capacity as a doctor apparently) with the British Army, Ed’s political outlook was certainly not pro- British.
Ed Moloney
Journalist Ed Moloney, who covered the Northern Ireland conflict and its aftermath for decades and in great detail, has died in New York at the age of 77. Edmund Gerrard Morton Moloney was born in Aldershot on May 5 1948. He contracted polio as a child but overcame the illness with the support of the NHS. After graduating in economics and politics from Queen’s University Belfast in 1969, young Moloney initially taught English in
Libya as a second language before moving back to Belfast. Having taken part in the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, he was briefly involved as an education officer with the wing of the Irish republican movement known as ‘The Officials’, which was moving away from paramilitary activity towards a political role. Although it has been reported in The Times and The New York Times that his Irish-born father of the same name was an officer (in his
His career in journalism began with writing for the left-wing Belfast Bulletin, followed by the Dublin-based Hibernia and Magill magazines. He served as northern editor of The Irish Times in Belfast in 1981–85, later holding a similar position over 1987–2001 with the now-defunct Sunday Tribune. He won Journalist of the Year in the Irish media awards in November 1999. Shortly before receiving the
award, he also won a long-drawn- out legal battle. The high court in Belfast overruled a decision by a lower court, which had previously ordered him to provide interview notes to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the predecessor of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), relating to the murder in March 1989 of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane in Belfast. Moloney had faced the possibility of a prison term if he lost the case but, with international support, refused to surrender his notes.
In 2000, he moved to New York
to help care for his mother-in-law. He became the driving force in the Belfast Project at Boston College, which recorded interviews with former paramilitaries who were involved in the Northern Ireland conflict. The Boston Tapes, as they were called, were meant to be kept confidential until the interviewee had died but this was overcome in a legal action initiated by the PSNI. Moloney’s most highly rated
book, A Secret History of the IRA, appeared in two editions in 2002 and 2007 and was described by political campaigner and long-time NUJ activist Eamonn McCann as ‘the best book yet’ on the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army. His website The Broken Elbow was widely read. He is survived by his wife Joan McKiernan, son Ciarán, daughter- in-law Stephanie and other relatives and friends. A celebration of his life as a journalist, author, husband, father and dog-lover was held at The Wheeltapper Pub in the Fitzpatrick Grand Central Hotel in New York in November.
Deaglán de Bréadún During her long life, Ruth worked
for several leading financial magazines and newspapers in South Africa, where she lived after her family’s expulsion from Nazi Germany in 1936.
Ruth Weiss
The Bible tells us that a prophet is never honoured in her or his country. Fortunately, that adage did not
apply in the case of Ruth Weiss, the German-Jewish journalist and anti-apartheid activist who died on September 5 this year at the home of her son, Alexander, in Denmark. She was 101.
After being declared a prohibited immigrant in that country in the 1960s, she went on to become a prominent reporter and commentator on African affairs for The Guardian, the Financial Times and the then Bonn-based Deutsche Welle. News of her death was announced by the German mayor of Fürth (near Nuremberg) where she was born. Girls at a high school named after her in Ascaffenburg in Bavaria bowed their heads but were soon told by the headmistress to sit up and read books written by a woman who spent her life opposing apartheid in South Africa. Ruth Weiss (nee Lowenthal) was born on July 26 1924 into a Jewish family in Fürth. After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Jews knew they had no place in the
land where they were born. The family moved to South Africa in 1936. There, they started again, assisted financially by German Jews who had also fled the Nazis. They lived next to impoverished
Afrikaners who told the teenage Ruth that, although she had the right skin colour, she had the wrong religion and should keep quiet about being a Jew. She was advised to carry an umbrella to keep the sun off her face to keep her skin as white as possible.
After trying her hand at
accountancy, she married a much older journalist and became one herself, soon angering the Nationalists who had come to power in 1948. She set up shop in neighbouring
southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) where, on November 11 1965, Ian Smith announced a Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Again, Ruth was told to move on
which she did – to nearby Zambia. She became a close friend of
President Kenneth Kaunda while working as the business editor of the Times of Zambia. In 1974, she left Zambia and returned to Germany as editor of the Africa service of Deutsche Welle. She moved to Zimbabwe in 1982 and was head of a training course for young reporters who wanted to specialise in economics and finance. She watched with considerable disgust as Robert Mugabe and his sidekick Emmerson Mnangagwa set about wiping out the political opposition led by Joshua Nkomo. On April 28 2023, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa granted Ruth one of his country’s highest awards, the order of the companions of OR Tambo for her contribution to the African liberation struggle. In 2014, Germany decorated her with a federal cross of merit and, in 2000, the PEN Centre for German- speaking writers made Ruth its honorary president. She was a life member of the NUJ.
Trevor Grundy theJournalist | 21
TREVOR GRUNDY
PA IMAGES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
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