‘Mural For Nell’ set to grace the Bogside’s People’s Gallery

A campaign is underway to have a mural celebrating internationally renowned author, journalist and feminist activist, Nell McCafferty, painted in her native Bogside.

The site of the mural is at 5, Lisfannon Park - close to Free Derry Corner.

Ms McCafferty, who was born and grew up at 8 Beechwood Street, in Derry, died in August last year at the age of 80.

The driving force behind the campaign is local woman, Shá Gillespie, who has set up the online fundraiser ‘Mural for Nell’ to help pay for the new artwork.

It is an indication of the esteem in which Nell McCafferty was held in Derry that the online fundraiser has raised more than half its target amount of £4,000 in less than a week.

The mural will be painted by the Peaball graffiti collective.

Peaball is responsible for many other eye-catching murals around the city, including the ‘We Carry On’ sunflowers at Quayside shopping centre on Strand Road, commissioned by Hive Cancer Support, and ‘Breastfeeding’ at the Pram Centre on Great James’ Street, commissioned by the North West Breastfeeding and Perinatal Support (BAPS) organisation.

Speaking to The Derry News, Ms Gillespie said: “As a daughter of the city, an activist and voice for women and the working class all over Ireland, Nell rightly deserves her place in the People’s Gallery in the Bogside.”

Nell McCafferty attended Queen’s University, Belfast, where she undertook a degree in Arts. After a brief spell as a substitute English teacher and a stint on a Kibbutz in Israel, she became a journalist with The Irish Times and later The Sunday Tribune and Hot Press.

During her time with The Irish Times, Nell McCafferty reported from the family courts in Dublin, where Shá Gillespie described her as “opening a window into the lives of working class families, particularly women”.

She added: “For more than three decades, Nell’s reporting on the treatment of women and children in the Republic was vital in starting to undermine the Catholic dominance there.”

A prominent voice on women’s rights, Nell McCafferty was also a founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM) in 1970.

A year later, she took part in the now famous Contraceptive Train against the law prohibiting the importation and sale of contraceptives in the Republic.

IWLM members travelled to Belfast, bought contraceptives, and brought them back to Dublin’s Connolly station, where they staged a protest.

“Nell’s 1985 book about the Kerry babies case - ‘A Woman To Blame: The Kerry Babies Case’ - still shines a light into the darkest recesses of Irish society and its treatment of women,” said Shá Gillespie.

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She added: “It was at Nell's mother's house in Beechwood Street where she stood with her friends Bernadette Devlin and Eamonn McCann, as Bernadette phoned, in her capacity as a sitting MP, and got the names of all those murdered on Bloody Sunday.

“Eamonn recalled at Nell's funeral in the Long Tower last summer, ‘the silence as she just kept writing.’”

Ms Gillespie acknowledged the “kind donations” to the ‘Mural for Nell’ fundraiser made by Ulster University’s Derry’s School of Arts and Humanities; Ulster University’s Special Projects Team, which is funded by the Department for the Economy; and the Gasyard Wall Féile.

She also thanked “everyone who has donated so far to the GoFundMe page”.

Donations to the ‘Mural for Nell’ online fundraiser can be made at: https://gofund.me/626fc06f