Born: 17 April 1934, United Kingdom
Died: 17 August 2015
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Marlene Young
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Angela Byrne. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Jefferson, Marlene (1934–2015), councillor and first female mayor of Derry, was born at 10 Carrigan’s Lane (now the site of Foyle Park), Derry, on 17 April 1934, the second of the ten children of Donegal-born electrical contractor James ‘Jim’ Young (d. 17 March 1980) and Derry native Martha ‘Dolly’ Doherty (her siblings were Jim, Billy, Terry, Ken, Sylvia, Valerie, Pat, Ian and Gregory). She attended First Derry primary school within the city walls until she was fourteen years old, when she began full-time work in a shirt factory, playing an important role in the upbringing of her many younger siblings. On 31 March 1955 she married building contractor James Jefferson and moved to the traditionally protestant working-class Fountain area of the city. The Jeffersons went on to have five children (Karen, Melanie, Craig, Siobhán and Thomas); after the birth of Karen, Marlene left her factory job to run a corner shop on the ground floor of the family home on Carlisle Street.
Entering local politics
Both Jefferson and her husband were committed unionists and she became well known in the Fountain area, where she volunteered locally with the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) by assisting with administrative tasks and updating voting registers. When the shop and family home was destroyed in an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb attack in the early 1970s, Jefferson and her family moved briefly to Academy Road before permanently settling in a four-bedroomed house at 22 Richill Park across the River Foyle on the Waterside. The family therefore became part of a significant pattern of protestant migration out of the catholic majority Cityside across to the Waterside throughout the 1960s and 1970s, seeking better housing, improved economic prospects, and an increased sense of safety and security. Jefferson remained ‘intensely proud’ of her working-class background and was keen to emphasise her Cityside roots, describing herself in a 1976 interview as ‘one of the original Bog Prods’ (Belfast Newsletter, 1 June 1976). Throughout her political career she urged Waterside protestants and unionists to overcome their marginalisation and alienation by taking an active part in public and political life in Derry, despite their minority status. Later, speaking to the Opsahl commission in January 1993 on the topic of community exclusion, she stated: ‘In the Waterside there is a feeling that the other side has won. Protestants have excluded themselves by choice’ (Pollak, 40).
Jefferson’s entry into local politics in 1973 was, by her own account, unplanned. The UUP invited her husband to run for Derry city council, but when he declined due to work pressures, Jefferson took his place. (In an earlier version of the story, Jefferson indicated that she was invited first and that she proposed her husband instead, but he did not have the time to take it on.) She ran for election for the first time under a new system of proportional representation that had been introduced following the suspension of Stormont in 1972, alongside a complete reorganisation of local government intended to eliminate the gerrymandering that had characterised elections in Northern Ireland for the previous fifty years.
Jefferson – described in the press as a thirty-nine-year-old housewife, the descriptor she applied to herself when appearing before the Opsahl commission in 1993 – contested the 1973 city council election representing the Bogside; she received 1,041 votes to take one of twenty-seven city council seats. As one of just seven women to contest the election, and one of the two to be elected, Jefferson’s success was described afterwards as a ‘startling feat’ (Belfast Newsletter, 1 June 1976). She retained her seat in the subsequent 1977 local elections.
Jefferson entered local politics during one of the most challenging periods in Derry’s long history. While public housing projects were completed and amenities like swimming pools and sports grounds were delivered in response to great need in the 1970s, the local economy suffered due to the militarisation of public spaces and the ongoing IRA campaign. The unemployment rate was twenty per cent, and half of the city’s twenty shirt factories – a core industry and one that provided desperately needed employment to local women that was particularly valuable in households impacted by long-term male unemployment – closed in the 1970s. Women stepped in to lead youth groups and community associations to combat the social problems blighting the city. A community-focused politician, Jefferson cooperated with fellow councillors to push for improved amenities, particularly in sports, leisure and housing. She sat on a committee for the employment of public health inspectors and on an advisory committee in relation to disbursement of grants from The Honourable The Irish Society (established in 1609 to administer the plantation of Derry and still a property holder in the region today).
Derry’s first female mayor
On 9 June 1980, Jefferson was appointed mayor of Derry. The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) – the largest single party on the city council, holding thirteen seats out of twenty-seven – supported her nomination as part of a local arrangement formed between them and the UUP following the reorganisation of local government, whereby the mayoralty rotated between the largest unionist and non-unionist parties. Her appointment prompted a walkout by the Irish Independence Party, Alliance and the Democratic Unionist Party, who accused the SDLP and UUP of excluding them from any possibility of holding the mayoralty.
Early in her tenure, Jefferson identified the particular challenges of local politics as the economic cutbacks of the era and insufficient council authority over planning and housing; she was also keen to continue expanding the provision of amenities and to promote tourism – no simple task given the recent violence in the city, and the tensions culminating in the republican hunger strikes that took place during most of her tenure as mayor.
