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Death of Brian Keenan, Member of the Army Council of the Provisional IRA

Brian Keenan, a member of the Army Council of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), dies on May 21, 2008, at Cullyhanna, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, following a battle with colorectal cancer. He receives an 18-year prison sentence in 1980 for conspiring to cause explosions and plays a key role in the Northern Ireland peace process.

The son of a member of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Keenan is born on July 17, 1941, in Swatragh, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, before his family moves to Belfast. As a teenager, he moves to England to find work, for a time working as a television repairman in partnership with his brother in Corby, Northamptonshire. During this time, he comes to the attention of the police when he damages a cigarette machine, which leads to police having his fingerprints on file. He returns to Northern Ireland when the Troubles begin and starts working at the Grundig factory in the Finaghy area of Belfast where he acquires a reputation as a radical due to his involvement in factory trade union activities.

Despite his family having no history of republicanism, Keenan joins the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1970 or 1971, and by August 1971 is the quartermaster of the Belfast Brigade. He is an active IRA member, planning bombings in Belfast and travelling abroad to make political contacts and arrange arms smuggling, acquiring contacts in East Germany, Libya, Lebanon and Syria. In 1972, he travels to Tripoli to meet with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in order to acquire arms and finance from his government. In early 1973 he takes over responsibility for control of the IRA’s bombing campaign in England and also becomes IRA Quartermaster General. In late 1973, he is the linchpin of the kidnap of his former employer at Grundig, director Thomas Niedermayer.

In early 1974, Keenan plans to break Gerry Adams and Ivor Bell out of Long Kesh using a helicopter, in a method similar to Seamus Twomey‘s escape from Mountjoy Prison in October 1973, but the plan is vetoed by Billy McKee. He is arrested in the Republic of Ireland in mid-1974 and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for IRA membership. On March 17, 1975, he is shot and wounded while attempting to lead a mass escape from Portlaoise Prison. While being held in Long Kesh, Gerry Adams helps to devise a blueprint for the reorganisation of the IRA, which includes the use of covert cells and the establishment of a Southern Command and Northern Command. As the architects of the blueprint, Adams, Bell and Brendan Hughes, are still imprisoned, Martin McGuinness and Keenan tour the country trying to convince the IRA Army Council and middle leadership of the benefits of the restructuring plan, with one IRA member remarking “Keenan was a roving ambassador for Adams.” The proposal is accepted after Keenan wins support from the South Derry Brigade, East Tyrone Brigade and South Armagh Brigade, with one IRA member saying, “Keenan was really the John the Baptist to Adams’ Christ.”

In December 1975, members of an IRA unit based in London are arrested following the six-day Balcombe Street siege. The IRA unit had been active in England since late 1974 carrying out a series of bombings, and a few months after his release from prison Keenan visits the unit in Crouch Hill, London, to give it further instructions. In follow-up raids after the siege, police discover crossword puzzles in his handwriting and his fingerprints on a list of bomb parts. A warrant is issued for his arrest.

Garda Síochána informer Sean O’Callaghan claims that Keenan recommended IRA Chief of Staff Seamus Twomey to authorise an attack on Ulster Protestants in retaliation to an increase in sectarian attacks on Catholic civilians by Protestant loyalist paramilitaries, such as the killing of three Catholics in a gun and bomb attack by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) on Donnelly’s Bar in Silverbridge, County Armagh on December 19, 1975. According to O’Callaghan “Keenan believed that the only way, in his words, to put the nonsense out of the Prods [Protestants] was to just hit back much harder and more savagely than them.” Soon after the sectarian Kingsmill massacre occurs, when ten Protestant men returning home from their work are ordered out of a minibus they are travelling in and executed en masse with a machine gun on January 5, 1976.

