THE death has taken place in Galway of famed Irish actress, playwright and peace campaigner Margaretta D'Arcy (91).
Famed for her 'Non-Stop Connolly Roadshow', which was performed twice in Belfast's Conway Mill in the 1980s, D'Arcy was unbending in her opposition to warmongers and repressive goverments.
She was jailed twice for her activism, once in the North for spray-painting graffiti on a wall at the Ulster Museum in 1978 in solidarity with protesting republican women prisoners in Armagh Jail, and in the South in 2014 for opposing use of Shannon Airport by US war planes.
She served a three-month sentence in Armagh during the women's protest for political status, subsequently penning a book of her experience, 'Tell Them Everything - A Sojourn in the Prison of HM Queen Eilizabeth II'.
Born and brought up in Dublin, D'Arcy was married to English playwright John Arden (who passed in 2012). The couple wrote numerous plays together including 'The Ballygombeen Bequest' about the eviction of a Galway family by an English absentee landlord.
A member of Aosdána, she once staged a six-week protest on the doorstep of the Arts Council in Dublin, producing a film, 'Circus Expose' which included the musings of artists who sat alongside her during her vigil 'against Ireland's cultural mafia'.
She stood unsuccessfully in the local elections in Galway in 2024 under the banner of "mad, bad and dangerous".
A fearless advocate for Palestinian rights, she was a regular presence at anti-genocide demonstrations in Galway. The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign said D’Arcy was a “fierce, fearless artist and anti-war activist. She was a strong advocate for Palestinians, an early signatory to our Irish Artists’ Pledge to Boycott Israel and a tireless campaigner against the US military use of Shannon Airport.”
It is believed, she was visited by President of Ireland Catherine Connolly just two weeks before her death.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam uasal.
