Say Nothing
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material to make curtains: McKay, ‘Diary’.
The family stayed in the chalet: Interview with Michael McConville; McKendry, Disappeared, p.12; McKay, ‘Diary’.
Divis Flats was meant: High Life, documentary (BBC, 2011); Megan Deirdre Roy, ‘Divis Flats: The Social and Political Implications of a Modern Housing Project in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1968–1998’, Iowa Historical Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (2007).
‘city in the sky’: High Life.
four-bedroom maisonette: Interview with Michael McConville.
no playgrounds: Roy, ‘Divis Flats’.
maze for rats: Interview with Michael McConville.
hear every word: McKay, ‘Diary’.
malignant black mould: Roy, ‘Divis Flats’; High Life.
‘slum in the sky’: Lynsey Hanley, Estates: An Intimate History (London: Granta, 2000), p.97.
soldiers cups of tea: Hastings, Barricades in Belfast, p.147.
more circumspect: McKay, ‘Diary’.
complicated ethnic geography: Hastings, Barricades in Belfast, p.147.
Gun battles broke out: Ibid., p.144.
Incensed by such aggression: Ibid., p.144.
city into darkness: Ibid., p.145.
Land Rovers with their headlights off: ‘Belfast’s Night Patrol: An Uneasy Tour’, Newsday, 17 September 1971.
For all the chaos: David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton, Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died As a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2004), table 1, p.1494.
stronghold for armed resistance: Roy, ‘Divis Flats’. Also see Jeffrey Sluka, Hearts and Minds, Water and Fish: Support for the IRA and INLA in a Northern Ireland Ghetto (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1989).
residents called ‘the chain’: McKendry, Disappeared, p.15.
‘A child’s been hit!’: Hastings, Barricades in Belfast, p.144.
A nine-year-old boy: McKittrick et al., Lost Lives, p.34.
frantically waving a white shirt: Hastings, Barricades in Belfast, p.144.
‘Down on the floor!’: McConville, ‘Disappearance of Jean McConville’, in The Disappeared of Northern Ireland’s Troubles (Belfast: Wave Trauma Centre, 2012), p.16.
anarchy persisted: Interview with Michael McConville.
One July afternoon: Simon Winchester, In Holy Terror (London: Faber, 1975), pp.68–69.
three thousand soldiers: Ibid., p.70.
They axed down doors: Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London: Heinemann, 1987), p.123.
an act of revenge: Winchester, In Holy Terror, p.73.
a military helicopter hovered: Winchester, In Holy Terror, pp.71–72.
Using the tips of their rifles: Archival footage.
From the windows: Winchester, In Holy Terror, p.72. Archival footage.
A cartridge would skitter: Archival footage.
seeped into the cracks: Interview with Richard O’Rawe.
inducing panic: Winchester, In Holy Terror, p.71.
Young men bathed: Ibid., p.70; ‘Falls Road Curfew, 40th Anniversary’, Irish News, 30 June 2010.
‘weld a crowd together’: Winchester, In Holy Terror, p.32.
He watched them: Interview with Michael McConville.
Arthur McConville was unemployed: McKendry, Disappeared, p.12.
welfare assistance: Roy, ‘Divis Flats’.
When the children: ‘Sons Recall 30 Years of Painful Memories’, Irish News, 24 October 2003.
kids would scuttle outside: ‘How Belfast Feels Behind the Barricades’, Christian Science Monitor, 10 September 1969.
‘the poor man’s racehorse’: Kevin C. Kearns, Dublin Street Life and Lore: An Oral History (Dublin: Glendale, 1991), p.63.
warm, nervous creatures: Interview with Michael McConville.
Eventually Arthur grew so weak: McKendry, Disappeared, p.13.
he had lung cancer: McKay, ‘Diary’; McKendry, Disappeared, p.13.
Michael would hear him: Interview with Michael McConville.
Chapter 4: An Underground Army
‘Are you carrying anything?’: This account is based on Tara Keenan-Thomson’s book Irish Women and Street Politics, pp.213–14, and on P-TKT.
The Falls Road and the Shankill Road: This description owes a debt to Tommy McKearney, The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament, p.47, and Winchester, In Holy Terror, p.164.
peace walls: H-BC; ‘IRA Provisionals Put Up Barriers in Belfast’, Telegraph, 30 June 1972.
