Derry-born journalist and feminist campaigner Nell McCaffrey has died at the age of 80. The Irish Times has a good obituary of her.
I met her several times over the years. She was, at times, very engaging and, at other times, utterly terrifying. She had that combination of extreme intelligence, raw anger, and a complete inability to suffer fools.
Years ago, I took her photo at an event in Queens. It is not one of my better ones, as she was entirely impervious to direction. I met her the next day on the Enterprise train to Dublin and I mentioned in passing that I had put the photo I took of her on her Wikipedia page. ‘What gives you the right to do that!’ she roared at me. She was soothed when I explained how Wikipedia works, but it gave me a good insight into what it must have been like to be on the wrong side of her.
She held the Irish establishment accountable, and they did not like it.
At other times, she seems to court controversy for controversy’s sake.
Reading her obits and profiles of her, it seemed like the rage came from a place of hurt and self-protection. She seemed a very lonely figure at times. A lesbian in the days when such things were still a sin, a northerner plying her trade in a Dublin which at best was indifferent to Northerners and at other times openly hostile.
Whatever she was, she was never dull, that’s for sure.
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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