PRICE SISTERS INTERNMENT

Below are extracts from Dolours and Marian Price writings and statements, with an article from Time Magazine, about the internment of the Price sisters. Dolours was interned this week in Milltown cemetery. Marian  was politically interned without trial, almost two years ago by the British in Occupied Ireland.

Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa
14 July 2004
I am now deeply worried. I watched the news on July 12th and saw a former I.R.A comrade, Gerry Kelly, standing, arms spread wide across a retreating British Army jeep protecting the British soldiers inside!
I have not slept a wink since seeing that. Did some incompetent give me the wrong instructions when I joined the I.R.A? I will be very cross indeed if I find out that I was inducted into the Army by some eejet who got things arse about face!

I Once Knew a Boy... 
17 July 2004
Perhaps my own experiences with Gerry Kelly as a comrade on a difficult mission in England and our subsequent imprisonment together leaves me somewhat emotionally vulnerable to the person. We went through a lot together. It causes me a great deal of pain to ridicule the boy I once knew to be stubborn, anti-establishment, arrogant as only those who are convinced of the rightness of their cause can be. A man-boy who endured the same rigours of hunger-strike and force-feeding as myself, my sister, Hugh Feeney and others on our failed mission.
I got to know Gerry Kelly well, from the boy leaping over bollards at Trafalgar Square to the boy who stood proudly in the dock at Winchester Crown Court to receive his life sentence and twenty years; the boy who was dragged from the dock declaring his loyalty to the Republican Cause, “Damn your concessions England we want our country!” To now witness what he has become, a British lackey, a forelock tugging parody of an enslaved people, a puppet for the Brits and all that is bad in our country, that causes me deep pain, deep hurt, hurt because Gerry Kelly was a person that I once loved as one can only love a brother or a comrade.
[...]
When we starved together it was not 'to move the process forward', it was not for seats in a British Government, it was not to be treated as 'equals' in a Stormont Assembly. It was, I like to think, because we had a shared passion for justice and freedom for this island, the whole of this island of Ireland. I believe that we were dedicated to the old struggle to rid this land of any British interference, that our wish was to regain our dignity as Irishmen and women never again to bend the knee, never again to lie down except in death after a good fight. Death would never have been our defeat — living on our knees, now that is defeat!

Dolours Price

Monday, Jun. 17, 1974
The World: Ulster's Price Sisters: Breaking the Long Fast
Time Magazine
Each day passes and we fade a little more. But no matter how the body may fade, our determination never will. We have geared ourselves for this and there is no other answer. - Dolours Price, May 27 letter to her mother

Sometimes we can achieve more by death than we could ever hope to living. We 've dedicated our lives to a cause and it's supremely more important than any one individual's life. - Marion Price, May 27 letter to her mother

Fate and politics have a way sometimes of cheating would-be martyrs. Belfast's Price sisters -- Dolours, 23, and Marion, 20 -- were sentenced last Nov. 15 to life in prison for their part in the March 1973 London car bombings that injured 238 persons and led to the fatal heart attack of another. In an effort to gain attention for their Irish Republican cause and force British authorities to return them to Ulster for the rest of their prison term, the sisters pursued a grim path toward self-imposed death: for seven months they systematically starved themselves. 

At week's end the British government announced that the Prices had ended their long fast after what appeared to be an eleventh-hour decision by Westminster to avert the risk of violent reprisals by the sisters' Irish Republican Army supporters. As soon as their health permits, the pair may be transferred from London's maximum-security Brixton Prison to jail in Northern Ireland. 

Dolours and Marion are daughters of a former I.R. A. officer who once tunneled his way out of a Londonderry prison. The sisters were raised amid the revolutionary passions of Belfast's working-class Andersontown district, an I.R.A. stronghold. As teenagers, they shared a liking for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as well as for Irish folk dances. Both girls were and are devout Roman Catholics: a notebook that Dolours was carrying when she was arrested for the London bombings contained notes on the Virgin Mary along with details about her I.R.A. contacts. 

According to their older sister Clare, 26, the girls showed little active interest in politics until 1968, when they joined the civil rights movement, which was dedicated to securing equal voting rights for Northern Ireland's Catholic minority. The turning point in the Prices' conversion to hard-line militancy came when they participated in the 1969 civil rights march from Belfast to Londonderry; Protestant hooligans ambushed and stoned the young marchers. 