The organisation dwindled: Liam McMillen put the number at 120 as of 1969. Liam McMillen, ‘The Role of the I.R.A. 1962–1967’ (lecture, Dublin, June 1972), reproduced in ‘Liam McMillen: Separatist, Socialist, Republican’, Repsol Pamphlet no. 21 (1975). For a revisionist account, which argues that the narrative of a diminished (and more peaceful) IRA has been greatly exaggerated, see Brian Hanley, ‘“I Ran Away”? The IRA and 1969: The Evolution of a Myth’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. XXXVIII, no. 152 (November 2013). He notes that British intelligence estimated that the IRA had perhaps 500 people throughout Northern Ireland in the spring of 1969, and that the organisation’s numbers in the Republic were much higher.
conspicuously unarmed: English, Armed Struggle, p.84; H-BC.
tendency to blow themselves up: ‘Why Britain Is Committed in Northern Ireland’, Irish Times, 27 January 1972.
‘I Ran Away’: H-BC; ‘The I.R.A., New York Brigade’, New York, 13 March 1972. Hanley points out that the story, which has circulated widely in the historical literature, of graffiti on walls in Belfast saying I RAN AWAY is probably apocryphal: there were hundreds of journalists in the city, yet no press photo of such a slogan exists. But Hanley acknowledges that the formulation was in use as of 1970, and Hughes, in his BC oral history, does recall the phrase appearing on city walls.
There was a faction in Belfast: Interview with Billy McKee; ‘IRA Founder, 89, Has “No Regrets”’, Belfast News Letter, 17 May 2011.
He had spent time: ‘Political Process Will Not Deliver a United Ireland’, Irish News, 30 March 2016.
A devout Catholic: H-BC.
‘You are a Dublin communist’: Martin Dillon, The Dirty War: Covert Strategies and Tactics Used in Political Conflicts (New York: Routledge, 1999), p.11; also see English, Armed Struggle, p.105.
first item on the agenda is the split: John F. Morrison, The Origins and Rise of Dissident Irish Republicanism (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), p.viii.
To Dolours: Ibid., p.54.
forty-four British soldiers: McKittrick et al., Lost Lives, table 1, p.1494.
Two of Dolours’s aunts: Price interview in I, Dolours; P-EM.
The army frequently raided: ‘Intelligence War by Army Cracks IRA Ranks’, Telegraph, 5 November 1971.
One local house doubled as: ‘IRA Bomb School Uncovered by Army Swoop’, Telegraph, 8 January 1972; ‘One Escapes After Seven Are Arrested at Bomb Lecture’, Guardian, 8 January 1972.
Local residents resented: ‘London Bomb Campaign Decision Taken by IRA in Dublin’, Irish Times, 16 November 1973.
‘The local people had suddenly changed’: Price interview in I, Dolours.
When the authorities were coming: Winchester, In Holy Terror, p.164.
Scrappy school-age kids: ‘Soldiers Scurry in Sniper Country’, Baltimore Sun, 26 November 1971.
People took to joking: ‘Army Under Crossfire’, Telegraph, 16 July 1972.
she was bitterly disappointed: Interview with Anne Devlin.
Instead she secured a place: ‘London Bomb Campaign Decision Taken by IRA in Dublin’, Irish Times, 16 November 1973.
When the IRA needed guns: P-TKT.
Albert went on the run: ‘Home Often Raided, Says Accused Girl’, Irish Times, 24 October 1973; ‘London Bomb Campaign Decision Taken by IRA in Dublin’, Irish Times, 16 November 1973; ‘Dolours Price Won Rapid Promotion As Gunmen Died’, Telegraph, 15 November 1973.
‘never the
same’: ‘Lest We Forget’, Daily Express, 1 June 1974.
‘I want to join’: P-EM.
declaration of allegiance: P-TKT.
She vowed to obey: Price interview in I, Dolours.
nursing a cup of tea: P-TKT.
fantasy of peaceful resistance: P-EM.
No amount of marching: Price interview in I, Dolours.
Having strayed, in her youth: Keenan-Thomson, Irish Women and Street Politics, 1956–1973 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010), p.149.
But at night they would disappear: ‘Lest We Forget’, Daily Express; P-TKT.
Young people could vanish: Interview with Francis McGuigan.
Unfazed by the assault rifle: Interview with Hugh Feeney.
This could be comical: Interview with Francis McGuigan and Kevin Hannaway.
A moon-faced teetotaller: ‘Seán Mac Stíofáin: Obituary’, Telegraph, 19 May 2001. Mac Stíofáin once said, ‘When I was very young, not more than seven, my mother said to me, “I’m Irish, therefore you’re Irish. You’re half Irish, anyway. Don’t forget it.” This myth was sufficiently entrenched by the time he died that several obituaries erroneously said that his mother was from Belfast. See ‘Adams Leads Tributes As Mac Stíofáin Dies’, Irish Independent, 19 May 2011; ‘Former Chief-of-Staff of the IRA Sean Mac Stíofáin Dies Aged 73’, Irish Times, 19 May 2001.
