Rose Dugdale, an Oxford-educated English woman who left a life of wealth to become a partisan activist fighting for Irish independence, in a career that included bomb-making, hijackings and art theft, died Monday in Dublin. She was 82.

Her death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by Aengus O Snodaigh, a friend and member of the Irish parliament. No reason was given.

Throughout the 1970s, Ms. Dugdale, whose family owned much of the London insurance company Lloyd’s, captivated the British and Irish news media with her exploits. Her story – like that of Patricia Hearst, another heiress who became a revolutionary and made news in the United States around the same time – fueled a narrative about glamorous, radical youth running wild in the post-1960s era:

Mrs. Dugdale repudiated her inheritance and liquidated her trust fund to support a variety of social and political causes. She and an accomplice were arrested in 1973 for stealing thousands of dollars worth of art and silverware from her parents’ home, with plans to sell it and give the proceeds to the Irish Republican Army.

Her father, Eric, appeared as a witness at her trial, and under British law she was allowed to cross-examine him herself – an opportunity she used to make political statements.

“I love you,” she told her father, “but hate everything you stand for.”

Nevertheless, the judge was lenient with her and imposed only a two-year suspended sentence because, he said, the likelihood of her breaking the law again was “extremely small.”

He was wrong. Immediately after her trial, she traveled to Ireland, where she and another accomplice, Eddie Gallagher, hijacked a helicopter and pilot to drop improvised bombs on a base of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the police force in Northern Ireland.

The bombs fell wide and failed to explode, and Ms Dugdale and Mr Gallagher went into hiding to plot their next move.

In April 1974, she and three other assailants burst through the doors of Russborough House, a palatial estate southwest of Dublin owned by Alfred Beit, a wealthy British politician and art collector.

They pistol-whipped Mr. Beit, tied him and his wife up and made off with 19 paintings by Gainsborough, Goya, Vermeer and other artists. Among the loot, worth a total of 8 million Irish pounds (about $110 million today), was ‘Lady Writing a Letter With Her Maid’, one of only two works by Vermeer in private hands. (The other was at Buckingham Palace.)

Knowing they could not easily sell the famous works on the black market, Mrs. Dugdale and the other thieves demanded a ransom of 500,000 Irish pounds. They also demanded that Dolours and Marian Price, two IRA members jailed over a series of car bombings in England, be transferred to a prison in Northern Ireland.

After a nationwide hunt, police tracked down the art, and Mrs Dugdale, to a rural cottage in County Cork. This time she pleaded “proudly and incorruptibly guilty” and received a nine-year prison sentence. As she left the courthouse, she greeted the crowd with a clenched fist.

After being released from prison in 1980, she returned to Dublin where she worked as a community organizer to stem the rising number of heroin dealers on the city’s streets.

She also went back to work for the IRA, this time as a bomb maker. She and her partner, Jim Monaghan, developed a number of innovative weapons, including a projectile launcher that used two packets of McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits to absorb recoil, and a new type of explosive that was used in bombings in Northern Ireland and London, killing six people died and more than a hundred were injured.

Bridget Rose Dugdale was born on March 25, 1941 in Yarty, her family’s 600-acre estate in Devon, south-west England. Both her parents came from money: her father was a major shareholder in Lloyd’s and her mother, Carol (Timmis) Dugdale, was an heiress.

She grew up shuttling between the family estate and a sprawling house in London, between riding lessons and society balls. She attended Miss Ironside’s School, a private school for girls that also produced the model and actress Jane Birkin.

When she was 17, Ms. Dugdale joined 1,400 other teenage debutantes at a coming-out ceremony for Queen Elizabeth II. It was the last year that a two-century-old tradition was performed.

Mrs. Dugdale was a reluctant socialite and only went along on the condition that her parents hire a tutor to prepare her for admission to the all-female St. Anne’s College at the University of Oxford.

She studied politics, philosophy and economics there and counted the Irish writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch among the professors she met personally. Years later, as Ms. Dugdale faced a prison sentence, Ms. Murdoch wrote letters urging leniency.

