Nell McCafferty, a pioneering journalist, author and feminist, has passed away at the age of 80. This morning, her family confirmed her passing in a nursing home located in Co Donegal.
McCafferty hailed from Derry, where she was born in 1944 to Hugh and Lily McCafferty, spending her childhood in the Bogside. Breaking barriers as one of the first batches of Catholic students admitted to Queens University in Belfast, she pursued arts and immersed herself in civil rights affairs. Prior to embarking on her journalistic journey, she dedicated some time to teaching.
She made significant contributions as a founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, taking a strong stance on issues such as women’s rights, poverty and societal injustices in late 60s and 70s Ireland.
McCafferty is acclaimed for a range of works, including the noteworthy, ‘A Woman to Blame’, centred on the Kerry babies case. Other books, like ‘The Armagh Women’, which talks about female republican inmates and their hunger strikes in Armagh jail, ‘Peggy Deery: A Derry Family at War’, her autobiography, as well as ‘Goodnight Sisters: Selected Writings of Nell McCafferty’, a collection of her works, also feature in her portfolio.
President Michael D Higgins, on the occasion of her 80th birthday in March, praised her, claiming how fortunate are those who had experienced her humanity, expressed through her unique blend of possibility, vulnerability and humour that so remarkably mirrored her Derry upbringing.