‘forget’ to use his Irish name: ‘IRA Threatens to Kill Ceasefire Breakers’, Guardian, 24 June 1972.
‘escalate, escalate, escalate’: Brendan O’Brien, The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Féin (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1999), p.119
Mac the Knife: ‘Death of the Englishman Who Led the Provisionals’, Observer, 19 May 2001.
In a passage in his: Seán Mac Stíofáin, Revolutionary in Ireland (Edinburgh: R&R Clark, 1975), p.117.
Initially, Mac Stíofáin proposed: P-EM; P-TKT; ‘IRA Bomber Says Adams Ordered Terror Attacks on London Targets’, Irish Independent, 23 September 2012.
The women of the Cumann: P-EM; ‘Irish Women Play a Growing Role in IRA Struggle against British’, Washington Post, 11 April 1972.
‘Army or nothing’: ‘IRA Bomber Says Adams Ordered Terror Attacks on London Targets’, Irish Independent, 23 September 2012.
Price insisted that she was equal: P-EM.
‘fighting soldier’: ‘IRA Bomber Says Adams Ordered Terror Attacks on London Targets’, Irish Independent, 23 September 2012.
A special meeting: Ibid.
But Price herself would speculate: Keenan-Thomson, Irish Women and Street Politics, p.232.
Clean the bullets: P-TKT.
glorious way of life: Price interview in I, Dolours.
New recruits to the Provos: H-BC.
‘Like the revolution’s going’: P-TKT.
Most nights: Ibid.
But on one occasion: Ibid.
Not long after: P-EM; P-TKT.
They marched in formation: These details are drawn from H-BC.
But during funerals: Archival images of IRA funerals.
organised, ideological – and ruthless: H-BC.
they worked as couriers: P-EM; P-TKT; ‘London Bomb Campaign Decision Taken by IRA in Dublin’, Irish Times, 16 November 1973.
Dolours had a friend: ‘Two Sisters from Belfast Republican Family – and Their Allies in IRA Unit’, Guardian, 15 November 1973; ‘Girl Out of Her Depth’, Telegraph, 15 November 1973.
The bespectacled son of a pub owner: Interview with Hugh Feeney.
come home after their classes: Marian Price interview in the documentary Car Bomb, directed by Kevin Toolis (Many Rivers Films, 2008).
Dolours would often cross the border: P-EM.
‘Rosie!’ the soldiers would say: P-TKT.
The scent of nitrobenzene: ‘What Ever Happened to the IRA?’ Time, 28 March 2008.
On one occasion, Marian was driving: Car Bomb.
Some Cumann veterans referred to: See Dieter Reinisch, ‘Cumann na mBan and the Acceptance of Women in the Provisional IRA: An Oral History Study of Irish Republican Women in the Early 1970s’, in Socheolas: Limerick Student Journal of Sociology, vol. 5, no. 1 (September 2013).
One afternoon in 1971: ‘Three British Soldiers Shot Dead in Ulster’, Guardian, 11 March 1971; Dillon, The Dirty War, pp.214–215.
The bodies of the soldiers were later: ‘Memorial to Scottish Soldiers Attacked’, Belfast Telegraph, 3 May 2015.
The Price sisters disdained such operations: P-EM; P-TKT. Also see Andrew Sanders, ‘Dolours Price, Boston College, and the Myth of the “Price Sisters”’, The United States of America and Northern Ireland blog, 24 January 2013.
The spectacle of women as avatars: ‘Woman Hijacker Feels “Engaged to the Revolution”’, New York Times, 9 September 1970.
Her photo was splashed across: ‘I Made the Ring from a Bullet and the Pin of a Hand Grenade’, Guardian, 25 January 2001.
Patty Hearst brandishing: Jeffrey Toobin, American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes, and Trial of Patty Hearst (New York: Doubleday, 2016), p.157.
‘rebel chic’: Interview with Carrie Twomey.
Stories about the Price sisters: ‘Dolours Price Won Rapid Promotion As Gunmen Died’, Telegraph, 15 November 1973.
They developed an outsize reputation: ‘The Sisters of Terror’, Observer, 18 November 1973.
‘the Widowmaker’: ‘IRA Female Terrorists Work Havoc in Ireland’, Associated Press, 21 September 1976.
‘most dangerous young women’: ‘Dolours Price Won Rapid Promotion As Gunmen Died’, Telegraph, 15 November 1973.
frisky sexualised rumour: Similar stories got passed around in Vietnam during the same era. See chapter 9, ‘Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong’, in Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990).
