Northern Ireland Political Collection

Another World Belfast is a not-for-profit social enterprise (CIC), founded in 2017 by Rebecca Bellamy and Connor Kerr that works towards equality, inclusivity, sustainability, and long-lasting change. It is self-funded and ran on a volunteer basis with head offices in Belfast.

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Anne Carr is a peace activist and community worker who has dedicated her career to peacebuilding and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Since the 1980s, she has advocated for better community relations through improved dialogue and mutual understanding. She helped develop the first integrated primary school outside of Belfast, and actively participated in cross-community organisations including Women Together for Peace, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, and Community Dialogue which she founded in 1997.

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Andrea Catherwood is an award-winning broadcast journalist, television newscaster, documentary maker, and radio presenter from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Since 1983, she has presented numerous news and current affairs programmes for BBC Northern Ireland, NBC Asia, ITN, Bloomberg Television and BBC Radio 4, and has regularly contributed to newspapers and magazines. Her long-spanning international reporting career has taken her all over the world where she has reported from the frontlines of conflict zones and covered major global events such as the Omagh Bombing, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the invasion of Iraq, and the Handover of Hong Kong.

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Alliance for Choice is a pro-choice organisation established in 1996 by women in and from Derry, with a Belfast branch becoming active in the 2000s. The organisation campaigns for free, safe, and legal access to abortion, barrier free access to unbiased sex education, and an end to harassment of those using reproductive health services.

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Linda Ervine MBE is an activist who has campaigned for the de-politicisation of the Irish language by supporting cross-community healing through provision of and access to Irish language lessons in majority Protestant/Unionist areas.

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Geraldine Finucane is an activist and justice advocate who, for over 30 years, has campaigned for a fully independent judicial public inquiry into the circumstances around the 1989 murder by loyalist paramilitaries of her human rights lawyer husband, Patrick (Pat) Finucane.

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Judith Gillespie CBE, from North Belfast, served with the Police Service in Northern Ireland for 32 years. In 2004, she became the first woman to be appointed Assistant Chief Constable and she had to commission a decorated cap specially to suit her measurements, since the caps were traditionally made for men. In 2009 she was appointed Deputy Chief Constable, and served a temporary period as acting Chief Constable, during which she commissioned a supply of female Chief Constable caps, so that her successors would not have to wait as she did. Judith Gillespie held several roles with the Police Service over her 32-year career. She was Chief Officer for 11 years and Human Rights Champion on the PSNI’s Gender Action Plan. In 2013, she led the World Police and Fire Games in Belfast, which marked the first time in its 28-year history that this high-profile, athletic contest was held in the United Kingdom.

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John Kennedy is a cartoonist and children’s literature illustrator from Strabane, County Tyrone. His work has been widely published and exhibited both nationally and internationally in Ireland, the UK, Canada, and the United States.

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Maeve Mulholland MBE is a community peace worker who co-founded Lisburn Women Together for Peace with Hazel Aicken in 1973. For over 30 years, Maeve Mulholland was involved in peace work with Women Together, one of the earliest women’s peace groups in Northern Ireland, calling on women from all backgrounds to take a stand against violence and sectarianism and promote peace. Maeve Mulholland helped establish the Voluntary Services in Lisburn, through which she was actively involved as a Bereavement Visitor Counsellor and engaged in peace dialogue with government officials and the Ulster Defence Association. She was one of the founding six governors and was an active fundraiser for Lagan College integrated school, which opened in 1981. In 1994, Maeve Mulholland was awarded an MBE for her services to the community.

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“The Woman of the Iron Lungs,” Marie Mulholland, is a feminist activist and community worker from Belfast. She was a member of Women Against Imperialism and the Women’s News Collective and cofounded the Women’s Support Network. In 1987 she led a successful campaign for the demolition of the Divis Flats, and provision of new housing for residents. Marie Mulholland received the Constance Markievicz Award in recognition of this achievement at a ceremony in Boston. In her acceptance speech she acknowledged the women from Divis who supported her, saying: “I believe… in the power of women.”

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This archive was donated by Prof Pauline Murphy, who pioneered many women's education initiatives in Northern Ireland. She founded the Northern Ireland Community Education Association (NICEA), and the Training for Women Network (TWN), and developed one of the first formal university programmes for women, when she opened the Women’s Opportunities Unit at Ulster University in 1985.

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Reverend Dr Ruth Patterson OBE is a parish minister, author, community worker, and Director of the Restoration Ministries. In 1976, she became the first woman to be ordained in Ireland.

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Selected from the Linen Hall Library’s extensive Periodical Collection for the extraORDINARYwomen project, this online archive encompasses periodicals and published material produced by a diverse range of women-centred groups, charities, and movements dating from the 1970s – 2010s.

