Miriam Daly

Miriam Daly (1928 – 26 June 1980) was an Irish republican activist and university lecturer who was assassinated by the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA), which was legal at the time.

She was born in the Curragh Irish Army camp, County Kildare, Ireland. She grew up in Hatch Street, Dublin, attending Loreto College on St Stephen's Green and then University College, Dublin, graduating in history. The economic historian George O'Brien supervised her MPhil in economic history, on Irish emigration to England. She went on to teach economic history in UCD for some years before moving to Southampton University with her husband, Joseph Lee. Two years after her first husband died, she remarried, to James Daly, returning to Ireland with him in 1968. They both were appointed lecturers in Queen's University, Belfast.

She soon became an activist in the civil rights movement, particularly following the introduction of internment without trial by the Stormont government. She was active in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and the Northern Resistance Movement.

She was a militant member of the Prisoners' Relatives Action Committee, and the national Hunger Strike Committee. In that campaign, she worked with Seamus Costello, and soon joined him in the Irish Republican Socialist Party and the Irish National Liberation Army. After Costello was assassinated, she became chairperson, leading the party for two years. During this time she and her husband James were instrumental in opposing Sinn Féin's drift towards federalism.