She was by all accounts a mediocre student, partly because her growing interest in left-wing politics took up most of her time and energy. Among her many exploits, Ms Dugdale and a friend dressed up as male students and sneaked into a session of the all-male Oxford Union debating society, where they jeered and heckled in low voices.

After graduating in 1962, she studied philosophy at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, earning a master’s degree, then returned to Britain to study economics at the London School of Economics, where she earned a Ph.D.

Although Ms Dugdale worked as an analyst for the British government, she quickly became radicalized. She received a significant income from a trust fund and gave most of it away to anti-poverty programs around her apartment in Tottenham, an impoverished part of north-east London.

She came into contact with a self-proclaimed “revolutionary socialist” named Walter Heaton, with whom she committed the burglary of her parents’ home in 1973. While she received a light sentence, he was sentenced to six years in prison.

Ms Dugdale’s survivors include Mr Gallagher, whom she married in 1978 while they were both in prison, although they later became estranged, and their son, Ruairi Gallagher.

After the Good Friday Agreements largely ended violence in Northern Ireland in 1998, Ms Dugdale retired as a fighter. But she remained active in Sinn Fein, the political party for independence in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Although she was a divisive figure in Britain, in Ireland she became something of a legend, the recipient of awards and the subject of biographies and documentaries – most recently the feature film ‘Baltimore’ (2023), starring Imogen Poots as Mrs Dugdale. (The film was released this month in the United States, titled “Rose’s War.”)

“I did what I wanted to do,” she said an interview from 2011 before the Dublin Volunteers Dinner, where she was the first honour. “I am proud to have been part of the Republican movement, and I hope I have played my very small role in the success of the armed struggle.”

For nearly a decade, Nicola Sturgeon, as leader of the Scottish government, was the undisputed figurehead of the push to break Scotland’s age-old union with England.

Her resignation earlier this year – and now her arrest on Sunday over an investigation into the finances of her Scottish National Party – has left the fate of the movement in flux.

Support for independence has waned, but support for Scotland remaining part of the United Kingdom, a bond forged in 1707, is also fragile. Opinion polls show that the Scottish public is still roughly divided on the issue. For now, the political road to an independent Scotland is blocked.

“It’s a stalemate, there is no firm will for independence, but we must equally recognize that there is no firm will for union either,” said Nicola McEwen, a professor of territorial politics at the University of Edinburgh.

“Reports of the demise of the independence movement and even of the SNP have been somewhat exaggerated,” said Professor McEwen, who added that “given everything that’s been going on, it might be surprising that support hasn’t fallen more than it is.”

Operation Branchform, the codename for investigation into the Scottish National Party’s finances, began in 2021 and is said to have followed complaints about the handling of about £600,000, or about $750,000, in donations raised to campaign for a second ballot about Scottish independence. In 2014, Scots voted 55 to 45 percent against secession from the United Kingdom in a divisive referendum.

Ms Sturgeon, who was released on Sunday after seven hours of questioning and quickly declared her innocence, has not been charged. On Monday, her successor, Humza Yousaf, rejected calls to suspend Ms Sturgeon from the party.

She is the third senior figure in the party to be arrested but not charged. Another is Ms Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, the former CEO of the party who held the position from 1999 until March when he resigned after accepting blame for misleading statements made by the party about the size of its dues-paying members .

The police investigation deepened in the weeks following Ms. Sturgeon and the tough competition to succeed her which was narrowly won by Mr. Yousaf.

His leadership is still relatively new, but so far he has struggled to match the high profile of his predecessor, or rise to the prize that ultimately eluded it: Scottish independence.

Supporters have pushed for a second vote on Scottish independence after the first failed in 2014. Their argument was supported by Brexit, which saw Britain leave the European Union because the majority of Scots who voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum were in the European bloc. They were outnumbered by voters in England and Wales who wanted to leave.

But to have legal effect, the London government must agree to a new independence vote, and successive prime ministers have refused, insisting that the 2014 decision is valid for a generation.

Ms Sturgeon hit another roadblock last year when she tested in court her right to schedule a referendum without London’s permission. In November, the UK Supreme Court ruled against her.

