Founder of the Red Cross in Londonderry who invited the British Government and the IRA to talk peace over tea and chocolate cake
Aileen McCorkell displayed great courage and determination as the founder and first president of the British Red Cross branch in Londonderry. During this time of violence and tangled political and religious loyalties during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, she remained true to the Red Cross principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality .
In keeping with her lifelong mission to heal community strife in the Province, McCorkell, along with her husband Colonel Sir Michael McCorkell, agreed in 1972 to host secret peace talks between the British Government and the Provisional IRA, whose delegation included a young Gerry Adams, at her family home. The meeting, the first between Adams and British officials, was relaxed and informal and led to a ten-day ceasefire.
She had been brought up in the Irish Republic before the Second World War and had never experienced the political and religious division and intolerance of the North. She realised that, by its principles, the Red Cross could in Ulster in 1969 play a vital role in promoting peace and reconciliation between the two warring communities.
Her first work with the Derry Red Cross had been in the early 1960s, and had concentrated on establishing welfare services of the kind now taken for granted, but then notably absent in areas of considerable poverty and dilapidation such as the Catholic Bogside.
The physically handicapped in particular were confined to homes wholly ill-suited to their needs and McCorkell began a “Thursday Club” to bring the disabled together from across the city. These early beginnings were to result in due course in the building of the Glenbrook Day Centre.
Through her efforts, the Derry Red Cross also established meals on wheels and a trolley shop service in the hospitals. These initiatives brought her into contact with other voluntary organisations working in Londonderry, notably the Order of Malta, a connection which was to be vital when serious trouble began to engulf the city from October 1968 onwards.
It was to the Order of Malta First Aid Post in Westland Street near the Bogside Inn that she and her deputy made their way amid the ferocious fighting which followed the Apprentice Boys’ Parade of August 12, 1969. Here she learnt quickly to lose her identity and to help treat, without judgment and with little training, often seriously injured casualties unwilling to go to hospital for fear of the consequences.
She did not share the temporary euphoria which greeted the arrival of the British Army to protect the Catholic Communities, and her foreboding was soon vindicated. She and her fellow Red Cross members became adept at delivering meals on wheels across the community as the Bogside and Creggan subsequently became “no go” areas to the security forces.
She was as prepared to take an army commander to task for exhibiting a red cross on an armoured vehicle which was clearly being used to block the advance of rioters, as she was to telephone the Bogside Committee to ask them to send someone down to stop looting of relief clothing and food from the Red Cross aid store.
The bombing had started by the end of 1970 and, as the violence in Londonderry took a sinister new direction, she found herself dealing with everything from trying to find accommodation for those made homeless by bombs to buying a better fitting wig for a girl shaved, tarred and feathered for going to a pub with soldiers.
She was in the Bogside and later in Casualty at Altnagelvin Hospital on Bloody Sunday and never forgot ferrying a distraught young priest back through the dark, fearful streets to the Creggan. She would never be drawn on that terrible day, not being prepared to see beyond the stark tragedy of so many young people losing their lives.
It was her clear-sighted impartiality and pragmatism which led her — and her husband — to agree to host at the family home near the Londonderry/Donegal border in June 1972 secret peace talks between representatives of the British Government and the Provisional IRA. Beyond greeting the parties, and providing a chocolate cake, the McCorkells left them to it.
The truce which followed was shortlived and long years of violence and bitterness were to follow, during which the Derry City Red Cross gave unstinting and impartial service. McCorkell was fond of saying that the Red Cross is neutral “even in Northern Ireland”.
Aileen Allen was born in 1921 in the Indian hill station of Ootacamund, the second daughter of Lieutenant Colonel E. B. Booth, DSO, RAMC, who was serving in India after the First World War (during which he had met and married Aileen’s mother, a nurse). The family returned to Ireland to live at Darver Castle in Co Louth when she was 2. She was educated at Dundalk Grammar School and Westonbirt and was at a finishing school in Paris in 1939 when war broke out.
Her early attempts to join the Wrens in Belfast were rebuffed and she eventually was accepted for the WAAF in 1941, hiding her privileged upbringing from the other girls in the ranks who came from the East End of London.
She trained as a radar filter plotter at Leighton Buzzard and was eventually stationed near Nottingham, and then in Belfast. She was commissioned after four years in the ranks and posted to North of England Coastal Command. She stayed in service until the end of 1946.
After a brief spell as a school matron at Cheltenham, she returned to Ireland and in 1950 married Michael McCorkell. After having four children, and breaking her back in a riding accident in 1961, she turned to voluntary work, founding the Derry City Red Cross Group in 1962, which became a fully fledged branch in 1965, with her as its first president. She also became a member of the Northern Ireland Council of the British Red Cross.
For her work in the Troubles she was awarded the Red Cross Badge of Honour for Distinguished Service in 1972 and in 1975 appointed OBE. She represented Northern Ireland on the London Council of the British Red Cross and in 1986 she was awarded the society’s highest award, the Queen’s Badge of Honour of the Red Cross.
Her experiences during the Troubles were recorded in a short memoir, A Red Cross in My Pocket, published in 1992, and parts of it were made into an anthology in 1995 in I Owe My Life: A Celebration of 125 Years of the British Red Cross.
She had a notably happy family life and, as well as her own life of service, supported her husband in his, which was equally distinguished. Colonel Sir Michael McCorkell was appointed OBE in 1964, Lord Lieutenant of the County of Londonderry in 1975 and KCVO in 1994. He predeceased her in 2006.
She is survived by three sons and a daughter.
Aileen McCorkell, OBE, founder of the Derry branch of the British Red Cross, was born on September 18, 1921. She died on December 25, 2010, aged 89
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