Choosing the Struggle by Martina Anderson | Women's Voices, Hopes for the Future | Mary Doherty

Choosing the Struggle by Martina Anderson

Last Saturday a packed St. Mary’s gave a huge welcome to Martina Anderson who was launching her personal and hugely important autobiography – Choosing the Struggle. This is an honest and heartfelt account of Martina growing up in Derry, her experience of poverty, witnessing the excesses of the British Army and RUC and the injustice of the northern state, and deciding to take a stand against these by joining the Irish Republican Army.

It is wonderfully well written with her description of her arrest and imprisonment in England, and of the conditions ion which she and her friend and comrade Ella O’Dwyer were held, a reminder of the terrible conditions that Irish POWs endured.

Martina’s account of her decision to seek a termination of a pregnancy and of the years of brutal strip searches are deeply personal and moving. Her experiences with Ella in Durham prison are especially shocking.

Martina sees herself as an activist – in whatever area of struggle she is engaged. She is an Irish Republican who believes that the future of the island of Ireland lies in securing our right to self-determination and Unity.

As an MEP she played a leadership role in the campaign to defend the Good Friday Agreement, and force the then Irish government of Enda Kenny to challenge the British government following the disastrous Brexit referendum vote. And she led the diplomatic offensive to secure a special drsignated status for the North.

As her friend Eibhlín Glenholmes writes in the Foreword: “This book is also threaded in her love stories. A love for her husband Paul, of the indefatigable Anderson family, of her people, of her comrades, of the future New Irelanders who will reap what she and other women have sown – the seeds of a just and equitable society where every voice is heard.” Well ssid Eibhlín. 

And well done Martina.

Choosing the Struggle is published by Beyond the Pale Books. It is available through An Fhuiseog, 55 Bóthar na bhFál, BT12 4PD and https://sinnfeinbookshop.com/

Women's Voices, Hopes for the Future:

Áras Uí Chonghaile was packed to capacity on Tuesday for the launch of Women's Voices, Hopes for the Future a new book published by Sinn Féin's Commission on the Future of Ireland, and Edited by Grace McDermott and Aoife Ferguson.

Uachtarán Shinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald praised the 62 women who contributed to the book which was, she said an “important opportunity to bring women's voices from the margins to the centre of the conversation about Ireland's future.”

The focus of Women's Voices, Hopes for the Future is the new Ireland. What kind of future Ireland do women envisage? The book is a contribution to this conversation and seeks to amplify the diverse voices of women and girls across Ireland and the diaspora.

Women have been in the leadership of the struggle for Irish freedom and self-determination. They have been champions for change. Women like Mary Ann McCracken and Winnie Carnie, Constance Markievicz and Máire Drumm, Mairead Farrell and too many others to name. This book challenges all of us to imagine a future that is more equal, more inclusive and more representative of all who share this island.

I want to thank all of the women who contributed to the book and when a book signing takes place in your area I would encourage you to get this remarkable book which is full of new ideas, great ideas, for the new Ireland.

Women’s Voices is available through An Fhuiseog, 55 Bóthar na bhFál, BT12 4PD and https://sinnfeinbookshop.com/

The book will also be launched at the Derry Féile by Leas Uachtarán Shinn Féin Michelle O’Neill in Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin, Derry on the 12th August at 2.30pm.

More details and other launches will be announced soon.

Mary Doherty

Last Friday I travelled to Carraig Airt in North Donegal to [join my friend and comrade Pat Doherty as he buried his wife Mary. I knew Mary well. She was originally from Mayo and met Pat in the early 1960s in the Gorbals in Glasgow. They married in 1967 and would have celebrated 59 years together next week.

As Uachtarán Shinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald said in her oration Mary was “unique, brave, irreplaceable. She was fierce. She stood her ground. Stood by her beliefs. By her friends. And she loved her family ferociously.”

Mary and Pat arrived back in Ireland as the Civil Rights campaign grew into mass street protests across the North and just a year before British soldiers were sent onto those same streets. Together they took a stand against the prejudice, discrimination and oppression they witnessed in the North. Thus began a lifetime of activism in the Republican struggle.

Pat contested his first general election in 1989 and then three European elections for Sinn Féin. He became an MLA in 1998. In 2001 Pat became Sinn Féin MP for West Tyrone. Mary was at the heart of each of those campaigns.  I want to extend my deep condolences to Mary’s children; Maria, Rosaleen, Kathleen Anne, Danny and Michael. And to her grandchildren; Aoife, Ultán, Daithí, Ruairí, Aoise, Dearbhla, Laoise, Pádraig, Óonagh, Daniel, Mikey and little Gracie.