McAliskey came to national and international prominence at the age of 21 when she became the youngest female ever (at that time) to become a member of the British Parliament.

For the majority of that time, McAliskey was politically active, advocating for a 32-county socialist Irish republic to replace the two states on the island of Ireland.

Since 1997 McAliskey has worked as the head of the South Tyrone Empowerment Programme, an NGO based in Dungannon which focuses on community development.

[5] She was studying psychology at Queen's University Belfast in 1968 when she took a prominent role in a student-led civil rights organisation, People's Democracy.

[6] Following complaints from Unionist politicians, Devlin's scholarship was revoked and she was refused to be allowed to sit her final exams.

[6][8] Devlin stood on the slogan "I will take my seat and fight for your rights" – signalling her rejection of the traditional Irish republican principle of abstentionism.

[10] After engaging, on the side of the residents, in the Battle of the Bogside in August, she was convicted of incitement to riot in December 1969, for which she served six months imprisonment.

[13] Almost immediately after the Battle of the Bogside, Devlin undertook a tour of the United States in August 1969, a trip which generated a significant amount of media attention.

At a number of speaking events, she made parallels between the struggle in the U.S. by African-Americans seeking civil rights and Catholics in Northern Ireland, sometimes to the embarrassment of her audience.

During an event in Philadelphia, she had to goad an African-American singer to sing "We Shall Overcome" to the Irish-American audience, many of whom refused to stand for the song.

Devlin, frustrated with conservative elements of the Irish-American community, left the tour to return to Northern Ireland and, believing the freedom of New York should go to the American poor, sent Eamonn McCann to present the key on her behalf to a representative from the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party.

Devlin responded by stating that Mills was a coward for waiting until she was abroad to make such a remark, but also that she was "as left as James Connolly and the starry plough".

[21] Thirteen years later, former British Prime Minister Edward Heath recalled the event: "I remember very well when an hon.

Instead, McAliskey flew to Paris and called upon French Trade Unions to place an embargo on handling British goods until the hunger strikes ended.

Allegations were subsequently made that elements of the security forces had colluded with the UDA in planning the botched assassination.

[34][35] The attackers—Ray Smallwoods, Tom Graham (38), both from Lisburn, and Andrew Watson (25) from Seymour Hill, Dunmurry—were captured by the army patrol and subsequently jailed.

[37] She twice failed, in February and November 1982, in attempts to be elected to the Dublin North-Central constituency of the Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann.

[38] In 1994, McAliskey attended the funeral of former Irish National Liberation Army Chief of Staff Dominic McGlinchey.

During the funeral oration, she condemned the recent press coverage which had accused McGlinchey of drug dealing and criminality and said of the journalists responsible that they were "curs and dogs.

Their reporter, David Sharrock, asked if her tirade had been intended to counteract the negative stories about McGlinchey that had recently appeared in the press.

[44] On 12 May 2007, McAliskey was a guest speaker at the socialist republican political party Éirígí's first Annual James Connolly commemoration in Arbour Hill, Dublin.

[46] During the campaigning for the 2024 European Parliament election in Ireland, McAliskey endorsed Clare Daly in the Dublin constituency.

[49] McAliskey stated: "Sinn Fein has no intention of moving forward to a united Ireland that it doesn't control."

Additionally, she stated "Do I think the people who are in the current mainstream of political ideology - whether that's from Fine Gael and Fianna Fail right through Sinn Fein, on into the SDLP and on over to the Unionists and the DUP - should be let out to run a country?

I would like to start again and have a constitutional conference, a series of clear discussions and debates and a democratic process for building a new independent republic in which everybody could feel they belonged.

[50] In August 2019 McAliskey made a similar statement, once again affirming she would not vote for a United Ireland in a Border Poll, asking rhetorically, "Who would want to join the Free State?".

I've always believed in the fundamental right of any woman to secure a safe, a free termination of pregnancy, an abortion, when she asks for it – and that there's a full stop and an exclamation mark after that.

Devlin, and her assault after the Bloody Sunday massacre on the British Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, were the subject of the title song of the 1990 music album, Slap!