IN 2018 a thought-provoking anti-Nato conference was held in Dublin. The speakers included Aida Touma from Israel, Medea Benjamin from Code Pink in the US, Clare Daly from Ireland, Thea Valentina Gardellin from Italy, Aleida Guevara from Cuba and many other anti-war activists from around the world.

It was a very powerful conference exposing the warmongers of the world and building solidarity. The following year in Belfast for International Women’s Day, Daly shared a platform with Gardellin under the title of “Welfare not warfare.”

This year the Irish Communist Party are pleased to welcome back Daly (former TD and MEP) who will be speaking at the International Women’s Day event on March 6 at 7pm, in the First Presbyterian Church Hall, Rosemary Street, Belfast.

This venue has a radical history of its own, with connections to the United Irishmen in 1798, and in more recent times various progressive speakers including Aleida Guevara and others from Cuba.

She will be reporting back from the 2025 Rosa Luxemburg Conference in Berlin, where she spoke about Europe as a target for the next big war — a target that Starmer appears to be aiming for.

Daly has been consistently active in defending neutrality in Ireland, opposing military spending and US and Nato military bases in Europe, the Americas and throughout the world. She has never failed to make her views known in the European Parliament regarding Palestine and other issues.

Daly has worked for years exposing hypocrisy, crimes of imperialism and injustice. Of the treatment of asylum-seekers and refugees who are often fleeing from conflict and wars that the West has initiated, she says: “For decades, the European Union has policed its borders with deadly force, raising the drawbridge to those fleeing Western wars, famine, and climate breakdown. This hostile environment has a name: Fortress Europe.”

She has been attacked and misrepresented by politicians and the media for her honest and outspoken views, especially on the war in Ukraine and genocide in Palestine. On March 2 2022, Daly was one of 13 MEPs who voted against a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She was criticised by constituents and others in Ireland.

She later said that she opposed Russia’s invasion but had voted against the resolution because it also stated support for Nato and had called for weapons to be sent to Ukraine. She said the “decision by Russia to abandon diplomacy and invade Ukraine is contrary to international law. The sole responsibility for this is borne by President Vladimir Putin.”

Daly also accused Nato of “destabilising the area for the past decade.” She has opposed sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. She said that “the ordinary people of Europe” would pay for the sanctions and “not a single Ukrainian life will be saved.” She added that the EU and military-industrial complex were “fanning the flames” of a “proxy war” with Russia.

She later accused the West of arming Ukraine “to keep the war going.” The supplying of weapons to Ukraine is somehow seen as a way to achieve peace: of this, she says: “War is peace? Blanket calls for more arms, more sanctions, more destruction are unweaving any chance at ending this war. MEP Angel Dzhambazki, fined one day prior for performing a Nazi salute in the parliament, questions the morality of anti-war politics. Not in my books.”

Daly defends Irish neutrality which is increasingly coming under attack: “Ireland’s history and tradition of UN peacekeeping is something we can rightly be proud of. We won’t give up at the behest of von der Leyen and her ilk. Irish neutrality matters. #keepthetriplelock.”

She has a long history of fighting for policies that improve living and working conditions in Ireland. “We have to change tack, we need public housing on public land, we need to make the local authorities fit for purpose so that they’re the developer, cut out the middle man or else you’ll never end the blight of unaffordability and the lack of adequate housing or decent rents for our citizens.”

Daly acted on the question of abortion law reform, one of the most unpopular issues in Ireland. In 2012, when she along with TD Mick Wallace and TD Joan Collins introduced abortion legislation, it was only supported by 20 TDs.

“But four incredible women went on the Late Late Show, the first time people in this state openly identified themselves as people who travelled for terminations,” she said.

The women became part of the Terminations for Medical Reasons group and it was appalling “that they had to lay bare their most appalling pain and tragedy and order to turn that into a social movement.”

Daly is upfront, outspoken and confronts injustice and dishonesty without fear or favour, we welcome her to Belfast with open arms — arms that comfort not kill.

The IWD march rally will be held in Belfast under the heading of Solidarity Beyond Borders — Women for World Peace, 11.30am, March 8, Writers Square.

Lynda Walker is a communist and is active in the anti-war, women’s, and trade union movement.