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Peace People is a peace activist group founded in 1976 to protest the ‘troubles’ violence in Northern Ireland. Together, the founders Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Betty Williams, and Ciaran McKeown, organised rallies, and peace marches with as many as 20,000 people joining each Saturday to march from the Falls and Ormeau Roads to Belfast city centre. Mairead Corrigan Maguire and Betty Williams were both awarded the 1976 Norwegian People of Peace Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize the same year. The Peace People were instrumental to the peace process in Northern Ireland. They called for peace talks, campaigned to Repeal the Emergency Provisions Act, led a rehabilitation programme, and protested the ill-treatment of detainees at RUC holding centres. Today, their work continues to promote non-violence and human rights on a global scale, engaging in dialogue and protest around the world, including Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Australia, and the USA. Mairead Corrigan Maguire helped launch a global 'Stop Rape' campaign from the Democratic Republic of Congo (2012), and, along with fellow peace activist Ann Patterson, was part of a delegation from North Korea to the demilitarised zone on the border with South Korea (2015) and campaigned at the US Consulate for Trump and Putin to work together for zero nuclear and zero war (2017).   on a global scale, engaging in dialogue and protest around the world, including Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Australia, and the USA.

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The posters in this archive collection have been selected from the Linen Hall Library’s expansive and ever-growing Northern Ireland Political Collection and highlight and demonstrate the key contribution and progress women have made and continue to make in politics, social activism, and the peace process in Northern Ireland since the mid-1960s.

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QueerSpace was founded in 1998 to support and create a safe and inclusive space for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community in Belfast. A volunteer-led collective, it aims to raise LGBT+ visibility, provide support and resources for LGBT+ activities, and facilitate communication by fostering discussion and debate.

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Ruth Taillon is a socialist feminist, activist, writer, researcher, and academic who has spent her 35-year career campaigning for political, social, and economic justice, and women’s rights.

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Bríd Ruddy is a civil rights activist, community builder, and environmentalist from Belfast who campaigns for the regeneration and transformation of derelict urban wasteland into communal green spaces for local people to contribute to and enjoy.

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The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition was a cross-community political party founded in 1996 that addressed gender imbalance and the lack of women’s representation in politics. Monica McWilliams and Pearl Sagar were the first in the Women’s Coalition to successfully attain seats in the Northern Ireland Forum following the 1996 elections.

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“We believe that the struggle for women’s rights is an integral part of the struggle for human rights, which will result in a society in which women and men are released from crude stereotypes and limited ideas of what they are, and may be.” (Quote from the NIWRM Charter). The Northern Ireland Women’s Rights Movement (NIWRM) was founded during International Women’s Year in 1975 at a Queen’s University film festival by a group of feminists including Lynda Walker and Bronagh Hinds. It was committed to building a non-sectarian movement that aimed to unite women from across the divide by challenging the broader issues that affected all women, namely inequality and discriminatory social attitudes.

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As well as being a library and archive, the Linen Hall Library is also an accredited museum. The Northern Ireland Political Collection was one of three collections to be granted museum accreditation in 2016, housing varied and fascinating artefacts and objects of national and international significance. This collection represents a selection of these contemporary and historic artefacts - material expressions of the roles that women played in their communities, and the ways that they were perceived.

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Dr Janet Gray MBE is a world class athlete and four-time winner of the World Disabled Water Ski Championships, and Northern Ireland Sports Personality of the Year. In 1997 she was selected by the Irish Water Ski Federation to compete for the European Disabled Water Ski Championships, and she later competed in the World Disabled Ski Championships, where she set the record for water skiing across three disciplines. Following an injury that left her unable to walk, Janet got back in the water, winning gold with the British Water Ski team, and regaining all of her previous titles. She is founder and President of Disability Sports NI.

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Belfast Health and Social Care Trust is a health organisation covering Belfast. It is the largest integrated health and social care Trust in the United Kingdom, delivering integrated health and social care to approximately 340,000 citizens in Belfast and providing the majority of regional specialist services to all of Northern Ireland. With an annual budget of £1.3bn and a workforce over 20,000, Belfast Trust also comprises the major teaching and training hospitals in Northern Ireland.

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Founded in 2016 by activist Katrina McDonnell, The Homeless Period Belfast is a volunteer-led initiative to alleviate period poverty, destigmatise menstruation, and campaign for universal access to free period products.

