My mum was born into one of Ireland’s mother and baby homes – this is why everyone should know her story

Ireland spent five years on a judicial inquiry into its darkest secret – about unmarried mothers, babies and their incarceration in Catholic institutions, the last of which closed its heartless, heavy doors in 1993.

The findings were published in the mother and baby homes report – a harrowing document for families like mine, because my darling mum Sally Mulready was born into such a place. Her mother, my nannie, wasn’t married, so mum’s childhood did not take place in a family home but in an institution run by nuns.

Nannie (who died aged 90, 10 years ago to the day the report was published) was initially allowed to stay with mum at a price, including that she breastfed other babies – those, far less lucky than mum, who had been (illegally) removed from their mothers at birth and could later be sold by the nuns to childless couples, many in the US. But on mum’s fourth birthday a nun came and told them nannie would be leaving and mum would be moving to a different institution for older children.  

Nannie was a devoted mother, but she had no say, no power, no right of appeal, and mum was taken from her a few hours later. Having not had a day apart for four years, they were abruptly separated for a very long time. If you’ve seen a distressed child on their first day at school, or a baby taken even briefly from the arms of one who has loved them every day, you will have a tiny insight into the wretched grief that followed.  

I struggle to articulate how they must have felt, because in my multiple attempts at description I have become overwhelmed with sadness myself. Three generations later, with an idyllic childhood under my belt, I still don’t have the words to do it justice.  

I will say instead that mum is a powerhouse. She spent decades working towards social justice - to free the Birmingham Six, for her constituents as a Labour Party councillor in London, as a member of the Irish Council of State, appointed by the president of Ireland, and for an acknowledgment from the Irish government that survivors of this Catholic hell must be offered some redress.    

I will add that my nannie was mischievous, witty, exceptionally beautiful and exploding with love for her grandchildren, to whom she devoted her life from the moment we came along.  

I think about nannie every day, particularly when I’m in places of power. The types of places decisions are made about the lives of people like nannie and mum, by establishment people who haven’t the first idea of the reality in which they live, but who are nevertheless considered so wise they should wield that determinative life-altering power.  

The first time I went to the Royal Courts of Justice in London, a proud as punch trainee solicitor, I was representing a teenager who was trafficked to the UK, made pregnant through rape and then sent to prison for child neglect – her punishment for being unable to protect her child from the violence from which, of course, she had no escape herself. I walked in through grand doors into a huge, imposing hall, with marble floors, stained glass windows, and massive paintings of begowned, white, men, the esteemed lawyers of yesteryear. I remember it so clearly - nannie, I’m here, we made it.

I want to write about this for her, and for my mum. I want everyone to know what happened to thousands of Irish women and children, in dark, patriarchal Ireland.  

Women and children who ran away from these institutions were brought back by the police, even though they’d committed no crime, were unlawfully imprisoned, and were in many cases enduring what international law would today unequivocally recognise as slavery and torture.  

The nuns and priests responsible not only acted with impunity, not a moment’s fear they’d ever face prosecution, but with approval. Politicians praised the good works of the church with these fallen, feckless women, and their illegitimate children, the products of sin. Families expressed gratitude to the nuns for taking shameful daughters off their hands – it is unthinkable, I know, but young women and girls were often brought to these cold places by their parents, the shame of their pregnancies so great that parents would rather their daughters hidden away, giving birth terrified and alone without so much as a hand to hold, sometimes tied down during labour, than have them at home, risking condemnation from the priest and embarrassment in the village.  

There is an outpouring of sorrow from Ireland about this now – it is a nation that, commendably, has devoted considerable time and expertise to the excruciating hard yards of looking at itself in the mirror; and in my family we welcome the apologies from leading Irish politicians and are hopeful that the significant social progress made in the last 10 years means Ireland is becoming a society which can be proud of itself.  

We were delighted to see the fearless Repeal the Eighth campaign succeed in delivering lawful abortion in Ireland – a feat unthinkable for the entirety of not only my mum’s childhood, but mine too; to see gay marriage legalised, following the riotously loving Yes Equality campaign; to see Ireland leading the world in legal protections for transgender people, and a visionary priest, Father Michael Kelly, given presidential recognition for his work championing people with HIV. Having at last stepped out of the cruel shadows of the past, Ireland looks now like a nation whose people are determined to find every opportunity to deliver a compassionate, enlightened, dare I say it, feminist future.  

There is still more to be done though – the state must stop denying the experience of mothers, like my nannie, whose children were taken from them illegally, it must acknowledge the callous racism experienced by mixed race children, and it must, urgently, remove the indefensible bureaucratic obstacles to survivors accessing their own records. They should not have to beg and plead, devote their lives to campaigning, banging on doors and hanging on phones, to track down piecemeal records from various different co-operative and not-so co-operative religious orders. It is staggering that this remains unresolved and the Irish government must stop hiding behind what it says the law says on this issue to justify inaction.  

It must also work to acquire and then redistribute the considerable wealth of the Catholic church, whose upper echelons have lived for years in the lap of luxury, apparently untroubled by the knowledge that whilst they preach Jesus’s message of love and devotion to the poor from beneath opulent painted ceilings, their bejewelled hands resting on expensive wooden lecterns, their financial security gold plated by a real estate portfolio worth millions, many survivors live in abject poverty – barriers to employment entirely down to the influence of the Catholic church on their early lives.  

Ireland should also share the painful national lessons it has learnt so far - because the pernicious influence of patriarchal religion is far from confined to one country. Ireland is a nation with global influence now, as a member of the two most powerful international institutions in the world: the EU and the UN, this year as an elected member of the Security Council.  

The Irish government should use that influence to support those in other countries who are working to dismantle barriers to abortion, contraception and comprehensive, religion-free sex and relationships education; and should work to replace them instead with publicly funded, legally protected rights of access to the same. That would send a compelling message to the daughters and granddaughters of people like my mum, and my nannie, that the powerful people of Ireland are genuinely determined to ensure nothing like this can happen - to us or anyone else - ever again.