LONDONDERRY

ONE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM’S greatest feminist exports, Nell McCafferty, has died.

Born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland in 1944, McCafferty grew up as British as Elizabeth II of Saxe Coburg Gotha in the United Kingdom’s most loyal region, until she first went to work in a Kibbutz in Palestine, and then emigrated to the Irish Republic.

“Nell came to Dublin an unknown foreigner, barely speaking the local tongue, and yet she passed away as one of our own,” says Dr Sean Stanza-Membrayne, the Eamonn Casey Resident Poet in Exile at the Cu Chulainn Summer School in Berlin. “The Irish people took her to their hearts in the way they have taken so many Brits to their bosoms over the years: Tom Clarke, James Connolly, Desmond FitzGerald and Patrick Pearse to name but a few.

“Then there’s old Micheal MacLiammoir, the thesbian’s thesbian, born Alfred Wilmore in Willesden, London. And who could forget Bruce Arnold, whose broad voweled grace launched a thousand quips? How they were all welcomed. Otto Skorzeny – sorry, he was German, wasn’t he? I sometimes get mixed up. Frederick Forsyth, MI6’s favourite errand boy, he’s definitely British. And let’s not leave out Kevin Myers, Leicester’s proudest. Not just welcomed, but loved. Many of theses people became even ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’, as the old phrase goes.

“Nell, though, did more than just assimilate. She – a Londonderry girl remember – put all of her energy into pulling the Irish out of the dark hole of wretched Popery, into which they had fallen over the centuries. Her weapon? The condom. When the Irish Prime Minister was telling people he wanted to put the issue of unnatural contraception on the long finger, Nell and her sisters explained to the still-ignorant Irish where the rubber sheath actually belonged. After that, the whole country just rose up and thrust itself forward into the sunlight of enlightenment.

“Like others who have made Ireland their home, Nell kept her British accent all her life but this was never held against her by the Irish. She even developed a relationship with a native woman, the writer Nuala O’Faolain, and they became a fixture among Dublin’s Bohemian set. Nell was one of those people the Irish know by their first name. You only had to say ‘Nell’ and everyone knew what was coming.

“Yes, she shot from the hip at times – a plain speaking Brit, like her fellow-countryman, Boris Johnson – and occasionally innocents were accidentally hit. Not unlike her country’s armed forces, you might say.

“Nevertheless, she carried her British heritage right through life, for all to see, and would probably have been terribly excited to see how UK media outlets reminded everyone that, despite her adopted status, she was born and bred in Londonderry.”