Keenan is arrested on the basis of the 1975 warrant near Banbridge on March 20, 1979, when the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) stopped two cars travelling north on the main road from Dublin to Belfast and is extradited to England to face charges relating to the Balcombe Street Gang‘s campaign in England. His capture is a blow to the IRA, in particular as he was carrying an address book listing his contacts including Palestinian activists in the United Kingdom. The IRA responds by dispatching Bobby Storey and three other members to break Keenan out of prison using a helicopter, but all four are arrested and remanded to Brixton Prison. Keenan stands trial at the Old Bailey in London in June 1980 defended by Michael Mansfield and is accused of organising the IRA’s bombings in England and being implicated in the deaths of eight people including Ross McWhirter and Gordon Hamilton Fairley. He is sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment after being found guilty on June 25, 1980.

Keenan continues to support Gerry Adams while in prison. In August 1982 Adams is granted permission by the IRA’s Army Council to stand in a forthcoming election to the Northern Ireland Assembly, having been refused permission at a meeting the previous month. In a letter sent from Leicester Prison, Keenan writes that he “emphatically” supports the move and endorses the Army Council’s decision.

Keenan is released from prison in June 1993 and by 1996 is one of seven members of the IRA’s Army Council. Following the events after the IRA’s ceasefire of August 1994, he is openly critical of Gerry Adams and the “tactical use of armed struggle,” or TUAS, strategy employed by the republican movement. After the Northern Ireland peace process becomes deadlocked over the issue of the IRA decommissiong its arms, he and the other members of the Army Council authorise the Docklands bombing which kills two people and marks the end of the IRA’s eighteen-month ceasefire in February 1996.

Keenan outlines the IRA’s public position in May 1996 at a ceremony in memory of hunger striker Seán McCaughey at Milltown Cemetery, where he states, “The IRA will not be defeated…Republicans will have our victory…Do not be confused about decommissioning. The only thing the Republican movement will accept is the decommissioning of the British state in this country.” In the same speech he accuses the British of “double-dealing” and denounces the Irish government as “spineless.”

On February 25, 2001, Keenan addresses a republican rally in Creggan, County Armagh, saying that republicans should not fear “this phase” of “the revolution” collapsing should the Good Friday Agreement fail. He confirms his continued commitment to the Armalite and ballot box strategy, saying that both political negotiations and violence are “legitimate forms of revolution” and that both “have to be prosecuted to the utmost.” He goes on to say, “The revolution can never be over until we have British imperialism where it belongs—in the dustbin of history,” a message aimed at preventing rank-and-file IRA activists defecting to the dissident Real IRA.

Keenan plays a key role in the peace process, acting as the IRA’s go-between with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). Gerry Adams remarks, “There wouldn’t be a peace process if it wasn’t for Brian Keenan.” Keenan resigns from his position on the Army Council in 2005 due to ill-health, and is replaced by Bernard Fox, who had taken part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike. On May 6, 2007, he is guest speaker at a rally in Cappagh, County Tyrone, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the deaths of the so-called “Loughgall Martyrs,” eight members of the IRA East Tyrone Brigade killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1987.

In July 2002, Keenan is diagnosed as suffering from terminal colorectal cancer. It is alleged by the Irish Independent and The Daily Telegraph that Keenan succeeded Thomas “Slab” Murphy as Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA at some point between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s before he relinquished the role to deal with his poor health caused by cancer.

Keenan’s last years are spent living with his wife in Cullyhanna, County Armagh, where he dies of cancer on May 21, 2008. He is an atheist and receives a secular funeral, representing a major republican show of strength.


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Birth of Dolours Price, Provisional Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Dolours Price, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, is born in Belfast on December 16, 1950.

Price and her sister, Marian, also an IRA member, are the daughters of Albert Price, a prominent Irish republican and former IRA member from Belfast. Their aunt, Bridie Dolan, is blinded and loses both hands in an accident while handling IRA explosives. 

Price becomes involved in Irish republicanism in the late 1960s and she and Marian participate in the Belfast to Derry civil rights march in January 1969 and are attacked in the Burntollet Bridge incident.

