyross was built only in the 1970s and is not yet finished - the streetlights simply weren't there to smash. And in the tight communities which previously existed such behaviour was taboo.
In recent months public representatives have begun to promise that any further housing estates will not be built without the installation of the necessary social and recreational facilities - as were the estates in the past, not only in Limerick but throughout the country. There is also questioning of the method of policing, with suggestions of the need for community policing, whereby the gardai don't enter the estates in squad cars like troops on a search-and-destroy mission.
However, such measures are unlikely to be taken in the current economic atmosphere, if ever. The 1976 Action Committee Report carried 36 recommendations by people who knew whereof they spoke and whose prime aim was to define the problem, its causes and possible solution. They were, the chairperson of the Committee confirms, largely ignored by the bodies, both state and municipal, to which they were addressed. Ironically, one of the recommendations involved the use of remedial teachers - and what there are of them became one of the first things the present government decided to chop in its austerity measures.
Joe Malone's pub in Denmark St is a small, cheerful, old fashioned pub frequented mostly by young people. Shortly before closing time on Sunday January 9 a young man ran into the pub and produced a gun. Pointing it at another he announced, "You've had it." Panic resulted, a fight followed and when it was over two young people, John Cross and John Manning, were found stabbed. Two people were charged with the crime. Cross and Manning survived.
Afterwards it was discovered that the "gun" was a plastic toy used in video games. It was the kind of Mickey Mouse incident that can happen anywhere, any time, but it added to the image of Limerick being out of control.
On October 13 last Thomas Coleman was knifed to death on Hyde Avenue. A Michael Kelly, aged 27, has been charged. Less than two months later, on a Saturday night at the Treaty Bar, beside Thomond Bridge, two brothers, Tommy and Seamus McCarthy, were murdered in horrific circumstances. They were held down with their arms outstretched and knifed in the chests. Neither the knife nor the killers have yet been found. However, police are following "a definite line of enquiry" and the names of the supposed killers are common knowledge.
Less than two weeks later, Christmas Eve, a few young people left a pub and smashed a window, not a grevious or uncommon crime. Garda strength was minimal and the kids didn't even get chased, so they broke some more windows. Eventually a pub owner pointed out several youths as the ones who supposedly smashed the windows - the gardai said they couldn't arrest them as they hadn't seen them commit a crime. However, names were taken and summonses will be issued, it will be settled in court.
Meanwhile, up in Thomas Street, Abousef Abdussalem Salim, a Libyan trainee working at Shannon Industrial Estate, was heading for a taxi with some friends. Some people came along and "words were exchanged", Abousef was stabbed with a screwdriver and died. A man has been charged.
The cumulative effect of these occurances, although they were of diverse origin and - however horrible individual incidents - hardly a surprise given the long gestation of the problem, was to provide a soapbox for various interests. The let's-stop-pussyfooting-with-criminals brigade got out their birches and the media had an easy "sexy" story. It was a natural for the garda overtime row, having the side effect of avoiding the thorny issue of policing methods.
The chronic delinquents of 1976 have now grown up - several of those involved in serious crimes in Limerick recently, either as victims or perpetrators, have records of petty crime. Among the chronics a fashion has developed over the past year or so for carrying knives. Several supposedly hard men are widely known to carry knives - to boost an image or for fear of being caught out by some other hard man who is fashionably equipped. They are few.
The casual delinquents get caught or get married or get jobs or get frightened off - and the next generation go through their phase. The collapse of the traditional industries, coupled with the continuing recession and the consequent unemployment might have some effect on crime figures, but the best evidence is that such problems have their roots in structural change in the way people live.
For instance, in the old, tighter communities people knew fewer people and knew them better - most acts of violence were within family circles. In a more urban society, with a higher density of population, acquaintanceships are wider and shallower and the potential for conflict greater - and statistics show that.
The changes which occurred in Ireland since the late 1950s occurred late and fast. They greatly reduced the powers of such repressive and manipulative institutions as the confraternities and threw up new problems. Housing estates and new communities were thrown together without planning and when individuals with a bit of cop-on, such as those who produced the 1976 Action Report, point to necessary reforms they are ignored or denounced as bleeding hearts. (Even though the authorities now can have no doubt that their lack of planning created problems they continue down the same road. The housing estates continue to deteriorate because of lack of maintenance - yet, between 1977 and 1982 maintenance staff was cut from 110 to 75.)
Monday night, Mount St Alphonsus. The Holy Family Confraternity is meeting. The Director gives his sermon and the prefects go forth with the baskets to collect money. There are several hundred in the audience, mostly elderly. There are some young boys but few of these have come alone, almost all have come with old men: An old man gets up on the pulpit to lead the members in a hymn - and forgets the words. He half-hums until the music finishes, remembering a word here and there, and as he leaves the pulpit he shrugs.
The confraternity is dying. The energetic Fr Kavanagh, ex·Director, carries on. In 1977 he was involved in organising a law and order march when Paddy Cooney came to town to open a new garda station. In the last election he wrote an article in a giveaway paper, the Limerick Citizen, on "The Election and Abortion". The article was signposted on the front page: "Fr Kavanagh warns against voting for atheists", part of the campaign to unseat Jim Kemmy. (In the mid-1970s a parish priest, in a sermon against contraception, warned against "Kemmy's Femmies". Such issues are no longer popular, but there is a new one.)
If the confraternities are symbolic of the old Limerick, Kemmy and his ilk bore the brunt of their attempts to hang on against the tide. Sample headlines from local papers in the lead-up to the election: "Kemmy, Killing and Me, by Father Johnson"; "Deputy Kemmy's Way Of Death"; "The Stench Of Death". The Limerick Leader had to make a grudging apology for a reference to "abortionist Jim Kemmy".
A society changed and did so quickly, ineptly, incompletely and one of the prices is a rise in violence against the person. One of the benefits was some reduction in one form of violence against the spirit.