30 Facts About Miriam Daly

Miriam Daly was an Irish republican and communist activist as well as a university lecturer who was assassinated by the loyalist Ulster Defence Association in 1980.

Miriam Daly was born Miriam Annette McDonnell in the Curragh Irish Army camp, County Kildare, Ireland, one of the two daughters of Commandant Daniel McDonnell and Anne McDonnell.

Miriam Daly's father had served under Michael Collins in the War of Independence and as part of the pro-treaty National Army during the Irish Civil War.

Miriam Daly grew up in Hatch Street, Dublin, where she attended Loreto College on St Stephen's Green and then University College, Dublin.

Miriam Daly graduated BA in 1948 with first-class honours in history and economics, a Higher Diploma in Education 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.

Miriam Daly became an active member of the Association of University Teachers and a campaigner against the Vietnam War.

In 1965 she married philosopher and social activist James Miriam Daly, who had family from Ulster.

Apart from her set course, Miriam Daly taught an extramural course on labour history whose students included numerous Protestant trade unionists.

Miriam Daly lectured both republican and loyalist prisoners in Long Kesh and cooperated with both on prisoner welfare work.

Miriam Daly was a founding member of the Irish Labour History Society, served on its committee for several years and co-edited its journal Saothar.

Miriam Daly 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.

Miriam Daly became active in the Northern Ireland civil rights movement following the introduction of internment without trial of suspected IRA members in 1972 by Westminster officials at the request of Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Brian Faulkner.

Miriam Daly was active in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, and the Northern Resistance Movement, becoming involved in the former when she moved to Belfast; Daly subsequently joined the National Democratic Party, and its successor, the Social Democratic and Labour Party.

At the first SDLP annual conference, Miriam Daly led opposition to a motion condemning all political violence that was proposed by Hume.

Miriam Daly joined the Prisoners' Relatives Action Committee, the National Hunger Strike Committee and the Murray Defence Committee, the latter of which successfully prevented the anarchist couple Marie and Noel Murray from being executed after they were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in June 1976 for murdering Garda Siochana officer Michael Reynolds.

Miriam Daly was elected to the leadership of the National H-Blocks Committee, despite threats from loyalists.

In February 1978 Miriam Daly was elected chairperson of the IRSP.

From 1978 onwards Miriam Daly campaigned for political status for paramilitary prisoners.

In March 1979, Miriam Daly resigned as Chairperson following a dispute between the Ard Comhairle and the Coiste Seasta.

Miriam Daly was later replaced by then-General Secretary, Mick Plunkett.

On 26 June 1980, Miriam Daly was shot dead at home, in the Andersonstown area of west Belfast.

Miriam Daly's husband was in Dublin at the time and so did not arrive.

Miriam Daly's body was discovered when her ten-year-old daughter arrived home from school.

Miriam Daly was buried in Swords, County Dublin with her first husband, after a paramilitary funeral.

Miriam Daly 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.

Miriam Daly was an advocate of State Socialism based on the nation-state, with government control of credit and industry.

Miriam Daly rejected capitalism and free trade on the basis of her belief that free trade was overwhelmingly biased in the favour of the already-developed countries.

Miriam Daly developed this view from her academic research into 19th-century Ireland and in particular her analysis of the deindustrialising effect of improved transport links.

Miriam Daly considered the 1916 Easter Rising and the 1917 Russian Revolution to be twin revolutions against the "capitalist world order", and generally held pro-Soviet views.

Miriam Daly rejected the view that Ulster Protestants form a distinct "nation" within the geography of Ireland, dismissing them as "a product of British colonial manipulation and native collaboration".