Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

The chapter opens in Long Kesh prison. Fellow prisoners helped Brendan Hughes escape in the outgoing trash, wrapped in a mattress. He succeeded in clearing the threshold of the prison but missed his secretly arranged ride back to Belfast, so he fled for the Republic.

The bombers, still imprisoned in London, found a sympathetic lawyer in Michael Mansfield, a young Englishman with radical political beliefs himself, though “he had chosen to pursue those politics through the less-than-revolutionary vocation of the law” (136). The trial began in the fall of 1973. A sexist press in England demonized the Price sisters and presented their plight “as a dangerous by-product of feminism” (137). The trial drew immense publicity.

One bomber, William McLarnon, pleaded guilty at the start of the trial. Another, McNearney, had already confessed upon detention at the airport. All the other defendants claimed innocence. They acted defiantly and stonewalled in court. The court acquitted McNearney and sent her into hiding to protect her from the IRA’s internal justice system. Then, the court convicted the remaining bombers and the judge delivered a sentence of 20 years in prison (a reduced sentence from the originally planned 30 for Feeney, Dolours, and Marian).

The convicted bombers erupted into protest, finally admitting their IRA membership and demanding to be relocated to Northern Ireland and treated as political prisoners of war rather than convicted criminals. The judge dismissed the court without entertaining the proposal.

The Price sisters declared instantly that they were going on a hunger strike until the court reclassified them as political prisoners. Officials carted them to Brixton Prison, an all-male prison ordered to take these two women “perceived as so dangerous that housing them there would represent a justifiable exception” (142). 

Keefe introduces a middle-class Belfast-area toy salesman by the name of Arthur McAllister, removed enough from the working-class conflict in the inner city that he could comfortably go door-to-door to stay in business. McAllister is actually the disguised Brendan Hughes, who had returned to his leadership role in the IRA after his escape from prison and a brief stint in the Republic.

The pseudonym and false identity allowed Hughes to move in plain sight even as one of the most wanted men in Northern Ireland. He concentrated his efforts on spying on the British and was largely successful: He worked with a phone technician to wiretap the Army’s headquarters.

He did not stay hidden for long, though. In the spring of 1974, police again arrested Hughes while he posed as McAllister. Instead of beating him senseless, they offered him money to become an informant. Hughes flatly refused and returned to prison.

Keefe explains the significance of hunger striking in Irish protest, calling it “a long-standing tradition of Irish resistance,” and “a quintessential weapon of passive aggression” (149). A republican prisoner at Brixton died from voluntary fasting in 1920, sparking outrage and upswelled support for republicanism in the name of a new martyr. Keefe relates the concept of a hunger strike to the Great Famine, an episode of mass starvation, death, and diaspora for the Irish, even as the small island exported precious food rations to England. He notes, “If the British had employed hunger as a weapon during the famine, it would now be turned around and used against them” (151). Dolours and Marian steadily maintained a hunger strike. We also learn that Hugh Feeney and Gerry Kelly did the same, but the media did not publicize it. Strikers and British government officials alike knew the power of the practice. The situation became a battle of wills and a question of who would relent first.

Just over two weeks into their strike, prison doctors started to force feed Dolours and Marian via a tube inserted into their mouths and down their throats. The process was extremely painful and traumatizing, often causing the women to vomit or faint. Published letters sent out of prison from Dolours caused public outcry over the force-feeding. The practice kept the sisters barely alive, but they physically decayed.

Dolours and Marian resisted the feeding tube more forcefully after 167 days of enduring it. Confronting this resistant behavior, the doctors determined that the tube was too dangerous for the threat it posed to their thrashing bodies.

They resumed their strike and felt empowered by the control they now issued over their own bodies as they approached the brink of death. Then, Roy Jenkins, The British Home Secretary chiefly concerned with internal affairs, relented. After 206 days of resistance, Dolours and Marian left Brixton to carry out their sentences as political prisoners in Armagh, Northern Ireland. Just before the journey, however, Chrissie Price, their mother, and Bridie Dolan, their aunt, died. Mounting grief and suffering would, as we witness in later chapters, take a great toll on both Dolours and Marian. 

In the early months of 1973, State authorities collected the McConville children still living in their flat and brought them to an orphanage. A court order relocated Michael, 11, and Tucker, nine, to De La Salle Boys’ Home after a shoplifting incident. Authorities also sent the twins, Billy and Jim, there at only seven years old. All four boys suffered physical abuse, and the staff sexually abused Billy.

Michael eventually relocated to a residential school/detention center called Lisnevin. It greatly resembled a prison; “Michael loved it” (165). An electric perimeter fence kept the threats of the city out of sight and mind. He remained there until the facility forced him to matriculate at age 16.

Helen became old enough to leave state care, found work, and married a man named Seamus McKendry.

The rest of the chapter takes place at Long Kesh, where Adams and Hughes shared a cage cell. There, Adams organized an intellectual social club that discussed news, politics, and history. A young prisoner named Bobby Sands led cultural classes and wrote poetry. Adams steadily grew more interested in politics. Public support for violent IRA tactics had dwindled after years of warfare. Adams concluded that “the Provos should reinvent themselves” both militarily and ideologically (169). They should function as celled units rather than a traditional military hierarchy and simultaneously pursue nonviolent action through the political party Sinn Féin. Such an approach, he thought, would enable the IRA to fight a “long war” with meaningful results instead of a violent conflict that would smolder in time. Adams left Long Kesh in 1977 and would manage to successfully reorganize the Provos in a few years’ time.

Hughes continued to organize within the prison. The British ended internment in 1975, which meant that IRA inmates no longer had special status as political prisoners and lost privileges such as wearing their own clothes or freely associating with one another. In one attempt to overturn the ruling, prisoners carried out a “dirty protest” that involved refusal to leave cells to shower or use bathroom facilities. It escalated to the point of loading up prison floors and walls with urine and human defecation.

These tactics did not yield results from British authorities. Margaret Thatcher took over as Prime Minister of England and maintained “uncompromising posture toward any form of Irish republicanism” (173). Since she was unaffected by the dirty protest, prisoners turned to hunger striking. Hughes and six others launched a failed strike and immediately planned a second attempt.