“So often during the Troubles in Northern Ireland it was the men who battled, bombed and maimed,” said The Times, “and the women – strong, irrepressible, no-nonsense – who held their communities together and fought for peace.” May Blood, who has died aged 84, “was a prime example” of that. Short of stature, but long on determination, she had seen her own childhood home, in west Belfast, burnt down by loyalist paramilitaries, after her father resisted the expulsion of a Roman Catholic neighbour. In her teens, she became a trade union official in a linen mill, and spent the next 38 years campaigning for improved pay and conditions for all workers regardless of their religious affiliation. Later, she became a community activist, fighting for better housing, education and job opportunities…