In 1971 Price and her sister join the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). In 1972 she joins an elite group within the IRA called “The Unknowns” commanded by Pat McClure.  The Unknowns are tasked with various secretive activities and transport several accused traitors across the border into the Republic of Ireland where they are “disappeared.” She personally states that she had driven Joe Lynskey across the border to face trial. In addition, she states that she, Pat McClure and a third Unknown were tasked with killing Jean McConville, with the third Unknown actually shooting her.

Price leads the car bombing attacks in London on March 8, 1973, which injure over 200 people and is believed to have contributed to the death of one person who suffers a fatal heart attack. The two sisters are arrested, along with Gerry Kelly, Hugh Feeney and six others, on the day of the bombing as they are boarding a flight to Ireland. They are tried and convicted at the Great Hall in Winchester Castle on November 14, 1973. Although originally sentenced to life imprisonment, which is to run concurrently for each criminal charge, their sentence is eventually reduced to 20 years. She serves seven years for her part in the bombing. She immediately goes on a hunger strike demanding to be moved to a prison in Northern Ireland. The hunger strike lasts for 208 days because the hunger strikers are force-fed by prison authorities to keep them alive.

On the back of the hunger-striking campaign, Price’s father contests Belfast West at the February 1974 United Kingdom general election, receiving 5,662 votes (11.9%). The Price sisters, Hugh Feeney, and Gerry Kelly are moved to Northern Ireland prisons in 1975 as a result of an IRA truce. In 1980 she receives the royal prerogative of mercy and is freed on humanitarian grounds in 1981, purportedly suffering from anorexia nervosa due to the invasive trauma of daily force feedings.

After her release in 1980, Price marries Irish actor Stephen Rea, with whom she has two sons, Danny and Oscar. They divorce in 2003.

The Price sisters remain active politically. In the late 1990s, Price and her sister claim that they have been threatened by their former colleagues in the IRA and Sinn Féin for publicly opposing the Good Friday Agreement (i.e. the cessation of the IRA’s military campaign). she is a contributor to The Blanket, an online journal, edited by former Provisional IRA member Anthony McIntyre, until it ceases publication in 2008.

In 2001, Price is arrested in Dublin and charged with possession of stolen prescription pads and forged prescriptions. She pleads guilty and is fined £200 and ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

In February 2010, it is reported by The Irish News that Price had offered help to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains in locating graves of three men, Joe Lynskey, Seamus Wright, and Kevin McKee. The bodies of Wright and McKee are recovered from a singular grave in County Meath in August 2015. It is unclear if Price played a role in their recovery. The remains of Joe Lynskey have not been recovered as of April 2021.

Price is the subject of the 2018 feature-length documentary I, Dolours in which she gives an extensive filmed interview.

In 2010, Price claims Gerry Adams had been her officer commanding (OC) when she was active in the IRA. Adams, who has always denied being a member of the IRA, denies her allegation. She admits taking part in the murder of Jean McConville, as part of an IRA action in 1972. She claims the murder of McConville, a mother of ten, was ordered by Adams when he was an IRA leader in West Belfast. Adams subsequently publicly further denies Price’s allegations, stating that the reason for them is that she is opposed to the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s abandonment of paramilitary warfare in favour of politics in 1994, in the facilitation of which Adams has been a key figure.

Oral historians at Boston College interview both Price and her fellow IRA paramilitary Brendan Hughes between 2001 and 2006. The two give detailed interviews for the historical record of the activities in the IRA, which are recorded on condition that the content of the interviews is not to be released during their lifetimes. Prior to her death in May 2011, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) subpoena the material, possibly as part of an investigation into the disappearance of a number of people in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. In June 2011, the college files a motion to quash the subpoena. A spokesman for the college states that “our position is that the premature release of the tapes could threaten the safety of the participants, the enterprise of oral history, and the ongoing peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland.” In June 2011, U.S. federal prosecutors ask a judge to require the college to release the tapes to comply with treaty obligations with the United Kingdom. On July 6, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agrees with the government’s position that the subpoena should stand. On October 17, 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States temporarily blocks the college from handing over the interview tapes. In April 2013, after Price’s death, the Supreme Court turns away an appeal that seeks to keep the interviews from being supplied to the PSNI. The order leaves in place a lower court ruling that orders Boston College to give the Justice Department portions of recorded interviews with Price. Federal officials want to forward the recordings to police investigating the murder of Jean McConville.