Dolours and Hugh Feeney, an I.R.A. comrade who is also in jail for the London bombings, formed the "People's Democracy," a militant offshoot of the civil rights movement, and took their cause to the streets. The sisters had been studying to become teachers. But they also began to investigate the revolutionary polemics of Che Guevara and Soledad Brother George Jackson. The girls learned the techniques of bombmaking and small-arms use in I.R.A. training courses across the border in the Republic. By the time they plotted the London bombings, both girls had become seasoned veterans of back-alley skirmishes with British troops and of slow marches behind the coffins of I.R.A. dead. 

Friends and relatives of the Price sisters have claimed that the pair were unjustly prosecuted and tried: that they received no legal advice until four days after their arrest, that authorities purposely shifted the trial from London to the more conservative town of Winchester. Their supporters have also charged that prison officials brutalized the sisters by force-feeding them during their long hunger strike. Force-feeding -- in which a person's mouth is clamped open while a greased tube is inserted through his nose and a "complan" solution of iron, orange and milk-soaked glucose is poured directly into the stomach -- usually causes acute vomiting. 

The procedure can provide a starving victim with 1,750 calories a day, but it is an exhausting and frightening experience. Shortly before the government announced that the Price girls had ended their fast, their sister Clare reported that they weighed less than 98 Ibs. each, that their skin had turned waxen, their hair was falling out and their mouths were covered with sores. The prison dentist confirmed that the sisters' teeth had been loosened under pressure from the mouth clamp. Last month, after doctors had said that the girls would probably die sooner from continued force-feeding than from fasting, officials halted the procedure. 

At week's end it was still uncertain how soon, if ever, the Prices would recover from their ordeal. Or whether, even if their flirtation with martyrdom has been happily aborted, they will be able to retain their heroine status once they are no longer a political cause celebre.

“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

Marian Price is just one of several Irish people currently politically interned in British Occupied Ireland during which time lawyers have not been allowed to see any of Britain's ‘alleged’ evidence.

• She has been kept in solitary confinement in a ‘male’ high security prison
• She is effectively interned without a trial, sentence, or release date.
• She has not been given any timescale for any investigation.
• She has not been allowed to see the evidence that the state claims to have
• Her release has been ordered on two occasions by judges. However, on both occasions the British Vice royal has overruled those decisions.
• The Vice royal claims they ‘revoked Marian’s license, ’despite Marian never being released on license. She was given a Royal Pardon.
• Marian’s Royal Pardon has ‘gone missing’ from the home office (the only time in history). The British Vice royal has taken the view that unless a paper copy can be located – it must be assumed that she does not have one. It is generally agreed that MI5 shredded her majesty's pardon.
• Despite no ‘license’ existing for her release from prison in 1980, it is the non-existent licence that is being used to keep her in prison.
• She can only be released by Theresa Villiers the current Vice royal responsible for Marian's internment.

DEFRAGMENTATION

30 January 2013 LINK

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

Travelling back in time through Bangkok’s Chinatown

InThailandCultural Activities

http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20130129-travelling-back-in-time-through-bangkoks-chinatown

 Perhaps you're one of those who think people are supposed to mellow in their old age? Think again. John Rotten may be past it but he will not be going quietly into that good night. And if they do finally get the bugger into a coffin they'd better nail the lid down good and tight.

 

And it looks like his half-sister may be managing a Tescos in Wales.

Remember when you were young,

You shone like the sun.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Now there's a look in your eyes,

Like black holes in the sky.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

You were caught on the crossfire

Of childhood and stardom,

Blown on the steel breeze.

Come on you target for faraway laughter,

Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon,

You cried for the moon.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Threatened by shadows at night,

And exposed in the light.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Well you wore out your welcome

With random precision,

Rode on the steel breeze.

Come on you raver, you seer of visions,

Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!
- Pink Floyd

For all that we struggle

For all we pretend

It don't come down to nothing

Except love in the end

And ours is a road

That is strewn with goodbyes

But as it unfolds

As it all unwinds

Remember your soul is the one thing

You can't compromise

Take my hand

We're gonna go where we can shine

- David Gray 

---

Letter of Ireland to Leon Trotsky 1938

Better an Honest Socialist than a Lying Republican

11 May 2004

I have no time for Stormont. I have no time for the Good Friday Agreement. I have no time for people who constantly change their position, cement hard gathered weapons into the ground, abduct people and put them down bogs, beat those who do not agree with their rules, have a finger in every financial pie going and seem to have done very nicely for themselves in their day to day lives. They are not Republicans, they are Stalinists. They have turned a once noble Army into an armed militia whose only role is to strong arm any opposition to their insatiable political greed and opportunism.   

