Dolours Price
Dolours Price (born 1951) is a former volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). She is also a critic of Gerry Adams and the current leadership of Sinn Féin.
Dolours Price and her sister, Marian Price, are the children of Albert Price, a prominent Irish Republican and former IRA member, from Belfast. She and her sister became involved in Irish republicanism sometime during the late 1960s and early 1970s. They participated in the car bombings of the Old Bailey and Scotland Yard on 8 March 1973.
On that day, a referendum, known as the 'Border Poll', was held to determine if Northern Ireland was to remain part of the United Kingdom. In protest at the referendum, the IRA planted four car bombs in London. Two of the bombs were defused but the others exploded, one near the Old Bailey and the second at Scotland Yard. As a result of the explosions one person was killed and almost 200 people were injured.
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 in Winchester Castle on 14 November after a six hour jury discussion. Although originally sentenced to life imprisonment (which was to run concurrently for each criminal charge), their sentence was eventually reduced to twenty years.
Dolours Price served seven years of her life sentence for her part in the IRA car bombing during which time she 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. The force-feeding ended with the death of another hunger striker, Michael Gaughan, in June 1974. The Price sisters, Hugh Feeney, and Gerry Kelly were repatriated to Northern Irish prisons in 1975. This was a benefit of negotiations that occurred during a British-IRA truce.[1]
In 1980 Price received the Royal Prerogative of Mercy and was freed on humanitarian grounds suffering from anorexia nervosa in 1981. After her release, she married Stephen Rea, who was hired to speak the words of Gerry Adams when Sinn Féin was under a broadcasting ban. Dolours Price, along with her sister Marian, remains active politically. For example, she regularly contributes to the on-line journal The Blanket,[1] which is edited by Anthony McIntyre and his wife, Carrie Twomey. McIntyre is a former IRA blanketman who spent almost two decades in prison.
Personal life
Price was married to Stephen Rea from 1983 to 2003. They have three children.
Further reading
- Clutterbuck, Richard. Kidnap and Ransom. Boston: Faber & Faber, 1978.