Price dies in her Malahide, County Dublin, home on January 23, 2013, from a toxic effect of mixing prescribed sedative and anti-depressant medication. Her body is found the following day. The inquest returns a verdict of death by misadventure. She is buried at Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast.


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Birth of Anthony McIntyre, Former IRA Volunteer, Writer & Historian

Anthony McIntyre, a former Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer, writer and historian, is born on June 27, 1957.

McIntyre is imprisoned for murder for 18 years in Long Kesh Detention Centre, spending four of those years on the dirty protest. Following his release from prison in 1992, he completes a PhD in political science at Queen’s University Belfast and leaves the republican movement in 1998 to work as a journalist and researcher. A collection of his journalism is published as a book in 2008, Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism.

McIntyre is involved with the Boston College oral history project on the Troubles entitled the Belfast Project, conducting interviews with former Provisional IRA members who, like himself, had become disillusioned with the direction the republican movement had taken, such as Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price, and former Ulster loyalist paramilitaries such as David Ervine. The interviews are the basis for the book Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland by Ed Moloney.

In 2011, McIntyre becomes embroiled in controversy when transcripts of the interviews, held by Boston College, are subpoenaed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in relation to an investigation of the 1972 abduction and killing of Jean McConville. In March 2014, the PSNI announces that it is seeking to question McIntyre over newly released Belfast Project recordings, specifically in reference to the alleged role of Gerry Adams in the kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville.

McIntyre is a prominent critic of modern-day Sinn Féin and its leadership. He has spoken at Republican Sinn Féin party events. He is a co-founder of The Blanket, a journal which casts a critical eye on the Northern Ireland peace process.


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The Mountjoy Prison Helicopter Escape

The Mountjoy Prison helicopter escape occurs on October 31, 1973, when three Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers escape from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin aboard a hijacked Alouette II helicopter, which briefly lands in the prison’s exercise yard. The escape makes headlines around the world and is an embarrassment to the Irish coalition government of the time, led by Fine Gael‘s Liam Cosgrave, which is criticised by opposition party Fianna Fáil. A manhunt involving twenty thousand members of the Irish Defence Forces and Garda Síochána is launched for the escapees, one of whom, Seamus Twomey, is not recaptured until December 1977. The Wolfe Tones write a song celebrating the escape called “The Helicopter Song,” which tops the Irish Singles Chart.

Following the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s, the Provisional IRA conducts an armed campaign that seeks to create a united Ireland by ending Northern Ireland‘s status as part of the United Kingdom. As a result of increasing levels of violence in Northern Ireland, internment without trial is introduced there in August 1971, and in the Republic of Ireland the coalition government led by Fine Gael’s Liam Cosgrave is attempting to curb IRA activity. Fine Gael had come to power on a law-and-order ticket, with a policy of “getting tough on crime.” Suspected IRA members are arrested and accused of IRA membership by a superintendent in the Garda Síochána, a crime under the Offences against the State Acts. They are tried at the juryless Special Criminal Court in Dublin, where the traditional IRA policy of not recognising the court results in a fait accompli as no defence is offered and IRA membership carries a minimum mandatory one-year sentence, resulting in internment in all but name. In September 1973 IRA Chief of Staff Seamus Twomey appears at the Special Criminal Court charged with IRA membership, and states, “I refuse to recognise this British-orientated quisling court.” He is found guilty and receives a five-year sentence. By October 1973 the IRA’s command structure is seriously curbed, with Twomey and other senior republicans J. B. O’Hagan and Kevin Mallon all being held in Mountjoy Prison.

