Miriam Daly

[Philip Ferguson <plf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Danielle for posting the commemorative piece on Miriam Daly on the list.

I never met her and know little about her, except the basics - that she was
the chairperson of the IRSP after Seamus Costello was assassinated in 1977
and that she herself was brutally murdered during the hunger strikes.  (I
never knew that as well as becoming IRSP chairperson, she was also a member
of the military wing.)

But two thngs immediately spring to mind.

One is the way in which the struggle for Irish national liberation has
attracted a number of remarkable women - and women who have not taken on
merely 'help-meet' roles, but central leadership positions.

Secondly, is that many of these women came from backgrounds that would have
allowed them to sit out the struggle in comfort.  Constance Markievicz was
a countess, who threw in her lot not only with the republican struggle but
with the Irish working class and died in the pauper's section of St Ultan's
Hospital in Dublin.  Maud Gonne and many other left-wing repubican women
came from wealthy backgrounds or had career options that they oculd have
put first.  Miriam Daly could have stayed teaching at university in
Britain, but the struggle in Ireland drew her back and she threw herself
into it and put all her considerable talents into it.

What a striking contrast to the grubby pseudo-radical academics, for whom
Marxism is merely a niche  position/selling point in the university jobs
market.

Cheers,
Phil






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