Some hard voices favor unilateral action, perhaps voting in defiance of London. Catalan separatists in Spain followed that path in 2017, but it led to the imprisonment or exile of some leaders of the independence movement. And going outside the law would block an independent Scotland on its way to European Union membership, the SNP’s goal.

Frustrated on all sides, Ms Sturgeon eventually proposed that the next UK general election, expected in the second half of 2024, be used as a de facto independence referendum, with Scotland’s constitutional future at its heart. Internal critics questioned the viability of that idea, as other political parties disagreed.

In an interview broadcast on Sunday, before Ms Sturgeon’s arrest, Mr Yousaf said he was confident that, despite the recent setbacks, an independent Scotland was on the way.

“Despite some of the most difficult weeks our party has probably experienced, especially in modern times, that support for independence is still rock solid. It’s a good foundation we can build on,” he told the BBC. “I have no doubt that I will be the leader who will see Scotland become an independent nation.”

The party may have missed its moment. It’s hard to see a more favorable backdrop for the independence campaign than the messy aftermath of Brexit, the chaotic leadership of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson – who was unpopular in Scotland – and the political dramas of 2022 when Britain was two changed prime ministers.

Paradoxically, while Brexit has strengthened the political case for Scottish independence, it has complicated the practical one. Britain has left the giant single market and customs union of the European Union, implying a trade border between an independent Scotland and England, its largest economic partner.

The years of stalemate and chaos that followed the Brexit referendum may have also deterred some Scottish voters from further constitutional changes.

In addition, the SNP has been criticized for its record in government, and the opposition Labor Party sees an opportunity to recover in Scotland, where it dominated politics before the SNP decimated it.

“After unfair claims of party membership, a very poor record in government and no progress towards independence, this just adds to the SNP’s woes,” said James Mitchell, a professor of public policy at the University of Edinburgh, referring to recent events.

“It would be damaging enough for the SNP’s electoral prospects, but with Labor looking increasingly confident and competent in Scotland and in Britain, it seems the SNP’s chance to advance its cause is over.”

The next UK general election could provide Mr Yousaf with another opening if, as some pollsters predict, Labor emerges as the largest party, but without an overall majority. In that scenario, the SNP could try to trade its support for a minority Labor government for a pledge to hold a second referendum.

The problem is that Keir Starmer, the Labor leader, has so far rejected such a deal. And if some supporters of Scottish independence vote Labor to try and defeat the Conservative government led by Rishi Sunak, the SNP could lose seats in the UK Parliament, weakening its position.

Some analysts believe that the independence movement should focus on building wider popular support, including through other organizations and political parties, reaching beyond the boundaries of the SNP and its supporters.

Finally, Scotland’s union with England entered into voluntarily, and were polls showing that around 60 per cent of voters were consistently in favor of an independent Scotland, that would be hard for a British government to ignore.

However, even Mr. Yousaf acknowledges that this is still a long way off. At this point, he told the BBC, “it is quite clear that independence is not the consistent firm will of the Scottish people.”

The question facing him, his colleagues and the wider independence movement is how they intend to change that. “I don’t really see any signs of a strategy,” said Professor McEwen, “that doesn’t mean there isn’t one, I just don’t see evidence of it.”

The subject of today’s newsletter is slightly different than usual. We’re going to focus on The Times itself – and how we define our mission today.

The opportunity is one new essay in the Columbia Journalism Review by AG Sulzberger, our publisher, explaining why independence is The Times’ guiding principle. In addition to summarizing his argument, I’ll offer my own thoughts on how they relate to this newsletter.

Sulzberger writes:

Independence is the increasingly contentious journalistic commitment to follow facts wherever they lead. It puts the truth – and seeking it with an open but skeptical mind – above all else. That may sound like bland, pleasant clichés from Journalism 101, but in this hyperpolarized era, independent journalism and the sometimes counterintuitive values ​​that animate it have become a radical pursuit.

Independence requires reporters to adopt a searching attitude rather than knowing. It requires that we reflect the world as it is, not the world as we might like it to be. It requires journalists to be willing to exonerate someone who is considered a villain or question someone who is considered a hero. It insists on sharing what we learn – fully and honestly – regardless of who it upsets or what the political ramifications may be. Independence calls for stating the facts clearly, even if they seem to favor one side of a dispute. And it calls for carefully conveying ambiguity and debate in the more frequent cases where the facts are unclear or their interpretation is reasonably contested, so that readers can understand and work through the uncertainty for themselves.

