Woman who helped the IRA to murder dozens of people praised by Sinn Fein as a champion of human rights and the oppressed

​Members of the party led the tributes to IRA weapons designer Rose Dugdale at her funeral on Wednesday in Dublin, following her death last week in a nursing home aged in her early 80s.

It will never be known how many people Dugdale had a hand in killing with the money she funnelled to the IRA and the bombs and launchers she built for it, but her biographer has estimated it to be at least 34 (more than the total fatalities in the worst atrocity of the Troubles, the 1998 Omagh bomb).

Sinn Fein has been unstinting in its praise for the Marxist fanatic since news of her death emerged, and her funeral in the chapel at Glasnevin (the most famous cemetery in Ireland, where countless republicans are buried) Gerry Adams was among those in attendance.

A close friend of Dugdale’s, introduced by ex-Sinn Fein MEP Martina Anderson, told mourners about her dedication to “class struggle” and her affinity for Basque separatism.

Quoting from US civil rights activist Maya Angelou, this friend said “if you're going to live, leave a legacy; make a mark on the world that can't be erased” – concluding that Dugdale’s legacy will “never be erased”.

Then Dublin Sinn Fein TD Aengus O Snodaigh spoke, describing her as an “enigma to the establishment” because she spurned her rich English family and took up arms against “world imperialism”, stealing from them to fund the IRA.

She was a “true Irish republican,” he said, “who opposed fascism and racism in all their forms, seeing from what they were: tools to divide the poor, the marginalised, and the workers” and was possessed by a “drive to help the oppressed” and “rebalance the world order”.

Hers was "a life well lived” with “no regrets” for her “struggle against British imperialism and world imperialism”.

Ms Anderson, also a former IRA member, said Dugdale had an “insatiable and unwavering commitment to economic equality, social justice, and human rights” whose “legacy will forever be intertwined with the tapestry of Ireland’s fight for freedom”.

Dugdale had been a front-line IRA member in the 1970s, and took part in the hijacking of a helicopter so that bombs could be dropped onto a barracks in Strabane.

She served six years in jail, and afterward her release in the early 1980s she became extremely active in Sinn Fein and its official newsletter, An Phoblacht.

A biography of Dugdale by journalist Sean O'Driscoll, featuring interviews with her and family, was published in 2022 (it is called 'Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber').

In it he describes her work on IRA grenades, mortars, a rocket launcher, a powerful rifle, and a new variety of explosive which was used to lethal effect multiple times, particularly against civilian targets in London.

Many more details of her paramilitary activities at this link:

• Rose Dugdale 'was a terrorist and not a freedom fighter' says ex-SDLP leader amid outpouring of Sinn Fein tributes to upper-class Marxist who designed much of the IRA's arsenal

Despite building and testing these devices, Dugdale managed to evade further prosecution and lived the rest of her life a free woman.

The book's author said Dugdale's "zealotry" was still evident right up until their last interviews before publication in 2022.

For example, she described the Strabane bombing as "the happiest day of my life".