WHEN Tommy Spooner was setting up the Men's Networking Resource Centre of Ireland in Ballymun in Dublin, he deliberately sought the recently vacated Aoibhneas Women's Refuge as a premises. For one thing it was easily accessible: a groundfloor flat located close to the centre of the north Dublin high rise complex, but as well as that the move had a symbolic significance for him.
"Aoibhneas was one of the greatest projects we ever saw here in Ballymun and now they've moved on, he says. "But the wheel has turned full circle because here we are now starting out where they were 10 years ago."
After a long struggle for recognition from statutory bodies such as the Eastern Health Board and FAS, Aoibhneas now has a purpose built premises for housing women and their children who have suffered violence in the home. As Tommy Spooner sees it, men's groups are now at the start of a similar struggle to achieve their respective aims. "We are the first men's group in the country to get a Community Employment Scheme and we had to lobby pretty damn hard to get it."
There is a great need for support services for men, he argues, particularly in disadvantaged areas such as Ballymun. "Men need reeducation and personal development to cope with the effects of conditioning. They're still stuck with the traditional idea of the man as breadwinner, although many of them have had that taken away from them. They need personal development as well because women have taken the leading role in communities like Ballymun over the last 20 years and men in that process have been left behind."
The most cursory glance shows that the vast majority of people involved in Ballymun's residents' associations, youth activities, drugs watch groups, adult education and training, community employment and so on are women. Men, they say, simply don't see most community activities as a thing for men to do.
The men's networking resource centre is not antiwomen, Tommy Spooner stresses; it just wants to get men to the same level of development as women. Gender balance is an important aspect of the group's employment policy and its management committee also has a woman member, he points out.
Since it opened last December, the resource centre's staff have combined their role of providing support to men's groups around the country with the operation of a drop in centre for men from the immediate area. During those six months they have dealt with men who have become deeply demoralised and isolated after years on the dole; husbands made homeless through separation; fathers who have been cut off from their children and a `surprising" number of very young men who, despite wanting to, have never been allowed to play any part in the lives of the children they've fathered.
"They're at the end of their tether when they come here, they've reached a crisis point in their lives," says Tommy Spooner. "They're saying `look at me, I'm on the scrap heap, why should I be like this?' This is happening nationwide, more so in disadvantaged areas, because of lack of education and the way men were conditioned in the past. Men have lost their identity and their role in the family and now they need to find a new role."
At the moment the resource centre's staff helps separated men and single fathers to take custody cases to the family law courts. A shortage of suitable flats in the area is another hurdle to overcome for men who have been awarded joint or sole custody of their children, so the resource centre plans to set up a shelter to provide emergency accommodation to prevent the breakup of these families. A creche and play centre aimed specifically at unemployed fathers in this situation is another of their aims.
In one sense Robert Bly's bestseller, Iron John: A Book About Men, has left an unfortunate legacy to groups like the men's networking resource centre according to Felix Gallagher, the community employment project supervisor at the centre. "People have this view of men's groups being about cuddling and banging drums and sitting around naked in a forest," he says. Add to that a touch of homophobic paranoia and you get a male population in Ballymun who, by and large, are reluctant to call into the centre. "It's a matter of breaking that stereotype. Once we get people in here they see that's not what we're about."
Moving from Belfast to the north city suburb of Cabra gave Felix an interesting perspective on how men view their role in a working class community. In Belfast, he says, everybody, male or female, gets involved in community activity which he thinks is probably due to the process of ghettoisation arising from the Troubles. When he came South he found a different situation.
"I was the only fellow working on the youth club committee, which has eight members and there was only me and another fellow on the Area Partnership committees. The drugs committee, now, would have more men but it was founded by women. The men would be more up for the macho thing of marching and going around on the drugs vigils.
"But even though one of the first things said at our meetings was that there was a need for more people to go out and get involved in the youth club and the sports clubs so they could open more nights a week and give the teenagers something to do to make them less likely to take drugs, even (though they recognised that need over a year and a half ago, not one man has come along to the youth club. It's still seen as women's work."
Pat Mooney, a separated mother of five children, is well known around Ballymun for her involvement in a long list of community organisations including the local area partnership, the Ballymun Housing Task Force and the children's baseball club. Working on the community employment project at the men's networking resource centre has to some extent changed her views on Ballymun men and what she sees as their reluctance to get involved in the community.
Before I would have been slagging them off and saying `what's wrong with you? You're always going off to the pub or the football pitch.' But I can see now that it's more than that. In general the long term unemployed men here get disheartened and feel that they can't do anything because they've been slapped down that many times. They've been for interviews and for one reason or another they just can't get a job. It's just a case of them saying `I'm not doing anything, I'm not going anywhere'." Women, she thinks, are more resilient in this situation.
Tommy Spooner sees personal development as the key to taking men like these out of a state of isolation, both in society and in the family. This problem, he says, is close to the heart of other problems like drug abuse, alcoholism, crime and suicide. The men's networking resource centre has submitted an action plan to the Department of Social Welfare detailing proposals for the training of men's personal development course facilitators throughout the country. "Women have cried in these rooms," he says. "Now it's time for men to cry."
