22 Aug 2024

Nell: Journalist, Author, Activist, Sister

Nell McCafferty has died at the age of 80. She attained that rare achievement in Ireland, someone whose first name was sufficient. She was Nell.

Nell will be remembered for her groundbreaking journalism, her books on the most difficult of subjects, and her activism for women’s rights and LGBTI rights.

She was a founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement and wrote on women’s rights, poverty and social injustices.

Her books include: ‘A Woman to Blame’’, on the Kerry babies’ case, ‘The Armagh Women’ on woman republican prisoners; ‘Peggy Deery: A Derry Family at War’; ‘Nell’, her autobiography, and a collection of her writings, 'Goodnight Sisters'.

President Higgins, a friend of Nell, said she was “a pioneer in raising those searching questions which could be asked, but which had been buried, hidden or neglected”.

The Press Ombudsman, Susan McKay, said McCafferty was a “ground-breaking journalist” [ ] before Nell “ordinary people were never asked for their opinion, they were written about by gents who thought that they knew how best to analyse society.”

Good night Sister, rest in peace.