Give me an honest Socialist any day before a lying treacherous so-called Republican  -

Dolours Price



11 December 1938
New York City

Leon Trotsky
Coyoacan
Mexico DF

My Dear Leon Trotsky:

We were both very pleased to receive your note. Hortense, jokingly, says that it must all be a Stalinist plot. While she is not disinterested in politics, she is, in no sense, a political person. However, she is no bitter foe. And in her own profession, the theatre, she must pay a price for her attitudes and the stand that she has taken. Stalinist influence is permeating the American theatre, and Hortense is automatically excluded from even being considered for roles in plays by certain managements because of this fact.

Concerning “the mysteries of my style” [1], you may be amused to know that one Communist Party functionary described it, once in The Daily Worker, as “Trotskyite.” And one of the most current criticisms of my writing in Stalinist sources is that “the rationale of Trotskyism” has given a basis for his “despair,” and through that means he is degenerating.

This summer I was in Ireland, and I saw Jim Larkin. All men have weaknesses, but all men are not the victims of their weaknesses. Jim Larkin is a victim of his own weaknesses, and his own temperament. Now, he is embittered and envenomed. He feels that the Irish working class has sold him out. He was not returned in the last elections for the Dáil, and he ran in a working class district. He defended the trials, but thought that Bukharin could not be interested. But Larkin’s formal attitudes do not have much meaning. He is untheoretical and unstable intellectually. He is always a direct actionist, and his direct actionism takes whatever turn that his impulses lead him toward, In the midst, for instance, of a severe fight, he might be walking down the street and see a sparrow trapped in some electric wires where it might die. He will become incensed, and will telephone important members of the government and demand that they have men sent down to release the sparrow immediately, and then this will loom more important than the fight in which he is engaged. He is very garrulous, human and humane, witty, vindictive, vituperative, and he is Irish. At times, he is almost like an embittered version of the stage Irishman. In Ireland, there has never been much theory, and in consequence, never been many men with a rounded view of the reasons why Ireland was struggling. Before the war, the Irish labor movement was very militant and well toward the forefront of the European labor movement. It was defeated in the great Dublin transport strike of 1913, and out of this crushing defeat, the Irish Citizen Army was formed. Larkin left for America, and Larkin says that one of the last things that he said to Connolly was not to go into the National movement, not to join the Irish Volunteers, which was the armed force of the nationalist movement. Connolly did go into the Easter Rebellion, and there is the disputed question as to whether or not he made a mistake. Sean O’Casey, the Irish playwright, in a pamphlet he wrote on the Irish Citizen Army, declares baldly that James Connolly died not for Irish socialism but for Irish nationalism. Others maintain that Connolly could not have remained out of the rising. At all events, the Irish Citizen Army was decimated, and crushed by the Easter Rebellion. There were no leaders left to carry on the social side of Connolly’s doctrines. The entire movement was swept along in a frenzied rise of Irish patriotism and Irish nationalism. Sinn Féin was in complete control of the movement. The leaders of Sinn Féin had only the most vague notions of what they wanted – an Irish Ireland speaking Gaelic, developing its own Irish culture, free of the British crown, and some were not even fighting them for freedom from the crown. In 1921, when the treaty was negotiated in England, there was this same unclarity. Following the treaty, there was the split in the Irish ranks. The record of that split is most saddening to read. It was not a split on real issues. There were two or three documents with different wordings, and they all meant much the same thing. Instead of discussing social programs, they discussed Ireland, and they insulted one another. Out of this split the bitter civil war developed, and the comrades in arms of yesterday assassinated one another. The treatment which the Free State government meted out to its former comrades matches almost that which Stalin has meted out. The bravest fighters of the Irish Republican Army were taken out and placed up against a wall and butchered without any formality. And now, after all the trouble, the Irish people have changed masters, and a new Irish bourgeoisie is developing and coagulating, and the politicians of Sinn Féin are aligned with them and the Church, with reaction rampant, poverty to match even that of Mexico, progressive ideas almost completely shut out, a wall of silence keeping out the best Irish tradition – that of Fintan Lalor, Davitt, and Connolly, and poor Ireland is in a hell of a state. Larkin returned in the early twenties. After defeat, the Irish labor movement needed someone to lead it who could remould a defeated class. Larkin was a great and courageous agitator, but not a leader of a defeated army, and he could not work with any one. Gradually, he lost influence, and now he is old and embittered. Of course, Catholicism plays a strong role in Ireland, and Larkin is a Catholic and talks of the virtues of the Christian home. And suddenly out of his garrulous talk, a flash of his old fire comes through. Perhaps you are riding through the Dublin slums with him, and suddenly, seeing the poor in their filth, standing in front of the filthy buildings in which they are forced to live like animals, and a strong denunciation comes, and there is something of the Jim Larkin who defied the British Army, and at whose words the poor of Dublin came out into the streets in thousands, and flung themselves against the might of Britain and that of the Irish bourgeoisie. Human beings are social products, and Larkin is a product of the Irish movement. The principal instrument of the Irish revolutionaries was always terrorism and direct action, and when Larkin was unable to function with these methods on the wave of a rising and militant movement, he was lost, and the labor bureaucrats outmaneuvered and outsmarted him. When he returned to Ireland from an American jail, he got his following together, and marched on the quarters of the union he had formerly led. He took the building, but later lost it in the law courts, and he is no longer the leader of the transport workers. He has union following, and among his strongest support is that of the butchers and hospital workers.

