Say Nothing

by Patrick Radden Keefe

  Reluctantly, he turned: Interview with Archie McConville.

  ‘Watch the children’: ‘Sons Recall 30 Years of Painful Memories’, Irish News, 24 October 2003.

  Chapter 2: Albert’s Daughters

  one very Catholic aunt: Dolours Price interview in the documentary I, Dolours, directed by Maurice Sweeney, produced by Ed Moloney and Nuala Cunningham (New Decade Films, 2018).

  ‘I’m not going back to Mass’: P-EM.

  The Prices lived: P-TKT.

  he made the chairs: ‘Lest We Forget’, Daily Express, 1 June 1974.

  snapshots taken in prisons: Interview with Eamonn McCann.

  When Dolours was little: ‘Protest Now, Before It Is Too Late!’ The Irish People, 12 January 1974; ‘“Republicanism Is Part of Our DNA,” Says IRA Bomber Dolours Price’, Telegraph, 23 September 2012.

  cardboard in his shoes: P-EM.

  fingertips stained yellow: ‘Lest We Forget’, Daily Express, 1 June 1974.

  digging a tunnel: Ibid. Details about the escape can be found in Uinseann Ó Rathaille Mac Eoin, The I.R.A. in the Twilight Years 1923–1948 (Dublin: Argenta, 1997), p.452.

  bagpipes to cover: Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2002), p.185.

  ‘a single spark’: P-EM.

  friends who’d been hanged: Ibid.

  tingling with goose bumps: Ibid. and P-TKT.

  relieve a police officer: Dolours Price, ‘Gerry Kelly: He’s Not the Boy I Loved’, Fortnight, September 2004.

  ‘banned emblem’: P-EM.

  raiders of the twelfth century: In an unintentionally comical flourish, the ‘Chronology of Events’ at the beginning of one of Gerry Adams’s memoirs commences in the year 1169. Gerry Adams, A Farther Shore: Ireland’s Long Road to Peace (New York: Random House, 2005), p.xi.

  ‘In every generation’: Peter de Rosa, Rebels: The Irish Rising of 1916 (New York: Random House, 1990), p.268.

  Even as a child: Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure (Dublin: Poolbeg Press, 1990), pp.7–8.

  a ‘cleansing’ thing: Ruán O’Donnell, 16 Lives: Patrick Pearse (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2016), pp.18, 63.

  Christlike deaths: Ibid., pp.140–41.

  ‘the red wine of the battlefield’: De Rosa, Rebels, p.89.

  a firing squad: O’Donnell, 16 Lives, p.273.

  rituals of commemoration: Flags and Emblems (Display) Act (Northern Ireland), 1954. The law was repealed in 1987.

  cover the lily: Price, ‘Gerry Kelly: He’s Not the Boy I Loved’.

  never met his first child: Ibid.

  suddenly detonated: ‘Big Arms Haul in Belfast’, Irish Times, 30 May 1938; ‘The Belfast Explosion’, Irish Times, 31 May 1938.

  for the rest of her life: P-TKT.

  everything for an ideal: ‘Old Bailey Bomber Ashamed of Sinn Féin’, Village Magazine, 7 December 2004.

  a life of blindness: Ibid.

  never expressed any regret: Price, ‘Gerry Kelly: He’s Not the Boy I Loved’.

  ‘talk to your Aunt Bridie’: P-TKT.

  lighting Bridie’s cigarettes: P-EM.

  found it revolting: Ibid.

  scrutinising her face: P-TKT.

  ‘Do you not wish you’d just died?’: Ibid.

  How can you cry: Ibid.; Price, ‘Gerry Kelly: He’s Not the Boy I Loved’.

  walk from Belfast: Interview with Eamonn McCann.

  extraordinary discrimination: See, generally, Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State (London: Pluto Press, 1987).

  For half a century: Michael Farrell, Introduction, in Twenty Years On, ed. Michael Farrell (Dingle, Ireland: Brandon, 1988), p.14.

  the Catholic population: Marc Mulholland, Northern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p.24.

  civil rights movement: Daniel Finn, ‘The Point of No Return? People’s Democracy and the Burntollet March’, Field Day Review no. 9 (2013), pp.4–21.

  As they trudged: Archival footage.

  At eighteen: Dolours is often reported to have been born on 21 June 1951, which would have made her seventeen at this time. According to her birth certificate, which I obtained, her actual birthday was 16 December 1950, so she was eighteen on 1 January 1969.

  ‘Albert’s daughters’: Dolours Price to her family, 28 January 1974, in Irish Voices from English Jails: Writings of Irish Political Prisoners in English Prisons (London: Prisoners Aid Committee, 1979), p.54.

