Marian Price

For the U.S. politician, see Marian Heiss Price

Marian Price (born 1954), also known by her married name as Marian McGinchey, is an Irish republican militant, one of the so-called "Price sisters", who was jailed for her part in the IRA London bombing campaign of 1973. Price was part of a unit who placed four car bombs in London on 8 March 1973. The Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court and Hillgate House - a Government Building) and Whitehall army recruitment centre were damaged with 200 injured and one man died of a heart attack.

The two sisters were apprehended along with Hugh Feeney and seven others as they were boarding a flight to Ireland and, they were tried and convicted at the Great Hall on Winchester Castle on 14 November after a 2 day discussion by a jury. Although originally sentenced to life imprisonment (which was to run concurrently for each criminal charge), their sentence was eventually reduced to twenty years.

She and her sister Dolours Price, along with Gerry Kelly and Hugh Feeney, immediately went on hunger strike in a campaign to be repatriated to a prison in Northern Ireland. The hunger strike lasted over 200 days, because the hunger strikers were force-fed by prison authorities.

In an interview with Suzanne Breen, Marian described being force-fed:

"Four male prison officers tie you into the chair so tightly with sheets you can't struggle," says Price. "You clench your teeth to try to keep your mouth closed but they push a metal spring device around your jaw to prise it open. They force a wooden clamp with a hole in the middle into your mouth. Then, they insert a big rubber tube down that. They hold your head back. You can't move. They throw whatever they like into the food mixer - orange juice, soup, or cartons of cream if they want to beef up the calories. They take jugs of this gruel from the food mixer and pour it into a funnel attached to the tube. The force-feeding takes 15 minutes but it feels like forever. You're in control of nothing. You're terrified the food will go down the wrong way and you won't be able to let them know because you can't speak or move. You're frightened you'll choke to death."

Marian Price resumed a private life, emerging only in the 1990s - as a vocal opponent of Sinn Féin's "peace strategy". Of the Good Friday Agreement she said: "It is not, certainly not, what I went to prison for."

Price gave the graveside oration at the funeral of Joseph O'Connor, a member of the Real IRA in Belfast killed by the Provisionals.

She is now a prominent republican and member of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and spokesperson for the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association.

On 17 November, 2009 she was named as being one of two people arrested in connection with an attack on the Masereene Barracks in Northern Ireland in March 2009 in which two British soldiers were shot dead.

On 15 May 2011 she was charged with encouraging support for an illegal organisation. This related to her involvement in a statement given at an Easter Rising rally in Derry in 2011. On the same day the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Owen Paterson revoked her release from prison on licence. Peterson said the decision was made because the threat posed by Price had "significantly increased".

Further reading

• Clutterbuck, Richard. Kidnap and Ransom. Boston: Faber & Faber, 1978.

External links

• "Fire in the Blood", Italian interview, January 2007
• Radio Free Eireann intervies Marian Price
• Suzanne Breen interviews Marian Price
• "I have no regrets", The Guardian, March 2003
• Source material (2000 Electronic Telegraph article)
• Interview with Marian Price, The Blanket, Winter 2002
• Who Killed Joseph O'Connor?
• Graveside Oration for Joseph O'Connor
• Graveside Oration for Volunteer Joe O'Connor (Italian version)