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Anne Cadwallader, originally from London, was an investigative journalist for 40 years in Ireland, reporting, often at great personal risk, on the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland. She produced contributions for the BBC, The Irish Press, Independent Network News, Reuters, and RTÉ. Anne Cadwallader is the author of Holy Cross: The Untold Story (Brehon Press, 2004) and Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland (Mercier Press, 2013). In 2009 she left journalism to work as an investigator and case worker at the Pat Finucane Centre for Human Rights; a non-party political, anti-sectarian human rights group advocating non-violent resolutions of conflict. More recently, Anne Cadwallader has written articles for Tribune magazine.

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V’cenza Cirefice is an ecofeminist artist, researcher, and activist from the Mourne Mountain area, who explores environmental justice issues through her practice. Her PhD research at the National University of Ireland, Galway, explored community resistance to extractivism in Northern Ireland, in response to the planned Dalradian gold mines in the Sperrin Mountains. V’cenza Cirefice is a member of the Environmental Justice Network Ireland and Temporal School of Experimental Geography. She is a prominent member of Fossil Free Northern Ireland, leading climate justice workshops and community art projects to highlight the climate crisis.

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Lynda Walker is a life-long feminist activist who was instrumental to the campaigns for civil rights, and women’s rights, and is an active Trade Unionist in Northern Ireland. Hailing originally from Sheffield, Lynda Walker made Belfast her home in 1969, and has dedicated her life to elevating women and campaigning for positive change, particularly for women in working class communities.

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Angelina Fusco is a broadcast and print journalist who, from 1982-2013, worked in the newsroom at BBC Northern Ireland where she reported on major events and breaking news stories during an historic period of time. In 1998, Angelina Fusco became Head of Television News and Editor of the flagship current affairs programme BBC Newsline, where she led a team of production staff delivering live television news for audiences in Northern Ireland. Under her leadership, Newsline went on to win two Irish Film and Television Academy awards for best news programme and was nominated for several Royal Television Society awards.

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Fidelma O’Kane is Secretary of Save Our Sperrins, a campaign group of residents from the Sperrins Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, protesting a planning application from Dalradian Gold Ltd for a gold mine and processing works since 2014. Formerly a social worker and lecturer, Fidelma O’Kane turned her efforts to environmentalism upon her retirement. In addition to her work with Save Our Sperrins, Fidelma O’Kane is involved in Friends of the Earth Northern Ireland and Communities Against the Injustice of Mining (CAIM), an all-Ireland group to prevent further mining in Ireland.

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The Western Health and Social Care Trust is a health organisation in Northern Ireland. Hospitals served by the Trust include Altnagelvin Area Hospital, Tyrone and Fermanagh Hospital, Omagh Hospital and Primary Care Complex and the South West Acute Hospital.

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NI Scrubs was a group of over 100 volunteers, set up using Facebook and coordinated by Grainne Quinn during lockdown 2020, to address the PPE shortage in hospitals that resulted from the Covid19 pandemic. During the summer of 2020, the group sewed over 2700 sets of scrubs, 2000 masks and 4800 visors which were distributed to frontline NHS staff at hospitals in Belfast, Newry, and Downpatrick.

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Labour Women for Ireland was a feminist, anti-imperialist group, set up c.1984 to be an autonomous women’s branch of the Labour Committee on Ireland. Their party priorities included promoting British withdrawal from Ireland, defending the right for Sinn Féin feminists to speak in London, ending sexual harassment of women in Armagh prison, and reproductive rights for women in Ireland.

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The Women's Resource and Development Agency (WRDA) was formed in the 1990s to counter gender inequalities in education and employment. They continue to support and empower women’s groups and networks in Northern Ireland, providing training opportunities around women’s health, voices, and leadership.

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Cara Sanquest is a human rights and social justice campaigner. In November 2016, she founded the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, a grassroots organisation that lobbied for access to free, safe, and legal abortions in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

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Sleacht Néill is a a camogie team in Maghera, Co. Derry/Londonderry.

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Harriett Moore-Boyd is a textile-knit crafter and business owner of Pink Unicorns, based in Newtownabbey. Since 2015 Harriett has actively campaigned with The Newtownabbey Pig Factories Campaign group, to protest the expansion of pig factories in and around Newtownabbey, engaging in fundraising activities, protests, and public meetings. In 2018 she travelled to the House of Commons, where they were joined by actors Jerome Flynn, Leslie Ash, and Ciarán McMenamin, to protest the expansion of the Newtownabbey pig farms.

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Ephemera from the Northern Ireland Political Collection at the Linen Hall Library relating to the Equal Opportunities Commission, later the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland.

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Ephemera from the Northern Ireland Political Collection at the Linen Hall Library relating to International Women's Day, including flyers, posters, newsletters, magazines, pamphlets, schedules and press statements. Notable activities include: marches, organisation of International Women's Day and Women's Conference, World Peace posters, and fundraising events.

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