The IRA immediately begins making plans to break Twomey, O’Hagan and Mallon out of the prison. The first attempt involves explosives that had been smuggled into the prison, which are to be used to blow a hole in a door which will give the prisoners access to the exercise yard. From there, they are to scale a rope ladder thrown over the exterior wall by members of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade who are to have a getaway car waiting to complete the escape. The plans when the prisoners cannot gain access to the exercise yard and the rope ladder is spotted, so the IRA begins making new escape plans. The idea of using a helicopter in an escape had been discussed before in a plot to break Gerry Adams out of Long Kesh internment camp but had been ruled out because of faster and more sophisticated British Army helicopters being stationed at a nearby base. The IRA’s GHQ staff approves the plan to break out Twomey, O’Hagan and Mallon, and arrangements are made to obtain a helicopter. A man with an American accent calling himself Mr. Leonard approaches the manager of Irish Helicopters at Dublin Airport, with a view to hiring a helicopter for an aerial photographic shoot in County Laois. After being shown the company’s fleet of helicopters, Leonard arranges to hire a five-seater Alouette II for October 31.

Leonard arrives at Irish Helicopters on October 31 and is introduced to the pilot of the helicopter, Captain Thompson Boyes. Boyes is instructed to fly to a field in Stradbally, in order to pick up Leonard’s photographic equipment. After landing Boyes sees two armed, masked men approaching the helicopter from nearby trees. He is held at gunpoint and told he will not be harmed if he follows instructions. Leonard leaves with one gunman, while the other gunman climbs aboard the helicopter armed with a pistol and an ArmaLite rifle. Boyes is instructed to fly towards Dublin following the path of railway lines and the Royal Canal and is ordered not to register his flight path with Air Traffic Control. As the helicopter approaches Dublin, Boyes is informed of the escape plan and is instructed to land in the exercise yard at Mountjoy Prison.

In the prison’s exercise yard, the prisoners are watching a football match. Shortly after 3:35 p.m. the helicopter swings in to land in the prison yard, with Kevin Mallon directing the pilot using semaphore. A prison officer on duty initially takes no action as he believes the helicopter contains the Minister for Defence, Paddy Donegan. After prisoners surround the eight prison officers in the yard, fights break out as the officers realise an escape attempt is in progress. As other prisoners restrain the officers, Twomey, Mallon and O’Hagan board the helicopter. As the helicopter takes off, in the confusion one officer shouts, “Close the gates, close the fucking gates.” The helicopter flies north and lands at a disused racecourse in the Baldoyle area of Dublin, where the escapees are met by members of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade. Boyes is released unharmed, and the escapees are transferred to a taxi that had been hijacked earlier and are transported to safe houses.

The escape makes headlines around the world and is an embarrassment for Cosgrave’s government, which is criticised for “incompetence in security matters” by opposition party Fianna Fáil. An emergency debate on security is held in Dáil Éireann on November 1.

The IRA releases a statement on the escape, which reads, “Three republican prisoners were rescued by a special unit from Mountjoy Prison on Wednesday. The operation was a complete success, and the men are now safe, despite a massive hunt by Free State forces.” Shortly after the escape Twomey gives an exclusive interview to German magazine Der Spiegel, where the reporter says people throughout Europe are joking about the incident as “the escape of the century.” Irish rebel band the Wolfe Tones writes a song celebrating the escape called “The Helicopter Song,” which is immediately banned by the government yet still tops the Irish Singles Chart after selling twelve thousand copies in a single week.

The escape results in all IRA prisoners being held at Mountjoy Prison and Curragh Camp being transferred to the maximum security Portlaoise Prison. In order to prevent any further escapes, the perimeter of the prison is guarded by members of the Irish Army, and wires are erected over the prison yard to prevent any future helicopter escape. Cosgrave states there will be “no hiding place” for the escapees, and a manhunt involving twenty thousand members of the Irish Defence Forces and Garda Síochána ensues.