He showed me something in Ireland that few people in Dublin know about. In the Parnell days, a terrorist organization, composed almost exclusively of Dublin workingmen was formed and named the Invincibles. The Invincibles committed the famous Phoenix Park murders in front of the vice-regal lodge, and were denounced by the Church, by Parnell, and by almost the entire Irish nation. There are no monuments in Ireland to the Invincibles. They died in isolation, some of them defiant to the end in their utter isolation. At the spot across from the vice-regal lodge in Phoenix Park, where the murders were committed, there is a patch of earth alongside of the park walk. No matter how often grass is planted over this spot the grass is torn up by the roots, and this spot of earth is left, and always, there is a cross marked into the dirt in commemoration of the Invincibles. Every week, someone – principally, I believe, one of Larkin’s boys – goes there and marks that cross. This has been going on for a long time.

In Larkin, there is something of that characteristic of defiant defeat that runs through so much of Irish history, and with it, never any real investigation of causes. But even up to today, he remains the only figure of commanding proportions in the Irish labor movement. The rest is pretty nearly all bureaucracy, tied to the tail of nationalism, enfolded in the cassock robes of the priestcraft, seeing the problems of Irish labor as an Irish question. Ireland is having something of an industrial boom. Certain sections of the Irish working class, the most advanced trade unions – which have been in existence some time – these are better paid than corresponding trade unions in England. But the country is partitioned between an industrial north and an agricultural south. In the south, de Valera is engaged in a program of industrialization. The Irish market is small, and that means that monopolies must be parcelled out to various groups or persons. When these monopolies get going, there will be resultant crises, because they will be able to supply the Irish market with a few months work and production. Also, the new factories are being spread over the country – a program of decentralization – and in many instances, factories are being set up in agricultural areas where there is no trade union strength. It is necessary to further industrialization in Ireland to have, as a consequence, sweat shop conditions. There is a small labor aristocracy and even this lives badly. And below it, poverty that reduces thousands upon thousands to live like animals in the most dire, miserable, and inhuman poverty. I saw some of this poverty. One family of eleven living in one room. The family has lived in this same room for twenty-four years. The building is crumbling, walls falling, ceiling caving in, roof decaying. The oldest in the family is nineteen, the youngest is an undernourished infant of eight months. Six sleep in one bed, three in another, two on the floor. The infant was born last Christmas eve in the bed where six sleep. The role of the Church is important. The Church tells the Irish that they are going to live for ever and be happier in heaven, and this engenders patience. There is a mystic fascination with death in Ireland. In all the homes of the poor, the walls are lined with holy pictures, those of the Sacred Heart predominating. The poor live in utter patience. They have lived in this patience ever since the heyday of Jim Larkin. In those days, at his word, they thronged the streets and threatened the power of England, and of the Irish and Anglo-Irish bourgeoisie. But no more. However, with the industrialization program, there is likely to be some enlargement of the Irish working class, and the economic factors of proletarianization, plus the resulting effects of factory work and familiarity with machines is likely to cause some changes in the consciousness of Irishmen. Familiarity with machines is likely to rub off some of the superstition, and the economic conditions will pose their problems to the Irish workers. There is possibly going to be a change in Ireland because of these factors, and some of the eternal sleep and mud-crusted ignorance is likely to go. But being an agricultural country, a poor country, a country ridden by superstition, it now sleeps, and there is a lot of talk about Ireland, and little is done about Ireland, and a characteristic attitude is sure and what is the bother. Ireland is no longer merely a victim of England, but of world economy now. Irish nationalism correspondingly has altered from being a progressive movement to a reactionary movement. Fascism could easily triumph in Ireland were fascism vitally necessary to the new rulers of Holy Ireland.