‘We had Paris Match magazine’: ‘Dolours Price Won Rapid Promotion As Gunmen Died’, Telegraph, 15 November 1973.
Eamonn McCann, the activist: Interview with Eamonn McCann.
Crazy Prices: Interview with Anthony McIntyre.
Once, officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary: P-TKT.
just as it was about to close: The robbery was reported in the press at the time, though the identity of the robbers was not known. ‘Spate of Robberies Throughout North’, Irish Times, 27 June 1972; ‘“Nuns” Hold Up Belfast Bank’, United Press International, 27 June 1972; ‘IRA Ceasefire Preceded by More Killing’, Guardian, 27 June 1972; ‘Ceasefire Off to Uneasy Start in Northern Ireland’, Associated Press, 27 June 1972.
It was the Price sisters: Price interview in I, Dolours.
The identity of the thieves was never: ‘A.I.B. Branch Robbed Again by Women’, Irish Times, 18 July 1972.
hijacked a post office lorry: P-EM.
springing Brown free: ‘Hospital Gang Grab IRA Chief’, Telegraph, 30 December 1972; ‘Two Sisters from Belfast Republican Family – and Their Allies in IRA Unit’, Guardian, 15 November 1973; ‘IRA Leader Is Caught Year After Escape’, The Times, 2 February 1974. That Dolours Price was directly involved in this operation is confirmed in P-EM.
The ranks of the Provos: P-EM; ‘Disappeared IRA Victim and Provo “Love Triangle”’, Irish Independent, 12 July 2014.
Lynskey had trained as a monk: Interview with a relative of Joe Lynskey’s (who did not want to be identified more specifically); ‘Behind the Story: Allison Morris on How She Broke the Story of Joe Lynskey’s IRA Execution’, Irish News, 25 June 2015.
ended up leaving the order: Interview with a relative of Joe Lynskey’s.
something of an oddball: Interview with Joe Clarke.
‘Mad Monk’: ‘Searching for the Mysterious “Mad Monk” Who Fought for – and Was Killed by – the IRA’, Washington Post, 30 June 2015.
Dolours grew very fond: Price interview in I, Dolours.
an ex-bartender from Ballymurphy: Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (Dingle, Ireland: Brandon, 2001), pp.62–64.
Adams came from a distinguished: The unc
le was Paddie Adams. Uinseann Ó Rathaille Mac Eoin, The I.R.A. in the Twilight Years 1923–1948 (Dublin: Argenta, 1997), p.453.
Adams had got his start: Adams, Before the Dawn, pp.88–89.
He had joined the IRA: Adams insists that he has never been a member of the IRA, but any consultation of the evidence makes it impossible to countenance such a claim. There is general agreement in the scholarly literature that Adams seems to have joined the IRA as a teenager. See English, Armed Struggle, p.110; Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (New York: Norton, 2002), p.46; David Beresford, Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987), p.23; Malachi O’Doherty, Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life (London: Faber, 2017), p.24. As early as 1972, Adams was identified in the press as a leader of the IRA in Belfast. In December that year, the month that Jean McConville was abducted, The Times reported, ‘Gerry Adams, the 25-year-old ex-barman who now commands the Provisionals in [Belfast], wants to play a more political role in the Sinn Féin movement in the North but he cannot do so because he knows he would be arrested immediately’ (‘The High Stakes on Mr. Whitelaw’s Luck’, The Times, 1 December 1972). In 2010, WikiLeaks released a secret US diplomatic cable, from 2005, in which the US ambassador in Dublin at the time, James Kenny, stated that the Irish government possessed ‘“rock solid evidence” that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are members of the IRA military command’ (‘Peace Process: GOI Shaken by Second IRA Statement’, US diplomatic cable, 4 February 2005).
‘Who does Gerry think he is?’: P-EM.
he had a quiet, watchful charisma: Ibid.
sleeping, lately, at a West Belfast undertaker’s: Ibid.
‘It was an exciting time’: ‘“Republicanism Is Part of Our DNA,” Says IRA Bomber Dolours Price’, Telegraph, 23 September 2012.
‘The Provo army was started by’: ‘Hunger Strikers Seek Only to Serve Sentences in North’, Irish Times, 21 January 1974.
‘But he is in uniform’: ‘Lest We Forget’, Daily Express, 1 June 1974.
‘maybe it will all have been worth it’: Ibid.
chilly Sunday afternoon in January 1972: ‘Bloody Sunday in Derry’, New York Times, 1 February 1972; ‘“Bloody Sunday,” Derry 30 January 1972 – Names of the Dead and Injured’, CAIN.