Jefferson’s politics were unionist, but her career was defined by a cross-community focus and a determination to work across the political divide (particularly with the SDLP) that persisted against the backdrop of paramilitary violence and events like the 1972 and 1973 bombings of the Guildhall and Walker’s Monument respectively (both potent symbols of a unionism that saw itself as embattled in a nationalist-majority city). She advocated for conciliation across communities, urged unionists and republicans to work together, expressed support for integrated schooling and voiced a desire for regional government (but not Irish unification) to replace direct rule, which she branded ‘a disgrace’ (Pollak, 410). As mayor, she emphasised her role as representative of the people, stating that she had ‘never come under any pressure from the Official Unionist Party to try and force through policies in line with their political thinking’ (Belfast Telegraph, 10 June 1980). Focused on community development and economic recovery, Jefferson was not motivated by securing unionist votes, but by improving life in Derry for all. Speaking to the New York Times towards the end of her term, she stated: ‘The world sees us in two camps, but generally speaking we try to live together’ (10 May 1981).
Jefferson forged strong working relationships and friendships across the political spectrum. One of her closest friends during her council years was the activist and catholic bishop of Derry Edward Daly, and she was a close friend of nationalist politician and SDLP leader John Hume. Defending her participation as mayor in a visit by Derry city councillors to their counterparts in Dublin, Jefferson stated that it was ‘common courtesy’ to accept the invitation, and that ‘It must be realised that the border was not the Berlin Wall’ (Evening Herald, 26 Mar. 1980). One of the most symbolically significant moments during her time as mayor – and, indeed, in the history of Irish theatre – was the premiere of Brian Friel’s ‘Translations’ in Derry’s Guildhall on 23 September 1980. Jefferson has been credited as the person who made it possible for the play to be staged in the venue and she led a standing ovation on the opening night.
During her eight years in local politics Jefferson developed a significant profile. Her son Craig later recalled that before her election in 1973 she had been known as ‘Jim Jefferson the contractor’s wife’; afterwards, and particularly after she became mayor, ‘he was demoted – he was Jim Jefferson, the mayor’s husband’ (Belfast Telegraph, 29 Aug. 2015). Jefferson was aware of her particular position as one of Derry’s few female councillors and its first female mayor (one of only fifteen in the city’s history so far; the second was Annie Gallagher (SDLP) in 1988–9), a year before Belfast got its first female mayor, Grace Bannister, in 1981. While women became extremely active at community level in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, they were much less visible in elected positions. Throughout her political career, contemporary print media emphasised an image of Jefferson balancing public duties with those of wife and mother, and she found herself receiving a degree of attention for her gender. Jefferson used her profile to encourage women to get involved in community activism and politics and rejected any suggestion that her appointment as mayor was related to anything other than her ability: ‘The fact that I was born a woman should have nothing to do with it. I would like to see more women involved in political life and they should be prepared to work at it’ (Belfast Telegraph, 10 June 1980).
Later life
Jefferson’s tenure as mayor of Derry ended in May 1981 after she chose not to stand in the scheduled local election. She remained active in unionism for a short time, becoming patron of ‘Widow’s Mite’, a group led by widows of members of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and the security forces. The group spoke to widows’ groups and district councils across Ulster, displaying a biblical mite forged from the wedding ring of David Deacon, a UDR member killed in 1973, to promote a ‘propaganda war against terrorism’ (Belfast Telegraph, 2 July 1981). The group also made public appearances in Scotland and England, with Jefferson accompanying Sylvia Deacon – David Deacon’s widow – to a meeting with Margaret Thatcher in a Blackpool hotel in October 1981. There followed a two-week-long US speaking tour by Jefferson and three UDR widows which attracted strong media attention.
In January 1993, Jefferson gave oral testimony to the Opsahl commission, established to inquire into the future of Northern Ireland. When asked what pressure she thought politicians were under to come to an accommodation in the North, she said: ‘It’s easy for politicians to walk away from talks. Then you will get your votes. It’s more difficult to stick in there’ (Pollak, 10). Convinced that a political solution was impossible while paramilitary violence was ongoing, Jefferson – like many other unionists – accepted the need to include paramilitary groups in the peace process.
Thereafter, Jefferson stepped away from politics, focusing her energy instead on community work. She became involved in the Churches’ Trust in Derry, the Post Office Users’ Council and within her parish, St Augustine’s, where she befriended Rev. Patricia Storey, who became the first female Anglican bishop in Britain and Ireland. Jefferson served on Altnagelvin Hospital Trust from 1995 onwards and was involved in the cross-community women into Irish history group, led by the Shared City Project. A vocal figure in the community, she was made member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to local government in Derry in 1983 and received the Cross of St Augustine for services to the Church of Ireland. The sudden death of her son, Thomas, in 1991, left a deep and lasting impact. In her later years, Jefferson retreated from public life to provide full-time care for her husband, who died in 2010.
Jefferson suffered a series of strokes and died in Altnagelvin Hospital on 17 August 2015. The funeral service, held in her parish church of St Augustine’s on 19 August, included readings by Catholic priest Fr Michael Canny in recognition of her dedication to cross-community work. She was buried in Altnagelvin cemetery. Jefferson is remembered as cheerful, optimistic, courageous, politically open-minded and an advocate of cross-community collaboration. On her death, UUP leader Mike Nesbitt said: ‘At a time when the communities were polarised, she was quick to reach out the hand of friendship and work with political colleagues from the nationalist tradition … Long after her term of office ended she continued to be a force for good’ (Belfast Telegraph, 18 Aug. 2015).