FROM THE ARCHIVES:The horrors of "pagan" England and the moral rot caused by dance halls were described in lectures by two priests in the Gaiety Theatre in 1937. – JOE JOYCE
The religious and moral aspect of emigration from the Free State to England, was discussed by the Rev Owen Dudley, the well-known preacher, in an address in the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, yesterday.
Fr Dudley spoke of the problem from the English point of view of the annual immigration of some 20,000 or 30,000 of Ireland’s youth to a country whose “national religion is football, boxing, film stars, Robert Taylor and the Zoo, and you can throw in beer, if it can any longer be called beer”.
England, he said, was no longer Christian in belief or morals. Irish girls went to England either to earn money or secure a “better time”, but a higher wage in England did not mean a higher standard of living, because the cost of living there was higher than in this country.
There were 20 million people in England living in a state of malnutrition or semi-starvation, the remedy for which, according to the English Government, was physical jerks; nine millions who had eight shillings a week for food, and four millions with four shillings a week for food. He had lived in England’s slums and amid its industrial hideousness, and he envied the Irish countryman. He did not deny that a great many Irishmen got work, but many of them only got odd jobs, and at the worst did not get a job at all.
The Rev RS Devane, SJ, proposing a vote of thanks to the lecturer, said that in addition to economic conditions driving or attracting girls to England, there were several other causes for that exodus, such as the increased facilities in rural areas for travelling to neighbouring towns and cities, which made for the break-up of the traditional, settled country home life, and developed a restlessness that looked to centres of population as so many Meccas.
Above all, he thought that the needless multiplication of the country dance halls was the cause of this mental urbanisation which made the young folk look to England as the Mecca of Meccas. When one knew that there were 139 licensed public dance halls in Donegal, 123 in Cork, 98 in Kerry, 79 in Wicklow, 64 in Limerick, all now on a purely commercial basis, and when one remembered the attendant disturbing influences of all these on simple country folk – late hours, drink, long distances coming home – one was not at all surprised at the moral dry rot that had set in in many country districts, with sad results which were not necessary to mention.
It seemed to him that there was a most pressing need for organising rural life in Ireland on new lines. He would suggest the system of the Latin countries, which was largely based on the parish, especially the system of Poland – the formation of parish councils, the members of which would be elected, as in Poland by the votes of the heads of families, and would regulate all the internal economic and social life of the parish.
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