The idea of ​​journalistic independence has been widely criticized, he notes. Conservatives argue that journalists are too liberal to be independent, while a growing number of liberals favor a more confident ideological form of journalism, as was the norm in the US in the 18th and 19th centuries and is still common in Europe.

Independence is not always self-evident for journalists. Each of us has our own personal opinion. Sometimes we fail to rise above our prejudices and produce flawed reporting. Other times we correct too much towards “false equivalence” and neglect to explain that one side in a debate is not telling the truth.

But striving for independence is a worthy goal. It is the same goal that scientists, judges and sports referees pursue. “Failure to meet standards does not obviate the need for them,” said Martin Baron, former editor-in-chief of The Washington Post. has written. “It makes them more necessary.”

Sulzberger elaborates on the counterarguments in the essay I encourage you to read it. (Obvious disclosure: He’s my boss.)

Covid as a case

I would like to add one consideration, based on writing this newsletter during the Covid pandemic. That experience emphasizes the distinction between the independent approach and the alternative.

Like many topics in American life today, Covid quickly became a source of political polarization. Many conservatives believe the threat of the virus has been exaggerated. Many liberals believe the country has done too little to fight Covid. The political right and left also disagree about the origin of the virus – from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, or from an animal at a food market in the same city.

If The Times adopted a more European model of journalism, our coverage of the pandemic would have begun with the assumption that the left or the right were right about all things Covid. The independent model asks for a different approach. It calls for examining the evidence on every aspect of Covid – and accepting the possibility that either one political tribe is right about almost everything, or that each side is right about just a few questions.

Sure enough, the data showed that many conservatives were terribly wrong about vaccines (that are safe and effective) and often wrong about masks (which can protect people with consistent wear). But many liberals — including some in public health, a left-leaning field — also came to adopt beliefs that the evidence did not support.

Lots of liberals overdone The dangers of Covid for the non-elderly, especially children. Partly for this reason, democratically run communities closed schools longer. It was a bad trade-off: These areas didn’t noticeably have less Covid and their children struggled more. The left also seems to have been wrong about long-standing mask mandates (which had little effect) and wrong to reject the lab leak theory (which, unlike a bigoted conspiracy theory, remains plausible).

I want to emphasize that the independent model of journalism does not guarantee accuracy. For example, I initially misread the evidence about declining vaccine immunity and underestimated the value of booster shots. Journalism is called the first draft of history because it is imperfect. Great stories require difficult appraisals, and reasonable people sometimes come to contradictory conclusions. My colleagues and I will make mistakes.

Nor am I suggesting that The Times’ approach is the only legitimate one. In the current digital landscape there is a lot of room for philosophical publications. I enjoy and learn from many of them.

But The Times follows a different strategy. We believe that no political group – whether left, center or right – has a monopoly on clairvoyance. We are not on a team. Our guess is that The Times can best serve society by remaining independent. We think many readers want such coverage, uncomfortable although it may be.

As Sulzberger writes“Independent journalism also rests on the fundamental belief that those who want to change the world must first understand it – that a fully informed society not only makes better decisions, but also operates with more trust, more empathy and more care.”

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• The election was in many ways a referendum on the performance of Erdogan, Turkey’s dominant politician for 20 years.

• Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader, came in second. Both men said they were ready for a second round, scheduled for May 28.

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An uncertain future: The Grizzlies have Ja Morant suspended again after he was seen flashing what appeared to be a gun in an Instagram Live.

ART AND IDEAS

What’s wrong with maturity?

“Seinfeld,” the show about nothing, ended in May 1998. The centerpiece was Jerry Seinfeld and his three friends, who proudly flouted social conventions and the rules of traditional adulthood, writes Maya Salam of The Times. Twenty-five years later, parts of the show seem prescient, Maya writes, “With the realization that long-held images of adulthood may no longer be as attainable as before, the show has taken on a new relatability.”