Mallon is recaptured at a Gaelic Athletic Association dance in a hotel near Portlaoise on December 10, 1973, and imprisoned in Portlaoise Prison. He escapes from there in a mass break-out on August 18, 1974, when nineteen prisoners escape after overpowering guards and using gelignite to blast through the gates. He is recaptured in Foxrock in January 1975 and returned to Portlaoise Prison. O’Hagan is recaptured in Dublin in early 1975, and also imprisoned in Portlaoise Prison. After the end of his original twelve-month sentence, he is immediately arrested and sentenced to a further two years imprisonment for escaping. Twomey evades recapture until December 2, 1977, when he is spotted sitting in a car in Sandycove by members of the Garda’s Special Branch who are investigating an arms shipment after a tip-off from police in Belgium. He drives away after spotting the officers, before being recaptured in the centre of Dublin after a high-speed car chase. He is also imprisoned in Portlaoise Prison until his release in 1982.

In 2021, Brendan Hughes publishes an autobiography Up Like a Bird, an account of the planning and organisation of the escape, co-authored with Doug Dalby.


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Death of Dolours Price, Provisional Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Dolours Price, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, dies in her Malahide, County Dublin home on January 23, 2013.

Price is born in Belfast on December 16, 1950. She and her sister, Marian, also an IRA member, are the daughters of Albert Price, a prominent Irish republican and former IRA member from Belfast. Their aunt, Bridie Dolan, is blinded and loses both hands in an accident handling IRA explosives. 

Price becomes involved in Irish republicanism in the late 1960s and she and Marian participate in the Belfast to Derry civil rights march in January 1969 and are attacked in the Burntollet Bridge incident.

In 1971 Price and her sister join the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). In 1972 she joins an elite group within the IRA called “The Unknowns” commanded by Pat McClure.  The Unknowns are tasked with various secretive activities and transport several accused traitors across the border into the Republic of Ireland where they are “disappeared.” She personally states that she had driven Joe Lynskey across the border to face trial. In addition she states that she, Pat McClure and a third Unknown were tasked with killing Jean McConville, with the third Unknown actually shooting her.

Price leads the car bombing attacks in London on March 8, 1973, which injure over 200 people and is believed to have contributed to the death of one person who suffers a fatal heart attack. The two sisters are arrested, along with Gerry Kelly, Hugh Feeney and six others, on the day of the bombing as they are boarding a flight to Ireland. They are tried and convicted at the Great Hall in Winchester Castle on November 14, 1973. Although originally sentenced to life imprisonment, which is to run concurrently for each criminal charge, their sentence is eventually reduced to 20 years. She serves seven years for her part in the bombing. She immediately goes on a hunger strike demanding to be moved to a prison in Northern Ireland. The hunger strike lasts for 208 days because the hunger strikers are force-fed by prison authorities to keep them alive.

On the back of the hunger-striking campaign, Price’s father contests Belfast West at the February 1974 United Kingdom general election, receiving 5,662 votes (11.9%). The Price sisters, Hugh Feeney, and Gerry Kelly are moved to Northern Ireland prisons in 1975 as a result of an IRA truce. In 1980 she receives the royal prerogative of mercy and is freed on humanitarian grounds in 1981, purportedly suffering from anorexia nervosa due to the invasive trauma of daily force feedings.

After her release in 1980, Price marries Irish actor Stephen Rea, with whom she has two sons, Danny and Oscar. They divorce in 2003.

The Price sisters remain active politically. In the late 1990s, Price and her sister claim that they have been threatened by their former colleagues in the IRA and Sinn Féin for publicly opposing the Good Friday Agreement (i.e. the cessation of the IRA’s military campaign). she is a contributor to The Blanket, an online journal, edited by former Provisional IRA member Anthony McIntyre, until it ceases publication in 2008.

In 2001, Price is arrested in Dublin and charged with possession of stolen prescription pads and forged prescriptions. She pleads guilty and is fined £200 and ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

In February 2010, it is reported by The Irish News that Price had offered help to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains in locating graves of three men, Joe Lynskey, Seamus Wright, and Kevin McKee. The bodies of Wright and McKee are recovered from a singular grave in County Meath in August 2015. It is unclear if Price played a role in their recovery. The remains of Joe Lynskey have not been recovered as of April 2021.

