Nell was a genius, an outlaw. When she saw injustice she’d act on it

It was the late 1970s and the bold, Bogside-born Nell McCafferty stood up on the lectern of Derry City’s Guildhall. Clutching a copy of the Bible in one hand and the Quran in the other, she began theatrically reciting various ­misogynistic and denigrative references to women she had underlined from each text.
She was supposed to be there as part of a debate team, discussing a completely unrelated topic, but she wasn’t going to waste the platform she had been afforded in her home city on something inconsequential.
Margo Harkin, the Derry-born filmmaker and a lifelong friend of McCafferty, bore witness to the disruption and remembers the roars of laughter at the absurdity of some of the passages.
McCafferty read each section in her husky voice with deliberance, and of course that sardonic wit she so regularly weaponised to make her point. She had style and the unique ability to make an audience laugh in a way that opened their eyes to topics that were no laughing ­matter.
“She was exposing how the world’s great religious faiths thought of and treated women. She didn’t care that there was another debate going on, she would use whatever platform she could to fight for women’s rights, but her great gift was that she knew how to make people laugh, and that helped her make her point.”
Harkin recalls her first awestruck experience of a young McCafferty ­delivering speeches at Civil Rights marches in Derry, flanked by figures such as Bernadette Devlin and Eamonn McCann.
“They would take your breath away. They were so coherent and articulate, just brilliant orators, all of them. They were all giants and Nell was one of them.”
McCafferty was born in 1944 to ­working-class parents, Hugh and Lily McCafferty. Her experiences in Derry profoundly influenced her worldview, instilling a fierce sense of justice and a commitment to challenging the status quo. Her sharp intellect led her to Queen’s University Belfast, where she studied the arts and, after a short-lived career as a teacher, she began a career in journalism — a calling she revolutionised with her unapologetic style.
McCafferty moved to Dublin in 1970 and went on to cofound the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement. Her lived experience was the ignition the movement needed. She was a seasoned activist at this point and it showed, according to Rosita Sweetman, a fellow journalist and Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM) member.
“She’d come down fresh from the ­Bogside with Bernadette Devlin, so by the time she came to Dublin she’d really earned her stripes as an activist. And of course we were meek and mild little Irish Catholics by comparison.
“She couldn’t get over how well- behaved, nice girls we were and so she was there to stir all that up.”
Her niece, Muire McCallion, says that McCafferty’s activism was not only ­fostered by influences within her family, but was an inexorable part of growing up in the Bogside. She told The Sunday Times: “Mammy and Nell both went to protests, they ­experienced Bloody Sunday, they saw the inevitable change that erupted in people’s consciousness and psyche in the heart of the city they loved.
“They were there at the coal face of the civil rights movement. People talk about rebel girls and that was them in the purest sense. Nell really was an outlaw. When she saw injustice she did something about it.
“Nell loved Derry but as we’ve seen from the outpouring of support the last few days, Derry also loved Nell.”
Ailbhe Smyth, a women’s rights ­campaigner and a former colleague of McCafferty, considers that this Derry upbringing not only influenced her ­journalism but shaped the evolution of the Irish feminist movement.
“She was obstreperous and dogged, but she needed to be. She got out there and she said, look, what we’re doing is very radical and revolutionary and if you want to be part of this, you have to be ­prepared to be radical and revolutionary.
“And the fact that she happened to come from Derry was a very good thing in that respect.”
McCafferty’s forms of protest were theatrical and humorous. A protest against the illegality of the import of ­contraceptives into Ireland, an event that became known as “the contraceptive train”, was McCafferty’s creation and one of her greatest triumphs.
She led 49 members of the IWLM onto a train from Dublin to Belfast, where they could lawfully buy contraceptives.
When they arrived in Belfast, they bought condoms and spermicidal jelly, but could not get the Pill without a ­prescription. Quick-thinking McCafferty ordered the women to buy several packets of aspirin to dupe customs officers into thinking that they were importing ­contraceptive pills.
Upon their return to Connolly Station in Dublin, the women paraded up the platform, waving the forbidden items in the air. Footage of the event showed bewildered officials making an initial attempt to prevent their entry before ­succumbing to the roars of the women’s supporters as “let them through” and “enforce the constitution” echoed through the station.
The birthplace of these ideas was Gaj’s restaurant on Baggot Street, where the IWLM met every Monday at 8pm. ­Sweetman recalls how McCafferty ­constantly strategised on how best to attract attention to the movement.
“Nell’s genius was in direct action. She and Mary Maher were behind the ­contraception train. Nell’s brain was always ticking away, trying to come up with the next plan and of course the ­Forty Foot was another one of those great, direct-action protests.
“She had this genius ability to see an opportunity for creating a drama that would highlight political issues. She found ways to illustrate what was going on in a witty way, and that was the beauty of her actions.”
