Nell McCafferty: Journalist and campaigner dies aged 80

A journalist and campaigner, who has died aged 80 has been described as “fierce, fearless and fiery” and a feminist icon.

Nell McCafferty, who was born in Londonderry in 1944, 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.

Her family said she died peacefully at her nursing home in Fahan in County Donegal. Her funeral will be on Friday.

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.

Irish President Michael D Higgins said Ms McCafferty had been “a pioneer in raising those searching questions which could be asked, but which had been buried, hidden or neglected”.

She possessed “a unique gift in stirring people’s consciousness, and this made her advocacy formidable on behalf of those who had been excluded from society,” Mr Higgins said.

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

Mr Harris said that her “passion and wrath was not scattergun, it had a laser-like focus on calling out inequality and injustice”.

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

First Minister Michelle O’Neill said she was a “a trailblazer in every sense of the word”.

Ms O’Neill said she was a “proud feminist, and a civil rights campaigner who “used her voice to promote equality and fight injustices in our society”.

She said she was an important figure during the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement.

Tánaiste Micheál Martin said she “was an exceptional journalist and campaigner – the voice of an era who helped to bring major advancements in civil rights and women’s rights”.

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”.

Ireland’s Press Ombudsman 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.

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

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

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 McGuinness 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.