Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

On 12 May 2007, she was a guest speaker at the socialist republican political party Éirígí's first Annual James Connolly commemoration in Arbour Hill, Dublin. She works with migrant workers to improve their treatment in Northern Ireland.

In 2003 she was barred from entering the United States and deported on the grounds that the United States Department of State had declared her to pose "a serious threat to the security of the United States" – apparently referring to her conviction for incitement to riot in 1969 – although she protested that she had no terrorist involvement and had frequently been permitted to travel to the United States in the past.

In the 2002 film Bloody Sunday, Bernadette is played by actress Mary Moulds.

McAliskey is chief executive of the South Tyrone Empowerment Programme (STEP) and was involved in its founding in 1997. STEP provides a range of services and advocacy in areas including community development, training, support and advice for migrants, policy work, and community enterprise.

In 1994, McAliskey attended the funeral of former Irish National Liberation Army Chief of Staff Dominic McGlinchey. The INLA had been the armed wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, which McAliskey had helped found. McAliskey kissed the coffin, which was carried by her, Sean McGlinchey, Dominic junior and Father O'Daly, who had given McGlinchey the last rites on Hardman's Gardens. During the funeral oration, she condemned the recent press coverage which had accused McGlinchey of drug dealing and criminality and said of the journalists responsible that they were "curs and dogs. May every one of them rot in hell. They have taken away Dominic McGlinchy's character and they will stand judgement for it. He was the finest Republican of them all. He never dishonoured the cause he believed in. His war was with the armed soldiers and the police of this state".

McAliskey, and her assault on the British Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, after the Bloody Sunday massacre, were the subject of the title song of the 1990 music album, Slap! by anarchist pop/punk band Chumbawamba.

She twice failed, in February and November 1982, in attempts to be elected to the Dublin North-Central constituency of the Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann.

On 16 January 1981, Devlin and her husband were shot by members of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a cover name of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), who broke into their home near Coalisland, County Tyrone. The gunmen shot Devlin nine times in front of her children.

Devlin stood as an independent candidate in support of the prisoners on the blanket protest and dirty protest at Long Kesh prison in the 1979 elections to the European Parliament in the Northern Ireland constituency, and won 5.9% of the vote. She was a leading spokesperson for the Smash H-Block Campaign, which supported the hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981.

Devlin helped to form the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) with Seamus Costello in 1974. This was a revolutionary socialist breakaway from Official Sinn Féin and, on the afternoon after the morning the party was established, Costello also created the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) as a split from the Official Irish Republican Army. Devlin did not join the INLA and while she served on the party's national executive in 1975, she resigned when a proposal that the INLA become subordinate to the party executive was defeated. In 1977, she joined the Independent Socialist Party, but it disbanded the following year.

In 1971, while still unmarried, she gave birth to a daughter, Róisín, which cost her some political support. She married Michael McAliskey on her 26th birthday on 23 April 1973.

Having witnessed the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry in 1972, Devlin was infuriated that she was later consistently denied the floor in the House of Commons by the Speaker Selwyn Lloyd, despite the fact that parliamentary convention decreed that any Member of Parliament witnessing an incident under discussion would be granted an opportunity to speak about it therein.

Devlin appeared on Firing Line in 1972 to discuss the situation in Northern Ireland.

She stood unsuccessfully against James Chichester-Clark in the 1969 Northern Ireland general election. When George Forrest, the MP for Mid Ulster, died, she fought the subsequent by-election on the "Unity" ticket, defeating the Ulster Unionist Party candidate, Forrest's widow Anna, and was elected to the Westminster Parliament. Aged 21, she was the youngest MP at the time, and remained the youngest woman ever elected to Westminster until the May 2015 general election when 20-year-old Mhairi Black eclipsed Devlin's achievement.

Devlin stood on the slogan "I will take my seat and fight for your rights" – signalling her rejection of the traditional Irish republican principle of abstentionism. On 22 April 1969, the day before her 22nd birthday, she swore the Oath of Allegiance and made her maiden speech within an hour.

After engaging, on the side of the residents, in the Battle of the Bogside in August, she was convicted of incitement to riot in December 1969, for which she served a short jail term. After being re-elected at the 1970 general election, Devlin declared that she would sit in Parliament as an independent socialist.

Almost immediately after the Battle of the Bogside, Devlin undertook a tour of the United States in August 1969, a trip which generated a significant amount of media attention. She met with members of the Black Panther Party in Watts, Los Angeles and gave them her support. She also made an appearance on The Johnny Carson Show. At a number of speaking events, she made parallels between the struggle in the U.S. by African-Americans seeking civil rights and Catholics in Northern Ireland, sometimes to the embarrassment of her audience. During an event in Philadelphia, she had to goad an African-American singer to sing "We Shall Overcome" to the Irish-American audience, many of whom refused to stand for the song. In Detroit, she refused to take the stage until African-Americans, who were barred from the event, were allowed in. In New York, Mayor John Lindsay arranged a ceremony to present Devlin with a key to the city of New York. Devlin, frustrated with conservative elements of the Irish-American community, left the tour to return to Northern Ireland and, believing the freedom of New York should go to the American poor, sent Eamonn McCann to present the key on her behalf to a representative from the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party.

In 1969, director and producer John Goldschmidt made the documentary film Bernadette Devlin for ATV, which was shown on the British television channel ITV and on the American television channel CBS's 60 Minutes programme, and included footage of Devlin during the Battle of the Bogside. She was also interviewed at length by Marcel Ophüls in A Sense of Loss (1972). Another documentary, Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey, directed by Irish programme-maker Leila Doolan, was released in 2011. At the 2008 Cannes Film Festival a biographical film of Devlin was announced, but she stated that "the whole concept is abhorrent to me" and the film was not made.

She attended St Patrick's Girls Academy in Dungannon. She was studying psychology at Queen's University Belfast in 1968 when she took a prominent role in a student-led civil rights organisation, People's Democracy. Devlin was subsequently excluded from the university.

Josephine Bernadette McAliskey (née Devlin; born 23 April 1947), usually known as Bernadette Devlin or Bernadette McAliskey, is an Irish civil rights leader, and former politician. She served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Ulster in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1974.