For the anthology We Shall Fight Until We Win, UK-based writers, illustrators and comic creators were chosen by BHP Comics and 404 Ink to tell the stories of some of the most inspiring and overlooked women of the last century.
Doran’s contribution tells the stories of Jessica Mitford and Bernadette Devlin McAliskey.
Jessica Mitford was one of the most influential investigative journalists of 20th Century America and one of Britain’s most scandalous aristocrats. Mitford ran away from her family to fight with the Republicans side in the Spanish Civil War, working as a reporter, while her sisters Diana and Unity organised for Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and socialised with Hitler and Goebbels.
Mitford rebelled against a British upper-class that denied women education and autonomy. Moving to America after the Republican defeat, she became a civil rights activist, filing reports on the Freedom Riders and Martin Luther King for publications such as Esquire and The Atlantic. Her 1963 book, The American Way of Death, exposed the predatory selling practices of the American funeral industry.
In 1969 Bernadette Devlin became the youngest female MP at the age of 21, winning the Northern Irish Mid-Ulster seat on a socialist ‘Unity’ ticket. A passionate activist for civil rights in the then gerrymandered and oppressive police-state of Northern Ireland, she co-founded the People’s Democracy organisation while a student at Queens University.
In 1972 Devlin participated in the anti-internment march which became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’, after British soldiers shot 28 marchers, killing 14. She travelled to London to attend Parliament as an MP and attest to what she had witnessed, and to dispute the government’s version of events, the next day.
Her chapter in WSFUWW focuses on that day, which became infamous for Devlin slapping the then-Home Secretary when she was denied the chance to speak as an eye-witness to events.
Devlin is a hugely important and (like Mitford) often overlooked figure in post-partition Irish politics. In a time when Brexit casts a new light on the complexities of Northern Irish history and politics, her voice is a much needed alternative perspective on a complex province.
Press coverage
Reviews
We Shall Fight Until We Win Featured on Stylist's 30 little pick-me-ups
We Shall Fight Until We Win featured on the front page of The National newspaper
“404 Ink and BHP Comics have teamed up to bring you WE SHALL FIGHT UNTIL WE WIN, a graphic novel celebrating a century since the first wave of women gained the right to vote in the UK, and the many pioneering women who are part of the ongoing fight since 1918.
The anthology takes women from each decade in the last 100 years and tells their stories in colourful, illustrated snapshots – some stories are well known, some less so – all worthy of note. We wanted to create a reminder of how far women’s rights have come over a century and, conversely, where we have left to go.
We’re looking back to the women who shaped our current climate or trail-blazed. From suffragettes like Emmeline Pankhurst and Sophia Duleep Singh, through the defining ‘firsts’ in politics like Nancy Astor, the first female member of Parliament, and Diane Abbott, the first black woman to hold a seat in the House of Commons, to many of the women campaigning and heading up politics today, this graphic novel brings together a mix of creators across the UK to illustrate the numerous stories from the last century.”
