In 1972, she and her husband, Colonel Sir Michael McCorkell, hosted secret peace talks between the British Government and the Provisional IRA, whose delegation included Gerry Adams.
[2] Her obituary noted that "Aileen had no memories of India, but a lifelong fear of snakes was reliably attributed to an incident in her infancy when a cobra came up through the bath’s plughole, only to be quickly dispatched by a capable ayah with a meat cleaver.
[citation needed] "In an Anglo-Irish society in which those "who did not go" to the war were long remembered, it never occurred to her that she should not do her bit, but ironically her early attempts to join the Wrens in Belfast were rebuffed precisely because she came from southern Ireland.
She signed the Official Secrets Act and was trained, on the then highly Hush-Hush Radar, as a Filter Plotter at Leighton Buzzard and was eventually stationed near Nottingham, and later in Belfast.
"Brought up in the Irish Republic before World War II, she had never imbibed the political and religious intolerance of the North, realising instead that, by its principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality, the Red Cross could play a vital role in Northern Ireland.
Her obituary noted that her early work focussed on establishing welfare services across the city of a kind now taken for granted but then notably absent; in areas of considerable poverty and dilapidation such as Catholic Bogside.
Additionally, the Red Cross established services, such as Meals on Wheels, this put Lady McCorkell into contact with other voluntary organisations working in Derry, notably the Order of Malta, "a connection which was to be vital when serious trouble began to engulf the city from October 1968 onwards".
[3] It was to the Order of Malta First Aid Post, in Westland Street near the Bogside Inn, that she and her deputy made their way amid the ferocious fighting which followed the Apprentice Boys' parade of 12 August 1969.
"[1] Following an explosion of violence, in June 1972, in which hundreds had been killed, Colonel Sir Michael and Lady McCorkell agreed to host, at the family home near the Londonderry/Donegal border, clandestine peace talks between the British government and the Provisional IRA, whose delegation included a young Gerry Adams.
[7] "The truce which followed was short-lived and within a month members of the North Derry Pony Club, who were having their annual camp on the McCorkell farm, woke to find soldiers had arrived secretly in the night and were shaving out of their horses' feed buckets".
"Long years of violence and bitterness were to follow, during which the Derry City Red Cross, led by its indefatigable president, gave unstinting and impartial service.