By: Shannon Carlin
November 14, 2024
With his 2018 international bestseller, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, journalist and author Patrick Radden Keefe offered a deep dive into the complicated history of the Troubles, the nearly 30-year conflict between Irish Catholics and U.K. Protestants in Northern Ireland. Now, the FX limited series of the same name brings the captivating and devastating true story of Ireland’s fight to unite its nation to the small screen.
Say Nothing, available to stream on Hulu, picks up in the 1960s in West Belfast as the violence between Protestant loyalists and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), the most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles, begins to escalate. The series recalls some of the most notable moments of the conflict, the origins of which can be traced back hundreds of years, through the eyes of several key members of the IRA, including high-ranking volunteer Dolours Price (played by Lola Petticrew), commanding officer Brendan “the Dark” Hughes (Anthony Boyle), and Gerry Adams (Josh Finan), the future president of the Irish political party Sinn Féin. (The now 76-year-old Adams has long denied being a member of the IRA or participating in any IRA-related violence despite reports to the contrary.)
Across nine episodes, Say Nothing also investigates the high cost of the IRA’s quest for peace by any means necessary on its members and those it swore to be fighting for. A high profile example of the IRA’s controversial treatment of alleged informers was the 1972 murder of Jean McConville, a widow and mother of ten who was accused of being a traitor.
Read more about the true story behind Say Nothing below.
What happened to Jean McConville?
It’s the question at the center of Say Nothing — and where the FX series begins.
In December 1972 (the exact date is unconfirmed), Jean McConville was taken from her Belfast home by a group of four women and eight men. Many of them were masked, and at least one was carrying a gun, but McConville’s ten children, who ranged in age from 20 to six, quickly realized that their mother’s abductors were not strangers. They were their neighbors at Divis Flats, a labyrinthine public housing complex in West Belfast that was “almost entirely Catholic” in population and “a stronghold for armed resistance,” as Patrick Radden Keefe writes in Say Nothing.
The men and women who took the 38-year-old widow that day were also members of the Belfast Brigade, the city’s local chapter of the Provisional IRA. The “Provos” were not the county’s only republican paramilitary force, but they considered themselves the only legitimate successors to the original IRA, who fought from 1919 to 1921 in the Irish War of Independence. The guerilla war against the British occupation of Ireland, also known as the Anglo-Irish War, resulted in the partition of the country, with the U.K. government dividing Ireland into two self-governing countries known as Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. However, this division led to widespread discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland, where the government was controlled by Protestant Loyalists.
By 1969, the IRA was mostly defunct, and, Keefe writes, was advocating “peaceful resistance through politics.” The displeasure with this approach from Catholics, specifically those in Northern Ireland, led to the emergence of the Provos that same year. The new army’s mission was to end British rule in Northern Ireland and facilitate Irish reunification. Unlike their predecessor, which advocated for non-violent resistance through politics, the Provos believed that armed resistance was necessary to finally securing an independent and unoccupied Ireland. The Provos insisted that their destructive operations, like car bombings, were not directed at civilians. “The point was to destroy property, not to murder people,” Keefe writes in Say Nothing. But this distinction did not stop the IRA from being designated a terrorist group in the U.K. and the U.S. by the mid–1970s.
The Provos also believed in absolute loyalty. Before the kidnapping, McConville, who Keefe describes in Say Nothing as a small, pale woman who “had spent nearly half her life either pregnant or recovering from childbirth,” had been accused of being a “tout,” Irish slang for an informant. People who were considered traitors by the IRA were often killed and their bodies were left in the street as an example to anyone else who considered sharing secrets with the British.
McConville’s children have always denied the allegations that their mother was an informant. They claim that she was “a Protestant widow in a nationalist Catholic neighborhood at the apex of sectarian tension” who was a “victim of bigoted animus.” They would often retell a story, one that is reenacted in the series, about how, shortly before she disappeared, their mother tended to a wounded British soldier in Divis Flats only to wake up the next morning to find the words “Brit Lover” painted on their door. Days later, McConville, who struggled with mental illness following the passing of her husband, would disappear, never to be seen again.