  They called each other ‘Dotes’: Letters from Dolours and Marian Price to their family, both dated 7 January 1974, reproduced in ‘The Price Sisters’, Spare Rib no. 22 (April 1974).

  grown up sharing not: Dolours Price, ‘Afraid of the Dark’, Krino no. 3 (Spring 1987).

  Belfast accents bevelled: P-TKT.

  peals of laughter: Interview with Eamonn McCann.

  childhood as an ‘indoctrination’: Price, ‘Gerry Kelly: He’s Not the Boy I Loved’.

  Like a lot of young people: ‘Ulster’s Price Sisters: Breaking the Long Fast’, Time, 17 June 1974. The former student leader Michael Farrell would subsequently describe the effect that Che’s death had on his generation in Ireland in the introduction to his edited collection Twenty Years On, p.11.

  Albert Price was an emphatic: This description is drawn from archival video of Price and conversations with people who knew him, among them Tommy Gorman.

  ‘and you lost!’: Tara Keenan-Thomson, Irish Women and Street Politics, 1956–1973 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010), p.146.

  ‘You failed’: Ibid., p.146.

  started attending meetings: P-EM.

  poisonous distraction: P-TKT.

  became fast friends: Interview with Eamonn McCann.

  ‘They are not our enemies’: Bowes Egan and Vincent McCormack, Burntollet (London: LRS, 1969), p.26.

  Though he had once: Max Hastings, Barricades in Belfast: The Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland (London: Taplinger, 1970), p.71; Walter Ellis, The Beginning of the End: The Crippling Disadvantage of a Happy Irish Childhood (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2006), p.137; Ed Moloney and Andy Pollak, Paisley (Dublin: Poolbeg Press, 1986), p.161.

  ‘You can’t ignore the devil’: Hastings, Barricades in Belfast, p.84.

  ‘outbred by Roman Catholics’: Marc Mulholland, Northern Ireland at the Crossroads: Ulster Unionism in the O’Neill Years (London: Palgrave, 2000), p.1.

  One English journalist: The commentator was Max Hastings. ‘Why Britain is Committed in Northern Ireland’, Irish Times, 27 January 1972.

  ‘We perish if we yield’: Rudyard Kipling, ‘Ulster’, in The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling (London: Wordsworth Editions, 1994), p.243.

  Among the scruffy: P-EM; ‘Documents Shed More Light on Burntollet Attack’, Irish News, 15 October 2010.

  A student at Queen’s: Ellis, Beginning of the End, pp.124, 157.

  ‘My father’s down there’: Interview with Eamonn McCann.

  But this oedipal dynamic: Ellis, Beginning of the End, p.138.

  ‘something bad’: P-EM. Ronnie Bunting would end up becoming a leader of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). In 1980, he was murdered in his bed, at the age of 32. See Martin Dillon, The Trigger Men (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2003), pp.95–96.

  a permanent state of emergency: Laura K. Donohue, ‘Regulating Northern Ireland: The Special Powers Acts, 1922–1972’, Historical Journal, vol. 41, no. 4 (1998).

  ‘wilder they are, the better’: Wallace Clark, Guns in Ulster (Belfast: Constabulary Gazette, 1967), p.9.

  cordon of police officers: Bob Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990), pp.213–14.

  One carried a Lambeg drum: Farrell, Northern Ireland, p.249; ‘End in Sight After Long March’, Guardian, 27 October 2001.

  welcomed the idea: Some observers have suggested that the civil rights protesters were not so distinct from the IRA as they might have liked to suggest. Richard English
has written that the movement was ‘an initiative which originated from within the old IRA, and which – as far as those old-IRA republicans were concerned – did so with the explicit intention of bringing down the Northern Ireland state’. Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p.82. Eamonn McCann told me that during the march to Derry, IRA gunmen materialised at night to ‘protect’ the marchers. McCann was not happy to discover them.

  sparked real change: Daniel Finn, ‘The Point of No Return? People’s Democracy and the Burntollet March’, Field Day Review no. 9 (2013).

  ‘possibility of being hurt?’: ‘Battling Through to Derry’, Irish Times, 6 January 1969; Archival footage. The man with the megaphone was Michael Farrell.

  The night before: Purdie, Politics in the Streets, pp.213–14; Egan and McCormack, Burntollet, p.22.

  ‘monster of Romanism’: Moloney and Pollak, Paisley, p.159.

  ‘multiply like vermin’: Ibid., p.201.

  ‘Why would we kill Paisley?’: Dolours Price, ‘Ideals Live On’, The Blanket, 29 November 2006.

  re-enacting the siege: Egan and McCormack, Burntollet, p.22.

