Nell McCafferty was ahead of her time

Nell McCafferty died this week. For subscribers outside of Ireland, you might not be familiar with that name. Nell was a journalist, an activist, a feminist. She was a founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, the sort of person to whom you would say Irish women owe a great deal, and you’d be correct. Una Mullally posted on her Instagram yesterday, saying “there will be a lot said and written about Nell McCafferty but my own words today are just two: read her.” and I agree – Nell’s writing, especially that on the Kerry Babies case, was as fierce and fearless as she was.

I met her only once and she was, in my limited experience, equal parts terrifying and incredibly kind. I’ve never recounted this anecdote publicly before, although it has become a favourite to tell friends. Nell and I had both contributed to the Repeal the Eighth anthology and in April 2018, we were asked to speak on the radio together. Before our interview, I was sitting in the RTÉ canteen, going through my notes, when Nell spotted me. She sat down next to me, asking if I was Louise O’Neill. Yes, I said, and we were off. She asked me question after question, each one more specific than the next (I looked through our email exchange this morning and it appears that at one point, upon hearing that my father owned a butcher shop, she asked me what they did with aborted calves when slaughtering cattle for meat and I was like… eh, I have literally never thought about that before in my life) as I tried my best to answer her. I had been nervous about meeting her – she was a living icon, notoriously brilliant and I’d heard she didn’t suffer fools gladly – and the more nervous I was, the more tongue tied I became.

“What do you think of this?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at me. “And this? What’s your opinion about this? Where do you stand on this matter? Do you agree or disagree with…?” On and on it went, until I felt like I was about to pass out with stage fright. “I don’t know,” I kept saying. “I’m not sure”. My mind had gone completely blank, like I was caught in a Leaving Cert nightmare, staring at the exam paper going, wait, I thought this was supposed to be English, not German? I was feeling more and more like a brain dead idiot, until finally, she looked at me, and she said