It would take more than three decades before the McConville family learned what happened to Jean, thanks, in part, to an unexpected admission from a noteworthy IRA member named Dolours Price.
Who is Dolours Price?
Dolours Price grew up in a family that had been fighting for the Irish republican cause for multiple generations. Sometimes to their detriment; Price’s aunt Birdie, one of her mother’s sisters, lost both of her hands and her sight in 1938 while helping the IRA move a cache of explosives that suddenly detonated.
In her teens, Price followed in her family’s footsteps, but looked to do so through non-violence, taking a page from the U.S. Civil Rights movement. But the 1969 incident at the Burntollet Bridge, in which 100 peaceful protestors were injured after they were ambushed by nearly 300 Protestant loyalists, radicalized the teenager. Fighting back began to seem to her like the only way to free her countrymen and women.
In 1971, Price, along with her younger sister, Marian, asked to join the IRA. Up until then, women were only allowed to be a part of Cumann na mBan, the female auxiliary wing of the IRA, but “I wanted to fight, not make tea or roll bandages,” Price said, according to Say Nothing. “Army or nothing.” The two teenagers would become the first full time female members of the IRA in the organization’s history.
Almost immediately, the Price sisters became invaluable members of the IRA, which FX’s Say Nothing shows in thrilling detail in its early episodes. The two started out as couriers, ferrying money and munitions north across the border at their own risk, before they became gun-toting rebels who robbed banks dressed as nuns and wore platinum blonde wigs to spring fellow members out of captivity.
Dolours, like many others in the IRA, was galvanized by Bloody Sunday, the 1972 massacre in which British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march. The IRA ramped up their tactics, introducing weapons like car bombs and other powerful homemade explosives, which resulted in 1972 becoming the organization’s most violent year. Nearly 500 people lost their lives, nearly half were civilians.
Dolours’ unwavering commitment to the cause would be rewarded by Gerry Adams, an ex-bartender turned activist, who she described as a “gawky fella with big black-rimmed glasses.” She, as well as others, claim he was the “the key strategist” for the Belfast Brigade back in those days. Adams denies any connection to the IRA, and each episode of Say Nothing ends with a disclaimer about his being a member or participating in “any IRA-related violence.” Through his attorneys, Adams reiterated that he “had no involvement in the killing or burial of any of those secretly buried by the IRA” in a statement to the Irish Times on Nov. 13.
The book and show paint a different picture. Adams allegedly recruited Dolours and her younger sister for the “Unknowns,” a black-ops squad established within the Provos that was tasked with helping rule out dissent and reported directly to him. She also claimed that Adams helped her and her sister plan the 1973 Old Bailey bombing, which left nearly 250 people injured after two car bombs detonated in the heart of London.
Dolours, like many others in the IRA, was galvanized by Bloody Sunday, the 1972 massacre in which British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march. The IRA ramped up their tactics, introducing weapons like car bombs and other powerful homemade explosives, which resulted in 1972 becoming the organization’s most violent year. Nearly 500 people lost their lives, nearly half were civilians.
Dolours’ unwavering commitment to the cause would be rewarded by Gerry Adams, an ex-bartender turned activist, who she described as a “gawky fella with big black-rimmed glasses.” She, as well as others, claim he was the “the key strategist” for the Belfast Brigade back in those days. Adams denies any connection to the IRA, and each episode of Say Nothing ends with a disclaimer about his being a member or participating in “any IRA-related violence.” Through his attorneys, Adams reiterated that he “had no involvement in the killing or burial of any of those secretly buried by the IRA” in a statement to the Irish Times on Nov. 13.
What happened to Dolours Price after the Old Bailey bombing?