  ‘IRA men’ in disguise: Ellis, Beginning of the End, p.137.

  defence of the city: Egan and McCormack, Burntollet, p.22.

  to play a ‘manly role’: Moloney and Pollak, Paisley, p.168.

  arsenal of stones: Tommy McKearney, The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament (London: Pluto Press, 2011), p.42.

  ‘that pious declaration’: Egan and McCormack, Burntollet, p.26.

  some unseen bull: Ibid., pp.29–30.

  other figures emerged: ‘Battling Through to Derry’, Irish Times, 6 January 1969; Purdie, Politics in the Streets, p.214.

  ‘curtain’ of projectiles: Bernadette Devlin, The Price of My Soul (New York: Vintage, 1970), pp.139–41; ‘Battling Through to Derry’, Irish Times, 6 January 1969.

  still swarming around: ‘Battling Through to Derry’, Irish Times, 6 January 1969.

  stuck in the middle: P-TKT.

  clambered over the hedge: P-EM.

  some Hollywood western: P-TKT

  wore motorcycle helmets: ‘Attack on March – Bunting Fined’, Irish Times, 11 March 1969; ‘Battling Through to Derry’, Irish Times, 6 January 1969.

  They descended: Egan and McCormack, Burntollet, pp.31–32.

  grabbed one another: Ibid., p.33.

  As marchers fled: Hastings, Barricades in Belfast, p.86.

  smacked a young girl: ‘Battling Through to Derry’, Irish Times, 6 January 1969.

  Two newspaper photographers: Ibid.

  the grand marshal: ‘Attack on March – Bunting Fined’, Irish Times, 11 March 1969.

  blotted with blood: Ibid.

  pledge of nonviolence: ‘Battling Through to Derry’, Irish Times, 6 January 1969; ‘Riots Injure 120 on Belfast March’, Reuters, 5 January 1969.

  blood running into their eyes: ‘Battling Through to Derry’, Irish Times, 6 January 1969.

  She splashed into: P-EM.

  pushed off the bridge: Egan and McCormack, Burntollet, p.37.

  glazed with hate: Dolours Price, ‘Gerry Kelly: He’s Not the Boy I Loved’.

  into those eyes: Keenan-Thomson, Irish Women and Street Politics, p.41.

  grabbed his coat: P-TKT.

  police could distinguish them: Purdie, Politics in the Streets, p.215; Michael Farrell, ‘Long March to Freedom’, in Twenty Years On, ed. Michael Farrell (Dingle, Ireland: Brandon, 1988), p.58.

  the B-Specials: Bob Purdie writes: ‘Many assailants wore white armbands which readily distinguished them from marchers. Egan and McCormack were able to identify a number of the attackers from photographs … Many were B Specials; this was a good propaganda point for the civil rights movement, but since membership of the B Specials in the area was roughly coterminous with the status of adult, able-bodied male Protestants, this underlies the point that it was an attack by local people.’ Purdie, Politics in the Streets, p.215.

  on the way to Altnagelvin Hospital: Dolours Price, ‘Gerry Kelly: He’s Not the Boy I Loved’.

  ‘fight back’: Ibid. The torn-clothes detail comes from ‘Lest We Forget’, Daily Express, 1 June 1974.

  Chapter 3: Evacuation

  one photograph: In an excellent piece based on an interview with Helen, Susan McKay says that the photo was taken in 1965. McKay, ‘Diary’, London Review of Books, 19 December 2013.

  defining accessory: In interviews with me, Michael, Susan and Archie McConville each recalled the nappy pin. Helen told Susan McKay that she has no memory of it. This is a typical pattern for the McConville children, who often have conflicting memories of their traumatic childhood.

  Titanic had been built: Author visit to Avoniel Road.

  Jean’s father worked: McKay, ‘Diary’.

  plodded home: Séamus McKendry, Disappeared: The Search for Jean McConville (Dublin: Blackwater Press, 2000), p.9.

  Luftwaffe bombers: ‘Many Killed in Mass Air Attack on Belfast’, Irish Independent, 17 April 1941; Ian S. Wood, Britain, Ireland and the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), pp.174–75.

  job as a servant: McKay, ‘Diary’.

  He towered over: McKendry, Disappeared, p.9.

  fight the Japanese: Ibid. and McKay, ‘Diary’.

