Journalist and campaigner dies aged 80

The journalist and campaigner Nell McCafferty has died at the age of 80.

Born in Londonderry in 1944, she was a founding member of the Irish Woman’s Liberation Movement and wrote for the Irish Times among other publications.

She campaigned for the legalisation of contraception in Ireland, including staging a protest where she and other women brought contraceptives over the border from Northern Ireland by train from Belfast to Dublin.

She was the author of several books, including a A Woman to Blame, about the Kerry Babies Case and The Armagh Women, about a hunger strike among female republican prisoners in Armagh jail in 1980.

Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Simon Harris has described her as “fierce, fearless and fiery”.

“Her passion and wrath was not scattergun, it had a laser-like focus on calling out inequality and injustice,” he said.

“She suffered no fools but had a kindness and warmth for many. Her wit and Derry turn of phrase made her impossible to ignore.”

The SDLP leader and Foyle MP Colum Eastwood described Ms McCafferty as “a mould breaker and establishment shaker”.

He added that she would be “sadly missed” but said her “activism will endure”.

Irish Times journalist Kitty Holland, daughter of activist Eamonn McCann, a lifelong friend of Ms McCafferty’s, said Ms McCafferty was a “huge figure in my life, a huge figure in journalism”.

“She is a huge loss to people personally, a huge loss to Ireland and to women,” she told BBC Radio Foyle.

She could be very opinionated around the dinner table,” Ms Holland said who “wouldn’t suffer fools gladly”

“She spoke her mind without apology,” Ms Holland said.

“That annoyed people but endeared people to her as well,” she added.

Leader of the Irish Labour Party Ivana Bacik said she was a “wonderful, fearless and unique feminist icon”.

Journalist Susan McKay worked with Ms McCafferty in Dublin in the 1990s.

She paid tribute to an “absolute inspiration” who had a profound effect on Irish journalism.

Ms McCafferty, she added, “was very determined that she was going to get to write about things regardless of whether editors wanted her to or not”.

“She had a hugely transformational effect on the way all of us do journalism in Ireland,” she added.

In an article published in the Irish Times in March to coincide with her 80th birthday, several figures including Irish President Michael D Higgins and Mr McCann paid tribute to Ms McCafferty.

President Higgins described her as a “friend and ally” who had “enduring courage that was delivered with a curiosity that was ethical and fearless on the side of those without power”.

Mr McCann wrote that “there hasn’t been a significant battle for women’s or for gay rights in more than half a century that Nell hasn’t played a key role in”.

In 1972 she interviewed the mother of Martin McGuiness at the time that he was leading the IRA’s operations in Derry.

In 2024 declassified government files reported on by the Belfast Telegraph include a record of a conversation in 1994 between McCafferty and officials in the British embassy in Dublin.

Ms McCafferty was described in the report of the meeting as being “in close personal touch with the Sinn Féin leadership and specifically with Martin McGuinness and Mitchel McLaughlin”.

In 2004 she published a memoir titled Nell, in which which recounted her upbringing in the Bogside and relationship with her long-term partner, the novelist Nuala O’Faolain.

McCafferty also spoke out against homophobia in the Catholic Church and Irish society.

She told RTÉ’s The Late Late Show in 2004 that being gay was the last great taboo in Ireland.

McCafferty died aged 80 at a nursing home in County Donegal.