REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE ASSOCIATION OF DIRECTORS OF SOCIAL SERVICES INTERNATIONAL
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE ASSOCIATION OF DIRECTORS OF SOCIAL SERVICES INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SERVICES CONFERENCE
My thanks to the organisers of this International Conference on "Social Inclusion - Crossing the Boundaries" for their kind invitation to address this gathering of so many distinguished individuals in the field of social services.
What brings us together is one of the great challenges facing our society as we exit a turbulent century with so many voices from the margins impatiently claiming their right to be part of the mainstream and so many more yet to be heard.
The concept of social inclusion is a politically loaded, vision loaded way of looking at the organisation of human relationships. It is not neutral about where we should be going as a society. It may be unsure about the best way of getting there and debate about that is part of what brings you here but at its core the concept of social inclusion springs from a profound commitment to the equal dignity of every human being and the equal right to live humanly, decently in a world which has its face turned to you the person and not a world where you are ignored, discarded, capriciously restrained, your giftedness left stillborn.
I was privileged to grow up in a large family of nine children among whom was a profoundly deaf younger brother. My abiding memory of him is of a little boy anxiously tugging at my elbow as his eight siblings laughed and joked so easily with each other. “Remember me” he would say “I am here too.”
Forty years later he still tugs at our elbows. “Remember me” In a world made by the hearing for the hearing, the literate for the literate, the ablebodied for the ablebodied, the achievers for the achievers, the strong for the strong, the elbow tuggers are still with us. Systems create their own vanities, their own wilful blindness to what lies beyond their constructs. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes carelessly, unthinkingly they hamper the life scope of some while affording free rein to others. The impulse, the imperative for social inclusion challenges those constructs, insists on the reconfiguration of those systems so that there are no margins, no wildernesses where people are condemned to merely watch life pass them by. That impulse has in recent times dismantled apartheid, forced a new political engagement here in Northern Ireland, opened up new space for women, shifted paradigms for dealing with the ambitions of the disabled and it continues its righteous work of pushing towards a society where each person counts. It is important though given the scale and complexity of the task, the work yet to be accomplished that we take heart from the changing and changed landscape which is facilitating conferences like this and giving us more hope than ever before that social inclusion is not just a noble goal but an achievable objective.
These past thirty years have witnessed changes - technological, scientific, economic, political and social on a scale and with a speed unparalleled in the history of humankind. It would be churlish not to acknowledge and applaud many of those developments, which have brought about major positive improvements in the lives of most of our citizens.
Today, we manifestly live in an era of greater material wealth. In this part of the globe we live longer, are healthier than ever before, have greater opportunities than ever before. We have a more profound understanding of the complex demands of equality, of human rights, a sharper sense of human justice, a growing awareness that a society which uses the talents of only part of its people achieves only part of its potential. This generation knows that the more people there are on the margins, the weaker, the more unstable, the more insecure is the so called mainstream.
While we appreciate all that is good in modern society, it is also essential that we mark the downside, the dark side, the twilight zones where erosion of family structures, of neighbourhood and community values among the other calamities life throws at us, have damaged the fabric of social cohesion, creating gaping holes where people’s lives are lived in very scary freefall. It is a paradox that in times of plenty and unprecedented opportunity, more and more are finding themselves alienated and excluded from the mainstream structures of our society. They have discovered from first principles that rising tides do not lift all boats and that when you are stuck fast in the mudbanks those in the accelerating mainstream get harder and harder to catch.
Bring a Honduran mother or a Sowetan teenager to our margins and they might be perplexed but their perplexity is small comfort to the issues of inequality and unequal access rooted in the warp and weft of our own place.
Inequality, with its countless insidious little ways, its many inevitable and cruel cul-de-sacs, is the enemy of social cohesion. While we are undoubtably creating more wealth today and more opportunity it is not necessarily axiomatic that we are creating a fairer or more caring society. Fairness and caring do not tumble naturally or spontaneously from wealth creation. Opportunity does not spread itself automatically and evenly with mathematical precision and exactidude across each social sector. It can be made to. Some boats are so far up the beach that their only hope of making that rising tide is with a serious push. Most of you are the pushers of those boats, the agencies whether state or voluntary, the professionals, the volunteers, to whom it falls to finesse the boundaries between the margins and the mainstream.
