Funeral takes place of renowned Derry journalist Nell McCafferty

The funeral has taken place of the renowned Derry journalist Nell McCafferty.

The veteran campaigner died earlier this week at the age of 80 in a nursing home in Inishowen.

The former Irish Times journalist, originally from the Bogside area of Derry, was a prominent voice on women’s rights issues across the island of Ireland and in 1970 co-founded the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM).

Considered a journalistic trailblazer and fearless social commentator, McCafferty wrote several books and also wrote for publications including the Sunday Tribune and Hot Press.

Campaigning for the legalisation of contraceptives in Ireland in the 1970s, she famously took part in an event known as the Contraceptive Train in 1971 when members of the IWLM travelled across the border to Belfast, bought a range of contraceptive products and took them to Dublin, where they staged a protest at the city’s Connolly station.

Tributes have flooded in since her death on Wednesday.

President Michael D Higgins said Ms McCafferty had a "unique gift in stirring people's consciousness, and this made her advocacy formidable on behalf of those who had been excluded from society".

He said she was a "pioneer in raising those searching questions which could be asked, but which had been buried, hidden or neglected".

Taoiseach Simon Harris described her as a "fierce, fearless and fiery" campaigner who "suffered no fools".

"If she was in the room or in the debate, you knew about it," the Taoiseach said in a statement.

"Her passion and wrath was not scattergun, it had a laser-like focus on calling out inequality and injustice. She suffered no fools but had a kindness and warmth for many.

"Her wit and Derry turn of phrase made her impossible to ignore."

Nell's Requiem Mass was held in St Columba's Church, Long Tower this afternoon.

Mourners stood for a round of applause as her remains were carried from the church.

Among the mourners were First Minister Michelle O'Neill, the Mayor of Derry Cllr Lilian Seenoi-Barr, veteran civil rights campaigners Eamonn McCann and Bernadette Devlin McAliskey.

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.

Mr 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,” Mr McCann said, which was met with a lengthy applause from mourners.

After the funeral mass ended, mourners applauded her once more as her coffin was carried out of the church.

McCaffrey’s body was taken for a private cremation in Co Cavan following the mass.

A book of condolence has been opened by Ms Seenoi-Barr in The Guildhall for those who wish to pay tribute to McCafferty.