The Irish Republican Army is split into factions, some demanding emphasis on a social program, others on a national program. Stalinists are in the former group, but Stalinism is very weak in Ireland, practically inconsequential. It amounts to a few pensionaries. Ireland does not need Stalinism. It has Rome. Rome handles these problems with the necessary efficiency. Rome confuses the struggles, poses the false questions, sidetracks protests as Stalinism now does in advanced countries.

As a kind of compensation, Ireland a defeated nation has developed a fine modern literature, just as Germany, defeated and still un-unified at an earlier period, developed German philosophy. But the moral terrorism in the name of the Church and the Nation, and the parochial character of the life and of intellect in Ireland might choke the literature now. So backward is Ireland that even the American motion pictures have a progressive influence in the sense that they make the youth restless, that they produce freer and less strained relationships between the sexes, and that they give a sense of a social life of more advanced countries that is not permitted because of the state of economy in Ireland. Ireland impresses me as being somewhat parallel to Mexico, except that in Mexico there are progressive strains in the country, and in Ireland these are weak and morally terrorized. In part, this is undoubtedly because of Ireland’s lack of mineral resources and wealth, the backwardness and sleep of its labor movement, and the role of the Church. In Ireland, the Church was not the feudal landholder. Behind the scenes, the Church always fought against the Irish people, and spoke for law and order. But at one time, the Church itself was oppressed. The Church and the people became entangled in the consciousness of the Irish, and the religion question befogged the social and economic one. In Mexico, Spain, France, and Russia, the Church was more openly a part of a feudal or pseudo-feudal system. The peasants became anti-clerical because they wanted land. This did not happen in Ireland. In consequence, anti-clericalism did not take the same form. Anti-clericalism amounts to jokes at the priesthood, dislike of the archbishops, and so forth. In earlier days, it was stronger, particularly among the Fenians. But it never took the real form it took in France, Spain, etc. And so the Church has great power in Ireland today. In the most real, vivid, and immediate sense it gives opium to the people.

Poor Ireland! She is one of the costs demanded by history in the growth of what we familiarly call our civilization. There is an old poem with the lines – They went forth to battle And they always fell. And today, after having fallen so many times, Ireland is a poor island on the outpost of European civilization, with all its heroic struggles leaving it, after partial victory, poverty-stricken, backward, wallowing in superstition and ignorance.

My favorite Irish anecdote is the following. The last castle in Ireland to fall to Cromwell’s army was Castleross on the lakes of Killarney. At that time, the castle was held by the O’Donoghue. For several months, the British could not take the castle. The Irish infantry was more lightly clad than the British, and would always lead the better armored and more heavily clad British down into the bogs where their armed superiority became a handicap, and then the Irish would cut them to pieces. There was an old Gaelic prophecy that Castleross would never fall to a foreign foe until it was attacked by water. There was a proviso in this prophecy. For the lakes of Killarney empty into Dingle Bay, where the water is so shallow that foreign men of war from the sea cannot enter it. The British general heard of this prophecy. He went to Dingle Bay and built flat-bottomed boats and floated them up the lakes of Killarney. He fired one cannon shot at Castleross. And the O’Donoghue, thinking that the prophecy had been fulfilled, surrendered without firing a shot in return.

I took the liberty of writing in such detail about Ireland because I thought you might be interested in modern Ireland. They call it the “new Ireland” these days.

Hortense joins me in sending our warmest greetings to you and Natalia.