Price is the subject of the 2018 feature-length documentary I, Dolours in which she gives an extensive filmed interview.

In 2010 Price claims Gerry Adams had been her officer commanding (OC) when she was active in the IRA. Adams, who has always denied being a member of the IRA, denies her allegation. She admits taking part in the murder of Jean McConville, as part of an IRA action in 1972. She claims the murder of McConville, a mother of ten, was ordered by Adams when he was an IRA leader in West Belfast. Adams subsequently publicly further denies Price’s allegations, stating that the reason for them is that she is opposed to the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s abandonment of paramilitary warfare in favour of politics in 1994, in the facilitation of which Adams has been a key figure.

Oral historians at Boston College interview both Price and her fellow IRA paramilitary Brendan Hughes between 2001 and 2006. The two give detailed interviews for the historical record of the activities in the IRA, which are recorded on condition that the content of the interviews is not to be released during their lifetimes. Prior to her death in May 2011, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) subpoena the material, possibly as part of an investigation into the disappearance of a number of people in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. In June 2011, the college files a motion to quash the subpoena. A spokesman for the college states that “our position is that the premature release of the tapes could threaten the safety of the participants, the enterprise of oral history, and the ongoing peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland.” In June 2011, U.S. federal prosecutors ask a judge to require the college to release the tapes to comply with treaty obligations with the United Kingdom. On July 6, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agrees with the government’s position that the subpoena should stand. On October 17, 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States temporarily blocks the college from handing over the interview tapes. In April 2013, after Price’s death, the Supreme Court turns away an appeal that seeks to keep the interviews from being supplied to the PSNI. The order leaves in place a lower court ruling that orders Boston College to give the Justice Department portions of recorded interviews with Price. Federal officials want to forward the recordings to police investigating the murder of Jean McConville.

On January 24, 2013 Price is found dead at her Malahide, County Dublin home, from a toxic effect of mixing prescribed sedative and anti-depressant medication. The inquest returns a verdict of death by misadventure. Her body is buried at Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast.


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The Beginning of the 1980 Hunger Strike

Irish political prisoners confined in the infamous H-Blocks of Long Kesh Detention Centre commence a hunger strike on October 27, 1980. The hunger strike is to continue until their demands for political status and for an end to British torture are met, or until death.

It begins with seven republican volunteers: Brendan Hughes, the IRA commanding officer in the prison, Sean McKenna, Tommy McKearney, Tommy McFeely, Leo Green, and Raymond McCartney, all of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and John Nixon of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

On December 1, three female prisoners, Mary Doyle, Mairéad Farrell and Mairéad Nugent, join the strike in Armagh Prison. Thirty more republican prisoners join later.

Despite being deceived into ending prematurely after 53 days, it sets the scene for a second hunger strike the following March, led by Bobby Sands. The first hunger strike announcement is made in a statement which is reprinted in full below.

“We the Republican POWs in the H-Blocks, Long Kesh, demand the right of political recognition and that we be accorded the status of political prisoners. We claim this right as captured combatants in the continuing struggle for national liberation and self-determination. We refute most strongly the tag of criminal with which the British have attempted to label us and our struggle, and we point to the devisive, partitionist institution of the six-county state as the sole criminal aspect of the present conflict.

“All of us were arrested under repressive laws, interrogated and often tortured in RUC barracks, and processed through special non-jury courts, where we were sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. After this we were put in the H-Blocks and were expected to bow the knee before the British administration and wear their criminal uniform. Attempts to criminalise us were designed to depoliticise the Irish national struggle.

“We don’t have to recite again the widespread, almost total forms of punishment, degradations and deprivations we have been subjected to. All have failed to break our resistance.

“For the past four years we have endured this brutality in deplorable conditions. We have been stripped naked and robbed of our individuality, yet we refuse to be broken. Further repression only serves to strengthen our resolve and that of our gallant female comrades’ enduring the same hardships in Armagh jail.