The sheer diversity of your work, the seemingly intractable nature of many of the problems you deal with makes it imperative that resources, skills, experiences are shared effectively.
The web of issues which lie at the heart of social exclusion cross State boundaries and exercises many countries. Many western European countries are devoting an increasing proportion of their resources to dealing with social problems but are failing to make the kind of significant impacts they aspire to.
While each country has its own history, its own character, its own unique profile and its own customised response nonetheless in each of our stories, in each of our attempts to tackle our own problems there is a vast and growing body of experience both negative and encouraging which is transferrable across boundaries whether of professional discipline or of geography.
Properly used, properly shared and accessed that body of knowledge, distilled and analysed is capable of offering us keys to understanding past failures and constructing more effective future agendas for action. It takes a certain amount of both professional and political humility to acknowledge that others might have something to teach us and a certain amount of generosity to offer what we have as a resource to others. That is what this conference is about, pooling, sharing, seeking a freshness of insight, a reinvigoration of perspective.
The title of the Conference was, I know, also chosen by the organisers to reflect the interconnections between social exclusion and the wider political landscape. Rightly so. It would be impossible, to look to the needs of those who find themselves marginalised in any society without looking at the broader political questions and context.
There can be no doubt that here in Northern Ireland this violent conflict over territory and identity, has been both shaped by and been a shaper of this society impacting heavily and dramatically, on the lived lives of so many people, creating victims capriciously and cruelly.
Equally, there can be no doubt that the single greatest contribution to improving the position of those who live on the margins of our communities would be made by a just and lasting peace. At the level of finances alone, one only has to consider the enormous financial cost of conflict and set it against for example the modest respite care aspirations of carers for Alzheimers, the enormous fundraising efforts on behalf of those with learning disabilities to increase the life chances of their loved ones, to see how skewed perspectives can get when we become obsessed with avoidable man-made conflicts instead of focussing on solving the many spontaneous and unavoidable crises and catastrophes life itself presents.
The Good Friday Agreement and the public mood which made it possible showed a community in serious dialogue with itself about its priorities for the future. Out of that dialogue came a commitment to building, however painstaking, however tough, a new partnership infused with mutual respect, equality and tolerance. Those of us who love this place and its people have seen and felt hope take root. We have watched a new language emerge, less strident, more affirming of each other. We have seen old enemies find common cause, people who never listened to each other now sit across tables to do exactly that.
There is tangible evidence that more and more people are taking personal responsibility for shaping a new society, creating a new language, building a new space in which peace can grow. It is essential that we hold on to and value that evidence for when people forecast failure and our hearts sink it is worth reminding ourselves that there is no square one to go back to. We have all moved a long, long way.
The change from a culture of conflict to a culture of consensus does not as we know happen overnight or with the stroke of a pen. It comes in fits and starts, tentative steps forward, lurches sideways and occasional stumbles. But the dynamic is inescapably forward.
We have still to see the ending, for all time, of vicious, hate-fuelled sectarianism which is causing so much on going misery. Generations of suspicion, fear and mistrust have clogged up many arteries and some find it very difficult to take a chance on each other, to risk trusting each other. In these difficult weeks it falls to today’s generation of politicians to find a common pathway through the chaos. Among them are the very people who have given us hope, whose determination, commitment, vision, and courage has allowed us to hope in a new beginning. I wish them, each and every one, well as they carry all our futures on their shoulders over these delicate coming weeks.
Few of us can understand how lonely a place political leadership can be, for the things they decide will change how we live our lives. Let us hope that as they contemplate and plan, discuss and negotiate, they feel at their elbows the tugging of those on the margins, that they hear the voices which say I want a decent life for my children, I do not want to be hated, I do not want to hate, I want to be respected for what and who I am, I want space and opportunity to grow to be all the things I am capable of. I want the God-given beauty of this extraordinary country to be matched by human relations which are healthy and happy. I want the corrosive power of hatred to be overwhelmed by the miraculous power of love.
I know that you too wish these things otherwise you would not be here. I hope that out of your deliberations will come a renewed and even deeper commitment to your vocation, a surge of power which will help you obliterate the boundaries which provoke and promote social exclusion.
My renewed thanks to the Association of Directors of Social Services for inviting me to come and address you here today. I hope that the conference is a success and I wish you well in your deliberations.