Yours,
Farrell "

How Iceland Overthrew The Banks Video

How Iceland Overthrew The Banks

Video

"Why do we consider banks to be like holy churches?" is the rhetorical question that Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimson asks (and answers) in this truly epic three minutes of truthiness from the farce that is the World Economic Forum in Davos. Amid a week of back-slapping and self-congratulatory party-outdoing, as John Aziz notes, the Icelandic President explains why his nation is growing strongly, why unemployment is negligible, and how they moved from the world's poster-child for banking crisis 5 years ago to a thriving nation once again. Simply put, he says, "we didn't follow the prevailing orthodoxies of the last 30 years in the Western world." There are lessons here for everyone - as Grimson explains the process of creative destruction that remains much needed in Western economies - though we suspect his holographic pass for next year's Swiss fun will be reneged...

January 29, 2013 - Zerohedge

Court: Iceland Doesn’t Need to Repay UK and Dutch Depositors

By Agence France-Presse

January 29, 2013  -- Iceland was entitled to refuse to pay immediate deposit guarantees to savers with failed online bank Icesave in Britain and the Netherlands, a European court said Monday.

The ruling is the latest twist in a bitter dispute which has clouded negotiations on Iceland’s ambitions to become a member of the European Union.

The Court of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which covers economic and trading relations between non-EU countries that are a part of the European Economic Area (EEA) single market and their European Union partners, was ruling on Reykjavik’s response to the collapse of the Icelandic banking sector in 2008-9.

The British and Dutch governments spent 3.9 billion euros ($5.5 billion) compensating 340,000 of their citizens who lost their savings in the collapse.

Iceland did not, and the EFTA Court upheld its approach, the court saying it had “dismissed the application” supported by London, The Hague and the European Commission.

The decision was based on three reasons — including the fact that Icelandic banking law at the time did not specify how to handle a major banking crisis of such global scale.

The ruling did not, however, call for monies already reimbursed to be clawed back.

Deals to use tax-payer money to refund the Icesave debt have been twice rejected in referendums so the assets of failed parent Landsbanki are the only way Iceland can settle the row.

In December, the group tasked with winding up Landsbanki reimbursed the first third of monies due to savers who lost money in the collapse of its Icesave — to the tune of 432 billion Icelandic kronor (2.71 billion euros, $3.64 billion).

IN THE WAKE OF DOLOURS PRICE

IN THE WAKE OF DOLOURS PRICE - Indymedia Ireland Link

REA BRINGS A REAL PROVO HOME

Dolours Price was carried home by her former husband of 17 years Stephen Rea and their two sons Danny and Oscar, at her funeral in Belfast today. Dolours sister Clare and brother Damian Price were among the thousands of mourners, many of whom could not attend because of British internment and profiling. Marian her sister was prevented from attending, by the British as was Dolours herself previously deprived of attending her mothers funeral.

Dolours was buried in Milltown cemetery, with full military honours, in her native west Belfast, after requiem mass at St Agnes's church in Andersonstown. Dolours and Marian known worldwide as the Price sisters, went on hunger strike and were force-fed for 200 days. Both sisters never really recovered from the ordeal.

Father Raymond Murray, who was prison chaplain to them, told mourners that Dolours Price and her sister Marian were like twins, saying: "Dolours's family can relate her nature and her talent, both of which is outside the knowledge and understanding of those who did not know her personally. She was clever and witty, full of fun and held people enthralled by her conversation."

At the graveside in Milltown Cemetery in west Belfast, socialist Eamon McCann delivered the oration, telling the crowds the crowds hidden under umbrellas to avoid politcal internment: "If Dolours had a big fault, it was perhaps that she lived out too urgently the ideals to which so many others also purported to be dedicated.

"She was a liberator but never managed to liberate herself from those ideas. Sometimes we are imprisoned within ideals; sometimes in war atrocious things are done; sometimes hard things have to be done.

"Sometimes it is very difficult to handle the hard things that you felt compelled to do when you are soft-hearted at the core of your being. And Dolours was a soft-hearted person as well as a hard person in her politics."


Provisional Sinn Fein publicity chief Danny Morrison attended,along with MP for West Belfast Paul Maskey. Dolours Price along with her sister Marian, became disenchanted, with Provisional Sinn Féin's leadership of the Irish Republican Movement and believed the 'process' was a sellout. Black flags were placed on poles along the Andersonstown Road during the funeral. Her coffin, draped in the Tricolour, was carried from the family home a few hundred yards from the church. It was led by a lone piper playing Raglan Road. The chief celebrant was Msgr Raymond Murray. Also attending was Hugh Feeney, one of her former comrades.

