Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
LAST UPDATE | 23 Aug 2024
THE FUNERAL SERVICE of journalist, author and feminist activist Nell McCafferty has taken place today in her hometown of Derry.
Sinn Féin First Minister Michelle O’Neill was among those in attendance for McCafferty’s funeral at St. Columba’s Church in Derry.
Delegates were also in attendance on behalf of Taoiseach Simon Harris and President Michael D Higgins.
People held LGBT+ rainbow flags on the way into St Columba’s Church and applauded after one of her articles about Bloody Sunday was read out during the ceremony.
Addressing the congregation, former journalist Eamonn McCann read out extracts from an article McCafferty wrote for her local paper about Bloody Sunday, which bore the headline “There will be another day”.
The article gave a powerful immediate reaction to the news that 13 people had been shot dead after soldiers opened fire on a civil rights march on January 30 1972.
McCann said: “Bloody Sunday is very important to Derry of course, it’s defined us all. Whatever you thought of your politics and so on, it’s defined everybody from Derry.”
He said that hours after the chaos unfolded, no-one knew exactly how many people had been killed or wounded.
The then-MP for Mid-Ulster Bernadette McAliskey, who was in attendance at the funeral, was given the names of the 13 men who were killed after phoning the hospital.
“I remember Nell holding Bernadette’s elbow as she was taking the names of the Bloody Sunday dead, and she just kept on writing,” Mr McCann said.
“That was a terrible omen, and I remember the shiver which went through the hallway and through the McCafferty house and eventually through the whole of Derry and large parts of the world.”
He said Bloody Sunday had an effect on McCafferty, on how she viewed politics, on how she thought of her city’s people and its marches.
In the article that she wrote for the paper, she called the infamous event both “a fine day and a foul day”, he said.
She described the thousands of people singing and marching through the streets as part of the “fine day” it had been, but that “death is no stranger to us now”.
“Let it not be said of us that they died in vain. Stay free brothers and sisters, there will be another day,” she wrote.
“And so there will be another day, but there will never be another Nell McCafferty,” McCann said, which was met with a lengthy applause from mourners.
Her funeral mass was live streamed and can be watched back here.
Following the funeral service, a private cremation took place in Lakelands Crematorium in Co Cavan.
McCafferty died at Beech Hill Care Nursing Home in Fahan, Co Donegal on Wednesday and her family have asked for any donations to be made to The Foyle Hospice in Derry.
During the Prayers of the Faithful during today’s funeral service, a prayer was said for “those who care for the sick and the dying, especially those who cared for Nell in Beech Hill nursing home”.
A further round of applause was held as Nell’s coffin made its way out of the church at the end of the funeral service and a hymn was sung to St Columba, the patron saint of Derry.
An online Book of Condolence is also available to sign and will remain open until Sunday 1 September, 2024 on the Dublin City Council website.
All messages of sympathy will be printed and forwarded in a Book of Condolence to McCafferty’s family.
Nell McCafferty was born in Derry in 1944 to Hugh and Lily McCafferty and grew up in the Bogside area.
After finishing secondary school, she went on to study Arts at Queen’s University in Belfast, where she discovered her passion for writing.
She began her career in journalism in her 20s, after first working as a teacher, and was a frequent contributor on Irish TV and radio.
She was a founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement in 1970.
McCafferty was probably best known for her coverage of the Kerry Babies case, which she collected in a book titled ‘A Woman to Blame’.
She also wrote the books ‘Nell’, ‘In the Eyes of the Law’ and ‘The Best of Nell’.
She also led a high-profile protest action in 1971 known as the Contraception Train, when feminists brought condoms bought in Northern Ireland down to Dublin, where they were illegal, and declared them to customs agents in Connolly Station.
-With additional reporting from Press Association
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Makes the Anglo “deal”, look even worse.
Unless Ireland can outperform the Euro zone by 1% every year for the next 40 year, inflation will not decrease the burden it will add to it.
Michael Noonan “forgot” (read refused), to tell us what the banks have legally had to tell us for years, “Past performance is no indication of future performance”.
For the benefit of readers who might not understand what you’re getting at, Eurostat figures put Inflation in the Eurozone at 2.0% in the year to January 2013.
Basic 101 economics ‘The Law of Diminishing Returns’
Austerity really working I see.
It is working! For the billionaires that is.. their wealth is increasing rapidly.. look it up yourselves.
Look at the situation from the perspective of its creators.
And is anyone really surprised by this? What exactly is it going to take to make the Germans realise that austerity economics is not working – you can’t cut your way out of a recession.
It’s not entirely bad news for Ireland. It means that interest rates are unlikely to rise at any time in the near future, which will be a relief to anyone who owes any significant debt.
So who profited on the 0.6% debt increase?
The economy dropped 0.6% in the forth quarter of 2012.
Debt is a different issue. I don’t know understand what you’re saying. ? Sorry
The debt based money system we use is essentially a ponzi scheme. As money is only created through debt and it demands payment with interest it is mathematically impossible to pay down all debts. The system must grow exponentially to feed the new money creation. Unfortunately permanent exponential growth is also mathematically impossible. By taking on the debts of the sick monsters who would enslave us our government has sold us down the river and up the swanny. We can just hope against hope that the system’s bubble reinflates itself long enough for us to dig ourselves out of this. The future of this country depends upon this very dodgy gamble…
Very well said John.
Try telling that Jack Bowden, 2 comments up. He didnt get what I was hinting at.
tin hats for sale, 50 euro.
have your say