The famous women’s invasion of the male-only Forty Foot swimming spot in Sandycove was another protest that made a splash. Initially McCafferty attended the invasions undercover as a reporter for The Irish Times, before revealing herself as one of the protesters by diving into the chilly waters.
Mary Dorcey, a fellow invader and women’s rights activist, recalls McCafferty’s role at the Forty Foot. “Nell wasn’t a great swimmer but she could stay in the cold water for hours, longer than ­anyone else. It was really remarkable, she was so determined.”
This determination sustained McCafferty throughout her career as she became one of Ireland’s most important journalists. Her talent and intellect was undeniable but, according to Smyth, it was her discipline and work ethic that brought her success.
“She was terrific to work with because she was a fabulous journalist and a great writer, but for all that exuberance and jauntiness she was a very hard worker and took her journalism seriously.
“She knew what she was doing and she knew what she was writing. She was very particular about it – she’d fight with you over a full stop.”
Some of McCafferty’s most notable work was done in the 1980s, in particular her expansive court reporting on the Kerry babies tribunal, which led to the publication of her book A Woman to Blame.Smyth, who was editor of the ­publisher, Attic Press said: “The book showed just how powerful our whole judicial system was and how it was ­perpetuating very profound misogyny which fundamentally declared that women weren’t to be believed.
“It was disgraceful, and Nell was ­spelling that out. You have to be very brave to do what she did. You have to be very determined and you have to be very clear about what your values were and where your loyalties lay. And her loyalty was to that woman, who was a scapegoat for some kind of national trauma or shame at the time.”
One part of McCafferty’s life that she was hesitant to publicise was her ­homosexuality. She said later she had know at 14 that she was gay. Her reverence for and devotion to her mother ­stopped her declaring it, although it was by all accounts an open secret”.
She confessed her sexuality to a priest, who advised her to turn away from the “sin”, and years later she spoke to the nuns at Thornhill College, the school that inspired the sitcom Derry Girls. ­McCafferty said later: “They showed me compassion, made it possible for me to go on when I was discovering what it meant to be gay”.
One of McCafferty’s friends, who does not wish to be named said: “It’s not that she was ashamed, but despite how ­outspoken she was, it just took her some time to become comfortable with being publicly labelled as a lesbian.”
The greatest heartbreak in McCafferty’s life was the end of her 15-year relationship with Nuala O’Faolain, the writer, in 1995.
John Clarke, McCafferty’s long-time friend and the husband to Marian ­Finucane, her late co-presenter, remarked on Joe Duffy’s Liveline: “Nell was never the same after that. When the light of your life walks out the door and you don’t know why, it leaves too many questions unanswered. She was forever looking for an explanation without any success. It was very sad.”
McCafferty’s later years were ­turbulent. In an interview on Newstalk in 2010 she made a defamatory remark about Mary Harney, then minister for health, which led to a libel allegation that cost the station €450,000.
She was was a loose cannon and the unpredictability was part of her charm, but in this case it proved costly and led to her being largely excluded from live ­public broadcasts.
In recent years, her health declined rapidly and she had become “difficult”, falling out with many old friends, including Sweetman, who remarked this year that “Nell doesn’t do forgiveness”.
McCann, a lifelong friend, was ­unperturbed by this side of McCafferty. He remained a devoted visitor, but he did say in an article in the Derry Journal last year: “She could be prickly as a ­porcupine.”
McCallion, however, speaks of her aunt’s private acts of kindness to people. She discovered a litany of letters in McCafferty’s possession, some of which were from strangers thanking her for ­various gestures over the years, most of which had been unknown to her family.
“So she was Nell McCafferty on the ­television, on The Late Late [Show], but she was also Nell McCafferty talking to somebody on the street, meeting somebody for a coffee if they needed to talk.“Somebody was at their absolute ­lowest and Nell was there to help them. There’s a lot of people who are very ­public about how they help people, but our Nell — she was a tiny woman who not just talked the talk but walked the walk when it mattered.”
The condolence book for McCafferty remains open to all at the Guildhall in Derry City, the very place where she once stood at all of 150cm (4ft 11in), arms ­outstretched, emblematic of Lady Justice but steadfast in her exposé of the world’s injustice.
McCallion says with a smile that ­McCafferty insisted she was “4ft 11 and a half”, but added: “Our Nell was a tiny woman with tiny shoes — but they’re shoes that no one will ever fill.”
McCann echoed the sentiment as he addressed the congregation at her funeral on Friday. He read an extract from McCafferty’s own report on Bloody Sunday in 1972, which said: “Let it not be said of us that they died in vain. Stay free brothers and sisters, there will be another day,”
He concluded: “And so there will be another day, but there will never be another Nell McCafferty”.