Msgr Murray recalled in the homily how Dolours Price before joining the IRA, was involved in the civil rights movement, as a member of People's Democracy, and at the PD march in 1969, was attacked by loyalists at Burntollet. "She was thrown into the river when it was attacked," he further said that there was never a period since her imprisonment and force-fed hunger strike in prison in England, when she was not ill. He said she and Marian Price were like "bosom twins". He said Dolours Price was a woman of considerable talents, interested in the arts, literature and philosophy. "She was clever and witty and full of fun, and she held people in thrall by her conversation."

The funeral cortège made its way to Milltown Cemetery for her final physical interment, finally out of the clutches of heartless, savage, bigots, unlike her sister Marian's internment currently in British Occupied Ireland. Intelligent Irish republicans will not allow themselves to be drawn into uncalculated, reactionary action by the uncivilized British behaviour but it is another definition for a new generation, if one were needed, of the barbarity of British occupation in Ireland.

Dolours Price is Finally at Rest and her Spirit Free. She is now one of those eternal Irish women, who define the status of the Island of Ireland to take its pace among the nations of the world as an equal, rather than a British commoner class, backwater.

DOLOURS PRICE FUNERAL TODAY Ardoyne Republican Article

DOLOURS PRICE FUNERAL TODAY St Agnes Catholic Church in Andersonstown - Her burial will take place at nearby Milltown Cemetery.

Sunday, 27 January 2013

Dolours Price (RIP)

Former Political Prisoner & Hunger-Striker, Dolours Price (RIP)

It was with profund sadness that I heard of the sudden death of Ex-POW, Dolours Price in herDublin home earlier this week. Unfortunately, I never had the pleasure of meeting Doloursbut truely felt for her and all she suffered during her lengthy imprisonment and hunger-strike in the Seventies....

Like everyone who joined the IRA and INLA to help liberate Ireland and her people from imperialist occupation. Volunteers were duly informed that they would endure many hardships, long years of imprisonment and possibly death as a result of Active Service. The process in joining a secret organisation as the IRA is pretty lengthy and one must pass a through a number hurdles before becoming a fully-fledged Oglach. Dolours already came from a strong Republican family. Her father, Albert was widely-respected for his valued contribution to the IRA in Belfast. He also spent a long time behind bars at the behest of theStormont and British governments. Albert helped fellow Republicans to defend the Lower Falls area against the Loyalist Pogrom in August, 1969, aided by the sectarian RUC. 

Dolours volunteered her services to the Provisional IRA, along with her sister, Marian. Both women soon became valued and trusted members of the fledgling Army in Belfast. It was no surprise that both sisters would play a vital role in rebuilding Oglaigh Na hEireann in the city. Between 1970 - 1973, the Provisionals successfully took on the British Crown Forcesacross Belfast and beyond. 

The Price sisters were selected by the PIRA Leadership to be part of an Active Service Unit (ASU) to target the British capitol, London. Due to the war of attrition being waged in theNorth by the Crown Forces. They agreed and were given important roles alongside otherBelfast Volunteers including, Ardoyne man, Paul Holmes and future Stormont MLA, Gerry Kelly. IRA Enginneers made and packed a number of cars with explosives and the ASU took them to London...

On March 8 1973, four PIRA car bombs exploded outside the Old Bailey, Hillgate House andWhitehall's British Army Recruitment Centre. The buildings were badly damaged and over 200 people were injured. The Irish War had came back to London. Almost immediately, seven Irish citizens attempted to board a plane back to Ireland. Although, they were arrested by English Police and held for questioning. They were tried and convicted later the same year and given Life Imprisonment. As Political Prisoners they demanded a transfer home to be closer to their families but were refused. 

The Price sisters soon embarked on a Hunger-Strike followed by a number of their male comrades. However, the British government ordered them to be brutally force-fed. A callous and extremely invasive procedure by so-called Medical Staff. During the Strike, their father, Albert stood as a Candidate in the British General Election in West Belfast to highlight his daughters' conditions. He successfully received 5, 662 votes, (11.9%). For the next 200 days, both women suffered this inhuman treatment which seriously damaged their health. In one Media interview, years later Marian described how she was force-fed;

'Four male prison officers tie you into the chair so tightly with sheets you can't struggle. 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'.