After the London bombing, Dolours and Marian were convicted of conspiring to cause “an explosion of a nature likely to endanger life” and sentenced to 20 years in Brixton Prison, a high-security all-male facility that rarely housed women. But due to the long history of IRA jail breaks, the British weren’t taking any chances with the young women now known as the “Sisters of Terror.” After Dolours and Marian’s request to serve out their sentences as political prisoners and be moved to a Northern Island prison was denied, the sisters went on a hunger strike. Their horrifying saga becomes the focus of Say Nothing’s engrossing but often hard to watch sixth episode.
In 1981, after 208 days of refusing to eat and being force fed by the prison for 167 of them, Dolours and Marian were sent back to Northern Ireland, where they served their remaining time in a women’s prison an hour outside of Belfast. Dolours was released in 1981 for health reasons, nearly a year after Marian, and vowed that once she was out she would dedicate herself to “urging her fellow Catholics to refrain from violence.”
After spending eight years in jail, Dolours began to question the IRA’s “culture of self-sacrifice” and how that led her to take part in acts of violence that she no longer felt she could defend. At 30 years old, she had spent the majority of her twenties in jail and was looking to settle down. In 1983, she married Irish actor Stephen Rea, had two kids, and began working as a journalist. But Dolours lived with the trauma and guilt of her past, struggling with alcoholism, drug addiction, and PTSD up until her 2013 death from an accidental drug overdose at the age of 61. (It was Dolours’ obit in the New York Times that inspired Keefe to write Say Nothing.)
Before Dolours passed away, she and other former members of the IRA sat down with the Belfast Project to talk about her experience as a member of the Provos. What they revealed helped multiple families understand what happened to their long-lost loved ones, including the McConvilles.
What is the Belfast Project?
The Belfast Project is an oral history of the Troubles led by Irish journalist and writer Ed Moloney. The goal of the project, which was created by Boston College, was to interview former members of the IRA and Provisional IRA in hopes of putting together a study for future generations of “the phenomenology of sectarian violence.”
With help from Anthony “Mackers” McIntyre, a South Belfast native and Provos volunteer who had served 17 years in prison for the murder of a loyalist paramilitary officer, frontline members of the paramilitary armies gave interviews to the Belfast Project about the crimes that they and others had committed. The only catch was their interviews were anonymous and could not be released until after their death. There was no legal immunity for coming forward: The IRA remained an unlawful organization until 2005 when it formally announced an end to its armed campaign and the former members’ unfettered honesty could have landed them in jail.
McIntyre began conducting interviews in 2001, seeking out those Provos who had a falling out with Gerry Adams, who, since becoming a politician in 1983, had denied that he had any involvement with the group. McIntryre and Moloney spoke to more than 40 ex-paramilitary members. The Belfast Project’s work deeply informs the FX series, which focuses on the testimonials of alleged Adams acolytes Dolours Price and Brendan “The Dark” Hughes.
Who is Brendan Hughes?
Brendan Hughes was an officer commanding, otherwise known as “the OC,” for Company D of the Provisional IRA. He was known for fighting right alongside the volunteers of his West Belfast-based company. It was one of the reasons why his company was considered to be the most dangerous.
Hughes, who spent much of the Troubles in and out of prison, was entirely committed to the cause and he quickly became a target of the loyalist paramilitaries, the police, the British Army, and the Official IRA. He was also a close confidant of Adams during the most violent years of the Troubles.
Two years after Hughes’ 2008 death, Moloney wrote the book, Voices from the Grave, which used the former IRA member’s Belfast Tapes interviews to tell the story of his time in the Provos. The tale Hughes told was one of disillusionment, disappointment, and regret.
In his testimony, Hughes alleged that Adams was the leader of the “Unknowns,” a handpicked team of “head hunters” that did dangerous, secretive, sometimes unsavory work. Hughes claimed on the tapes that McConville had admitted to being an informant for the British and because of this he believed that her killing was justified. Hughes also stated that Adams had personally ordered the murder of McConville. “There was only one man who gave the order for that woman to be executed,” Hughes said. “That f–ing man is now the head of Sinn Féin.”