“During this period many individuals, religious figures and political organisations and sections of the media have condemned the way we have been treated. Yet despite appeals for a resolution of the H-Block protest, the British government has remained intransigent and has displayed vindictive arrogance in dealing with the problem. They refuse to treat this issue in a realistic manner which is just another reflection of their attitude to the entire Irish question.

“Bearing in mind the serious implications of our final step, not only for us but for our people, we wish to make it clear that every channel has now been exhausted, and not wishing to break faith with those from whom we have inherited our principles, we now commit ourselves to a hunger strike.

“We call on the Irish people to lend us their support for our just demands and we are confident that this support will be very much in evidence in the coming days.

“We call on all solidarity and support groups to intensify their efforts and we also look forward with full confidence to the support of our exiled countrymen in America and Australia.

“We declare that political status is ours of right and we declare that from Monday, October 27th, 1980, a hunger strike by a number of men representing H- Blocks 3, 4, and 5 will commence.

“Our widely recognised resistance has carried us through four years of immense suffering, and it shall carry us through to the bitter climax of death, if necessary.”

Signed: PRO, H-Block blanket men, Long Kesh camp

(From: “The 1980 H-Block hunger strike,” Irish Republican News, http://www.republican-news.org, October 31, 2020)


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Bloody Friday in Belfast

bloody-friday-1972

At least twenty Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombs explode in Belfast on July 21, 1972, during the Troubles in what has become known as “Bloody Friday.” Most of the bombs are car bombs and most target infrastructure, especially the transport network. Nine people are killed, including two British soldiers and five civilians, while 130 are injured.

In late June and early July 1972, a British government delegation led by William Whitelaw holds secret talks with the Provisional IRA leadership. As part of the talks, the IRA agrees to a temporary ceasefire beginning on June 26. The IRA leaders seek a peace settlement that includes a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland by 1975 and the release of republican prisoners. However, the British refuse and the talks break down. The ceasefire comes to an end on July 9.

Bloody Friday is the IRA’s response to the breakdown of the talks. According to the IRA’s Chief of Staff, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the main goal of the bombing operation is to wreak financial harm. It is a “message to the British government that the IRA could and would make a commercial desert of the city unless its demands were met.” Some also see it as a reprisal for Bloody Sunday in Derry six months earlier. The attack is carried out by the IRA’s Belfast Brigade and the main organiser is Brendan Hughes, the brigade’s Officer Commanding.

The bombings occur during an 80-minute period on the afternoon of Friday, July 21. At least 24 bombs are planted. At least 20 explode and the rest fail to detonate or are defused. At the height of the bombing, the middle of Belfast “resembled a city under artillery fire; clouds of suffocating smoke enveloped buildings as one explosion followed another, almost drowning out the hysterical screams of panicked shoppers.” According to The Guardian, “for much of the afternoon, Belfast was reduced to near total chaos and panic. Thousands streamed out of the stricken city…and huge traffic jams built up. All bus services were cancelled, and on some roads, hitchhikers frantically trying to get away lined the pavements.”

Nine people are killed and 130 are injured, some of them horrifically mutilated. Of those injured, 77 are women and children. All of the deaths are caused by two of the bombs – at Oxford Street bus depot and at Cavehill Road. The Oxford Street bomb kills two British soldiers and four Ulsterbus employees. One employee is a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) reservist, one is an Ulster loyalist paramilitary, and the other two are civilians. The Cavehill Road bomb kills three civilians.

The IRA’s Belfast Brigade claims responsibility for the bombings and says that it had given warnings to the security forces before the bombs exploded. It says that the Public Protection Agency, the Samaritans and the press “were informed of bomb positions at least 30 minutes to one hour before each explosion.” Mac Stíofáin says, “It required only one man with a loud hailer to clear each target area in no time” and alleged that the warnings for the two bombs that claim lives are deliberately ignored by the British for “strategic policy reasons.”