  ‘mixed’ relationships were rare: See Edward Moxon-Browne, ‘National Identity in Northern Ireland’, in Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The First Report, ed. Peter Stringer and Gillian Robinson (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1991).

  circumscribed worlds: Cormac Ó Gráda and Brendan M. Walsh, ‘Intermarriage in a Divided Society: Ireland a Century Ago’, Explorations in Economic History, vol. 56 (2015).

  crossed these lines: McKay, ‘Diary’.

  member of the Orange Order: This is an area where the McConville children have differing accounts. In his book, Helen’s husband, Séamus McKendry, suggests that Granny Murray did not seem concerned about the marriage, and it is a fact that Albert and the children did end up moving in with Mrs Murray in East Belfast. But after the disappearance of Jean McConville, several of her children would suggest that Mrs Murray had effectively disowned her daughter (and, by extension, her grandchildren) because Jean had married a Catholic. It may be that such social transgressions were easier to overlook in the 1950s than in the 1960s. On the notion that Mary McConville was not overly troubled, and on the beating by the uncle, see McKendry, Disappeared, p.10. Michael McConville told me, ‘My mother’s family wouldn’t have anything to do with us, because she’d married a Catholic.’ The same assertion is made in legal papers filed on behalf of James McConville: ‘Their mother’s family had disowned her.’ Application to the Attorney General in Relation to the Death of Jean McConville, filed by Joe Mulholland & Co., Solicitors, on behalf of James McConville, 23 May 2013.

  eloped to England: McKay, ‘Diary’ (2013); McKendry, Disappeared, p.9.

  a dozen or so people crammed: McKay, ‘Diary’.

  Arthur retired: McKendry, Disappeared, p.10.

  job in a ropeworks: McKay, ‘Diary’.

  starting right outside: McKendry, Disappeared, p.10.

  ‘You people of the Shankill Road’: Moloney and Pollak, Paisley, p.89.

  There was no television: McKendry, Disappeared, p.10; McKay, ‘Diary’.

  Battle of the Bogside: English, Armed Struggle, p.102. See also Russell Stetler, The Battle of Bogside: The Politics of Violence in Northern Ireland (London: Sheed and Ward, 1970).

  prised up paving stones: Hastings, Barricades in Belfast, pp.142–43.

  blue flame spilling: Archival footage.

  a bulldozer: Hastings, Barricades in Belfast, p.143.

  Loyalist gangs started moving systematically: An eyewitness account from the documentary The Burning of Bombay Street (BBC One Northern Ireland, 2011).

  As the rioting spread: Seamus Brady, ‘Eye-witness Account of Events in Belfast’, 22 August 1969, Nation
al Archives of Ireland. See also Burning of Bombay Street.

  clasping their rosaries: McKearney, Provisional IRA, p.47.

  two thousand families: The Irish Times, the Guardian and other media sources cite the same figures, which appear to have originated with Tim Pat Coogan: 1,820 families are believed to have fled their homes between July and September 1969 – 315 Protestant and 1,505 Catholic. See ‘Day the Troops Marched in to Nationalist Welcome’, Irish Times, 14 August 1999; Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles (New York: Palgrave, 2002), p.91.

  Some 350,000 people: Census of Population, Belfast County Borough, 1971.

  10 per cent: Paul Doherty and Michael A. Poole, ‘Ethnic Residential Segregation in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1971–1991’, Geographical Review, vol. 87, no. 4 (October 1997).

  converge on a house: McKay, ‘Diary’.

  hour to vacate: Brady, ‘Eye-witness Account of Events in Belfast’.

  family of eight: Ibid.

  southbound train: ‘Army Under Crossfire’, Telegraph, 16 July 1972. See also ‘Thousands of Northern Refugees Streamed over the Border in the 1970s – Some Were Called “Ungrateful”’, TheJournal.ie, 27 December 2014.

  his mother’s house: Interview with Michael McConville.

  forced to flee: McKay, ‘Diary’; McKendry, Disappeared, p.10.

  staggered through the streets: See Burning of Bombay Street.

  All the traffic lights: Hastings, Barricades in Belfast, pp.146–47.

  ‘Belfast confetti’: Ciarán Carson, Belfast Confetti (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Wake Forest University Press, 1989).

  war zone to the shops: There is archival footage of women heading to a shop on Omar Street during a lull in the shooting during the Falls Curfew, on Saturday, 4 July 1970.

  lug their belongings: McKay, ‘Diary’; McKendry, Disappeared, p.10.

  She was half-blind: Interview with Michael McConville; social worker’s report regarding the McConville children, 13 December 1972.

  the fire could spread: McKay, ‘Diary’; McKendry, Disappeared, p.11.

  Many displaced families: ‘Flight: A Report on Population Movement in Belfast During August, 1971’, Northern Ireland Community Relations Commission Research Unit, Belfast, 1971.

  nobody else could get in first: McKay, ‘Diary’; McKendry, Disappeared, p.11.