AILEEN MCCORKELL:AILEEN McCORKELL, who has died aged 89, had to assert during the Northern Ireland Troubles: "The Red Cross is neutral, even in Northern Ireland!"
She had founded and became first president of a branch in Derry in the early 1960s which was engaged in welfare services such as meals-on-wheels and the Thursday Club, where the physically handicapped could be brought together. This eventually resulted, after many battles, in the building of the Glenbrook Day Centre on land that had been designated for Protestant housing.
In 1969, amid the ferocious fighting that followed the Apprentice Boys’ Parade of August 12th, she and her deputy, Eustelle Harvey, made their way to the Order of Malta first aid post in the Bogside.
They helped treat the injured casualties, many of whom were reluctant to go to hospital as they feared they might be arrested, but if they could be persuaded, they ferried them through the barricades to the hospital.
One barricade was beside an open-air bomb factory where milk bottles were filled with petrol and then transported to the front line.
She was dedicated to the principles of humanity and impartiality and wrote that “to work in such situations one had to lose one’s identity and not listen to chatter going on. Some people get hot under the collar when they hear things that perhaps go against everything they consider is right.”
On Bloody Sunday (January 30th, 1972), she was in the Bogside and later in casualty at Altnagelvin hospital. In the months that followed, her heavy workload included negotiating with soldiers about the free movement of meals-on-wheels and the return of the temporarily impounded Order of Malta ambulance.
Aileen McCorkell was born in Ootacamund in India, the daughter of Col EB Booth of the Royal Army Medical Corps. When she was two, the family came to live at Darver Castle in Co Louth where the Booths had lived since the early 1800s.
She was educated at Dundalk Grammar School and Westonbirt in England. At the beginning of the second World War she was accepted into the ranks of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Service. She was stationed in Nottingham and then in Belfast and after four years received her commission.
In 1951, she married Michael McCorkell, whose family founded Derry shipping line Wm McCorkell. Michael was lord lieutenant of Co Londonderry from 1975 to 2000 and was knighted for his services to the community.
The McCorkells were without prejudice or favour in their public life. In great secrecy in 1972, the first meeting between the Provisional IRA, whose delegation included a young Gerry Adams, and senior officials of the British government took place at Ballyarnet, the McCorkells’ family home. She was awarded an OBE in 1975. Her experiences with the Red Cross during the Northern Ireland troubles were recorded in a memoir, A Red Cross in my Pocket.
She is survived by three sons and a daughter.
Aileen Allen, Lady McCorkell, born September 18th, 1921; died December 25th, 2010