Sally Mulready founded the Irish Women Survivors Network in London in 2002 after watching the ground-breaking States of Fear programme by the late Mary Raftery.
The group was founded in order to provide support, advice and companionship to women who had spent time in Irish institutional care, either as children or as mothers (in 'mother and baby' homes.)
Mulready has gathered extensive evidence from individual Magdalene women, which has been acknowledged as of great importance to the work of the inquiry.
In 2011 and after a long fight for justice, the women received an official apology from the Irish government in a speech made by Ireland's Taoiseach Enda Kenny[5], who met 15 from the Magdalene survivors and ordered the judicial commission to create compensation packages for the affected women.
The aim was to meet the urgent needs of the thousands of men and women who fled Ireland hurt and alone following terrible experiences and ordeals.
Having watched the Granada TV World In Action programme on the case of the Birmingham six, Sally was convinced of the innocence of the six men and worked with a handful of other workers, mostly from Islington Council in London, to arrange the first meeting of the London campaign[citation needed]; it took place in a small room in the Red Rose Club in Islington in 1986, where Sally was elected as the Secretary of the campaign.
When the men were finally released Sally wrote Cruel Fate with Hugh Callaghan, the oldest of the Birmingham Six.
Sally Mulready is also an elected Labour Party Councillor in Chatham Ward in the London Borough of Hackney.
Her daughter, Molly Mulready, worked as a lawyer for the UK Foreign Office between 2014 and 2019, where she became a whistleblower regarding British arms sales to Saudi Arabia and their use during the Yemeni Civil War.