Adams denied Hughes’ claims, saying in a statement: “I knew Brendan Hughes well. He wasn’t well and hadn’t been for a very long time, including during the time he did these interviews. Brendan also opposed the IRA cessations and the peace process.”
It was true that Hughes, who suffered from alcoholism and PTSD in the years leading up to his death, was disappointed in Adams’ decision to deny the role he played in the conflict. Hughes, who considered himself to be a revolutionary socialist, felt that, in effect, Adams had absolved himself of any moral responsibility for the war. “It means that people like myself…have to carry the responsibility of all those deaths,” Hughes told the Belfast Project.
However, Hughes wasn’t the only former IRA member who accused Adams of being involved in McConville’s murder. In 2010, Price told the Irish Times that she had taken part in the killing of McConville, and others who had gone missing, and that Adams had ordered the hit on the widow. As a driver for the Unknowns, Price said she had shuttled McConville to her certain death. While the book and FX series allege that Dolours’ sister, Marian, was the one who killed McConville, Marian, now in her 70s, denies any involvement in the murder.
Adams denied Price’s allegations, accusing her of wanting revenge on him for choosing politics over paramilitary warfare. Adams’ alibi against her and Hughes’ claims was that he was in prison at the time of McConville’s disappearance. When it was later revealed that Adams had been released in June of 1972 in order to fly to London for peace talks he said, “I got confused about the dates.”
Did they ever solve the murder of Jean McConville?
More than 20 years after their mother’s disappearance, the McConville children learned that they weren’t the only Belfast family who had mysteriously lost a loved one. There were 15 other families whose relatives had been abducted or murdered during the Troubles and whose bodies had never been found.
In 1995, these families came forward to ask the public for help in finding answers to their loved ones’ whereabouts. Adams, then the president of Sinn Féin, pledged to help locate the bodies of those who had disappeared. “I call upon anyone who has any information about the whereabouts of these missing people to contact the families,” he said in a statement. In his Belfast Tapes interview, Brendan Hughes called Adams a “Machiavellian monster” for offering to help the family whose mother Hughes claimed Adams had killed. “The man that gave the f—ing order for that woman to be executed,” Hughes said. “Now tell me the morality in that.”
By 1999, the historic yet contentious Good Friday Agreement, which Adams helped pass, had been signed, bringing the violence of the Troubles to an end. As part of the peace process, the governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland created the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains. The commission made it so anyone coming forward with information about those who had disappeared would receive a limited grant of immunity from prosecution. Dolours Price came forward to offer information on those who had disappeared, including McConville. (She would further detail her involvement in McConville’s death in the 2018 documentary I, Dolours.)
McConville’s body was found in Shelling Hill Beach, also known as Templetown Beach, in Ireland on August 27, 2003. Her children identified her by the blue safety pin on her coat, which she always wore fastened to her clothes, in case one of her children’s clothes needed repair. It was ruled that she had died from a gunshot wound to the head.
In 2019, Ivor Bell, a former Belfast Brigade leader, was tried for his alleged involvement in the murder of McConville. In his Belfast Project interviews, he claimed that he, Adams, and the late Pat McClure, a known member of the Unknowns, met to decide the fate of McConville. The judge would go on to rule that Bell’s interviews were inadmissible evidence because those involved had a “clear bias and were out to get Gerry Adams,” who took the stand during the trial.
After eight days in court, the jury found Bell not guilty of aiding and abetting the murder, but the judge told the court that the tapes would be made public at the end of the trial and “people can make up their own view.” No one has been charged in the murder of McConville.
While burying their mother has given the McConville children a sense of closure, they continue to fight to clear her name. Following an investigation, the police ombudsman for Northern Ireland never found any evidence that McConville was an informant. Now, her six remaining kids are demanding an apology from the IRA, who despite publicly saying sorry in 2003 for her disappearance have never retracted their claims that she was a tout.
“We as a family want an apology for all the accusations of our mother of having been an informer,” McConville’s son Michael told the Irish Times in 2022, what would be the 50th anniversary of her disappearance. “I’ll look for that apology until the day I die.”