Opinion

Claire Simpson: Here's to women who refuse to stay quiet

Margaret McGuckian of pressure group SAVIA. Picture by Hugh Russell
Margaret McGuckian of pressure group SAVIA. Picture by Hugh Russell Margaret McGuckian of pressure group SAVIA. Picture by Hugh Russell

Historian Mary Beard's wonderful book Women & Power begins with an attempt to explain, as she puts it, ”just how deeply embedded in Western culture are the mechanisms that silence women, that refuse to take them seriously".

Beard outlines a moment mentioned almost 3,000 years ago in Homer's Odyssey. For decades, Odysseus's wife Penelope has waited for her husband to return home after the Trojan War, while also fending off persistent suitors who want to marry her.

At one point, she comes into the great hall of the palace to find a bard singing to her suitors of the problems the Greek heroes have experienced in coming home.

When she tells the bard to choose a happier song, her young son Telemachus essentially tells her to shut up.

He tells her to "go back to your quarters, and take up your own work, the loom and the distaff... speech will be the business of men, all men, and of me most of all; for mine is the power in this household".

The speech to which Homer refers isn't everyday chat but public oratory - the kind that is heard in meetings, campaign rallies and Parliament.

Beard writes that although not everything we say or do can be linked back to the classical world, reflecting on that time allows us to understand how we have learned to think as we do.

Her book came to mind last week when, as the Boris and Jeremy show rolled into Cultra, I met a woman who has refused to shut up for more than a decade.

For 11 years, Margaret McGuckin, who helped establish Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse (Savia), has fought for victims’ voices to be heard.

Having spoken to Margaret often, particularly during the last few months, she is absolutely unapologetic about insisting the scandal of abuse is not forgotten.

For many victims, the publication of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry’s report two-and-a-half years ago was a landmark in their fight for justice.

Yet that report proved to be a false dawn since, with the collapse of Stormont in January 2017, victims still have not received the apology, redress payments or care package that the inquiry recommended.

It's likely that without Margaret’s work, the inquiry’s recommendations would have quietly been mothballed.

Yet she has spent the last few years relentlessly campaigning for political action.

The fact that redress legislation may go through Westminster, rather than wait for the outcome of the glacial talks process at Stormont, is down to her tireless lobbying of politicians.

The appointment of victims’ advocate Brendan McAllister last week would probably not have been done without Margaret’s very polite hounding of the head of the Northern Ireland civil service David Sterling.

Even though all the parties are agreed that redress legislation is needed, the civil service response has been spectacularly slow. But it may never have responded at all had Margaret not continued to speak out.

Last year, she considered stepping down from the campaign and support group she set up due to relentless online bullying - itself an attempt to silence her.

It’s hard to say how much of that abuse is down to her gender. Women in public life face a regular onslaught of abuse, particularly from anonymous online trolls.

In fact, such abuse is one of the reasons why women are often fearful to speak out.

Speaking truth to power takes huge courage, particularly when victims have to repeat over and over the terrible crimes which were done to them.

Some of them are understandably tired and drained by being forced to relive their abuse every time they meet the secretary of state or government officials.

But it is this public speech which, along with the work of Savia’s solicitor Claire McKeegan, has kept victims’s issues in the headlines.

Should redress legislation not go before Parliament before its recess on July 25 you can be sure that Margaret will have something to say about it.

And so she should. We’re long past the stage where abuse was allowed to continue in closed institutions and victims were told never to speak of it. Speech and speaking out is itself a necessary form of action.

Here’s to not shutting up.