And one of the significant national achievements of journalist and feminist campaigner, Nell McCafferty, who died recently, aged 80, was that she was equally recognised, and equally relatable, north and south.
The Derrywoman’s reputation went across 32 counties.
Many accolades have been paid to Nell, and justly so. She was a fearless campaigner who passionately fought for women, whether that be Republican women in Northern jails or Joanne Hayes of the “Kerry babies” tragedy: in her book about the latter, she demonstrated that the law looked for “a woman to blame”. (Although obviously it mustn’t be forgotten that an infant died cruelly.)
McCafferty
Nell was a deeply involved part of the Irish feminist movement of the 1970s, as was I – as were more elevated figures such as Mary Robinson, and the poet Eavan Boland.
The civil rights activist Maírín de Burca, very committed to peace (though she had been in the Official IRA in her youth) was another key figure.
Everyone was bewitched by Nell, I think, with her beguiling mixture of audacity and humour.
Nell was an Irish Republican, but not anti-British – she gave credit to the British administration for her education and for the NHS and the welfare state. She was a lesbian, but not a man-hater.
She fiercely criticised the Catholic church, especially over clerical scandals, but I have heard it suggested that this was because she cared about the Church: and she had a comforting Catholic funeral at St Columba’s in Derry, with hymns in Irish, English and Latin – a female cantor giving an especially beautiful “Ave Maria” by Gounod.
She felt a loyalty to Martin McGuinness, an old family friend. But like him she genuinely came to support peace”
As it happened Nell had a Protestant grandmother, who converted on marriage. She joked that the legacy was a high Ulster standard of domestic cleanliness, as illuminated by the Nordie boast: “You could eat your dinner off my kitchen floor!”
She could have a go at southerners, jokily.
I once mispronounced a place-name in Derry.
“Free State idiot!” she expostulated.
Some friends did have certain reservations about Nell’s defence of the Provos, especially around the time of the Enniskillen bomb in 1987 – I think a real turning-point in consciousness about what political violence means.
She felt a loyalty to Martin McGuinness, an old family friend.
But like him she genuinely came to support peace.
We used to have annual group reunions, which Nell called, with her salty humour “The Dying Feminists’ Lunch”.
God bless her memory.