Miriam Daly

Miriam Daly (6 May 1928 – 26 June 1980) was an Irish republican activist and university lecturer who was assassinated by the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA).

Background and personal life

She was born Miriam Annette McDonnell in the Curragh Irish Army camp, County Kildare, Ireland, one of the two daughters of daughter of Commandant Daniel McDonnell and Anne McDonnell (née Cummins). Her father had served under Michael Collins in the War of Independence She grew up in Hatch Street, Dublin, where she attended Loreto College on St Stephen's Green and then University College, Dublin. While at UCD, Daly was a member of Young Fine Gael. She graduated BA in 1948 with first-class honours in history and economics, HDipEd in 1949, and then a first-class honours MA with a dissertation on Irish labour in England in the first half of the nineteenth century. She taught economic history in UCD for some years before moving to Southampton University with her husband, psychiatrist Joseph Lee. There, she became an active member of the Association of University Teachers and a campaigner against the Vietnam War. Lee died of a heart attack in 1963. In 1965 she married philosopher and social activist James Daly. They moved to Ireland in 1968 and were appointed lecturers in the departments of scholastic philosophy and of economic and social history at Queen's University, Belfast. {{1. James P. Daly appointed lecturer in Scholastic Philosophy,1968. Vice-Chancellors report for year 1967-1968, page 12. QUB 2. James P. Daly. BA, LP Maynooth, MPhil S'ton- Lecturer in Scholastic Philosophy, 1968. page 46 of The Queen's University Calendar, 1968-1969. 3. Mrs Miriam A. Daly. M.A. (NUI). Appointed Assistant lecturer to Department of Economic and Social History in 1969, page 42 of The Queen's University of Belfast Calendar for 1969-70. 4. Daly, Miriam A., lecturer in economic and social history since 1969; died 26 June 1980, as the result of a terrorist shooting, page 68, The Annual Review for 1980. The Queen's University Association. Belfast 1980. }}

Civil rights activist

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History is written by the winner Mural

Apart from her set course, Daly taught an extramural course on labour history whose students included many protestant trade unionists. She also lectured both republican and loyalist prisoners in Long Kesh and cooperated with both on prisoner welfare work. She contributed regularly to RTÉ Radio's Thomas Davis lectures in 1972–3. She was a founding member of the Irish Labour History Society, served on its committee for several years and co-edited its journal Saothar. She was a co-founder of the Economic and Social History Society of Ireland, a committee member of the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies, a member of the editorial board of Irish Historical Studies, and organised the first conference on Irish labour history held at an Irish university in 1974. She became active in the civil rights movement, particularly following the introduction of internment without trial in the British Army's Operation Demetrius and the Stormont government. She was active in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and the Northern Resistance Movement.

On moving to Belfast, the Dalys became involved in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). The rapid escalation of violence, especially State violence, gradually radicalised her. She joined the National Democratic Party, and its successor, the Social Democratic and Labour Party. She was further radicalised by the events of Bloody Sunday, when, on 30 January 1972, British soldiers shot 20 civilians during a civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland's second largest city. She left the SDLP to join Provisional Sinn Féin. She opposed the notion of 'two-nationism' or any formal recognition of Northern Ireland Protestants or unionists as possessing any distinctive identity that was not simply a product of British colonial manipulation and native collaboration. She was a militant member of the Prisoners' Relatives Action Committee, and the national Hunger Strike Committee. She chaired the Murray Defence Committee to save anarchists Marie and Noel Murray from the death sentence after they were condemned to death in June 1976 for the murder of Garda Michael Reynolds. In that campaign, she worked with Seamus Costello. In 1977 the Dalys resigned from Provisional Sinn Féin over the party's advocacy of an Irish federation of four self-governing provinces. They were recruited in August 1977 to the IRSP by Costello, and co-opted to its Árd Chomhairle or governing body just before Costello's assassination on 5 October 1977. In February 1978 Miriam Daly was elected chair of the IRSP. Some later IRSP/INLA material describes Daly as a 'volunteer', but she was never an member of the Irish National Liberation Army, the IRSP's military wing. In 1974 the Dalys, who had received death threats, moved from their home in Stranmillis, close to Queen's University and working-class Protestant loyalist districts, to the Andersonstown Road, deep within the west Belfast Catholic ghetto. From 1978 Daly campaigned for political status for paramilitary prisoners. This became her main political cause after she resigned from the IRSP, partly for political reasons, partly because IRSP chair Ronnie Bunting shrugged off her complaint of sexual assault by an INLA member. Less than a fortnight before her death, Daly was elected to the executive of the Smash H-block Committee.

Death

On 26 June 1980, Daly was shot dead at home, in the Andersonstown area of west Belfast. At the time of her assassination, she was in charge of the IRSP prisoners' welfare.

According to reports in The Irish Times, members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) had gained entry to her home with the intention of killing her husband. They tied up Daly and waited for him to return home. Her husband was in Dublin at the time and so did not arrive. After a considerable time, the UDA men decided to kill Daly instead. Muffling the sound of the gun with a pillow, they shot her in the head and cut the phone lines before fleeing. Her body was discovered when her ten-year-old daughter arrived home from school. There has been widespread and persistent speculation (including by Monsignor Raymond Murray) that British forces were involved in Daly's death, either as suppliers of intelligence or as perpetrators, and in attacks on other H-block campaigners, including Ronnie Bunting (who was assassinated four months later John Turnly (assassinated earlier in June 1980) and Bernadette Devlin McAliskey (who survived being shot multiple times with her husband in front of her children on 16 January 1981; the telephone line was also torn out). It has been suggested that Daly's murder and others were in retaliation for the killing of Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Airey Neave at the Palace of Westminster in London by the INLA. Daly was buried in Swords, County Dublin with her first husband, after a paramilitary funeral. Mourners included Seán Mac Stíofáin and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, but also old friends such as Supreme Court of Ireland (and later European Court of Justice) judge Donal Barrington and UCD historian F.X. Martin. In the graveside oration, Osgur Breatnach said that Daly stood for a peaceful, socialist united Ireland. She is included as a volunteer on the INLA monument in Milltown Cemetery and is one of several commemorated by an IRSP mural on the Springfield Road, Belfast.

External links

• Straight from the Heart - an interview with Miriam Daly's widower, Jim Daly accessed 24 April 2008
• IRSP: Miriam Daly Commemoration Speech 25 June 2005 accessed 24 April 2008
• Dictionary of Irish Biography [2]*Unveiling of Daly/McNamee Plaque 22 June 2003 accessed 24 April 2008