LAST UPDATE | 23 Aug

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”.

File image of Nell McCafferty, a prominent journalist, author, and feminist campaigner who died Wednesday.

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