The practise of force-feeding ended after the brutal death of , Volunteer. Michael Gaughan(24) on June 3rd, 1974 in Parkhurst Prison. His death forced the British government to stop its ill-treatment of Irish Political Prisoners and assurances were given to the POWs' that they would be repatriated to Ireland. Following Gaughan's death, Dolours, Marian, Feeney andKelly were transferred to Armagh Gaol and Long Kesh. However, fellow IRA Hunger-Striker, Frank Stagg was denied repatriation and he was instead transferred to Long Lartin Prison. Where he was held in isolation, humiliating Strip-Searches and ordered to work. Staggrefused to conform to the system and resumed his Hunger-Strike on December 14, 1975. TheBritish government ignored his pleas and Volunteer. Frank Stagg (33) died on February 12, 1976 after 62 agonising days without food. 

After their arrival in Armagh, it was clear to their comrades that the Price sisters had suffered immense health problems as a result of their Hunger-Strike, Force-Feeding and imprisonment in England. The POWs', Prison Chaplin, Fr. Raymond Murray, Doctors, Family and Sinn Fein all agreed that they needed to be released from gaol. Another campaign to have the sisters freed on humanitarian grounds began but it would be another few years before they were finally released in 1980. 

Dolours & Marian Outside the British Prime Minister's Residence

After both sisters were released they remained politically active and used their experiences to help highlight conditions Irish Political Prisoners were forcced to endure in English Gaols. They also travelled throughout Ireland in support of the Blanketmen in the H-Blocks andBlanketwomen in Armagh. During the 1980 and 1981 Hunger-Strikes, Dolours and Marianworked passionately to help save the lives of the POWs'. 

Dolours found love and married Irish Actor, Stephen Rea in 1983. They moved to Dublin,where they had two children, Danny and Oscar. Sadly, the trauma of her lengthy incarceration and ill-treatment remained for Dolours and she continued to suffer from depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The majority of former Republican Prisonersbattle with the same medical conditions and Dolours was no different. It didn't help her marriage and the couple divorced in 2003.

Dolours and Marian were outspoken critics of Provisional Sinn Fein and gave many interviews about how they and other former Volunteers had been ignored by the Party in their rush to agree a political compromise in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. They rejected the terms of the Treaty and were threatened by their former Comrades. Dolours was also one of the former Combatants who gave detailed interviews to the Boston College Project about their involvement in the Provisional IRA. She also gave an indepth interview to the Irish News about her role in the disappearance of Belfast woman, Jean McConnville who the Provisional's killed and secretly buried in 1972. Dolours wanted the McConnville family to know the truth behind their mother's killing to try and give them some closure. 

As sisters, , friends, comrades, prisoners and Volunteers, Dolours and Marian were very close throughout their lives. It is a travesty of justice that Marian is currently imprisoned by theBritish Secretary of State has been refused to attend her sister's funeral tomorrow. The refusal is indicative of Britain's immoral occupation of part of Ireland given it's protracted rejection of Irish National Sovereignty. The Price sisters endured much to secure our Nation'sright to liberty and Marian continues to be held in bondage. I would urge everyone to attendDolours funeral tomorrow as an expression of our respect to her and her family. Likewise, I ask everyone to redouble their efforts to help break Marian's chains and have her return home to her loving family. Enough is enough. As another Irish Patriot said; 

'We will not take any steps backwards, our steps will be onward,

For if we don't the ghost's of the martyrs who died for me, for you,

for this Country, will haunt us for eternity...'

Maire Drumm

ARDOYNE REPUBLICAN LINK

SS UK Still Murder Journalists & Human Rights Lawyers

Since the the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and the start 

of the Peace Process In Ireland. The British have blocked an

inquiry into the British Government's role in the murder of a Human

rights lawyer Pat Finucane.

The British Government has also been involved in the murder of

another Human Rights Lawyer, Rosemary Nelson who was bombed by

their agents, just a few months after the Agreement was signed.

Agents of the British Government have also since the Agreement 

murdered journalist Martin O'Hagan.

The British have further introduced secret political internment 

without trial of political activists. Continued with political 

policing,the torture of political prisoners, the censorship of 

independent Irish media and the continuance of a Police state run

by SS UK, still very agencies involved in these murders.

Below are just a few of the many mainstream media accounts of their activities.

The bottom line, is that there is no Peace Process, based on

basic principles of civilized justice functioning in British

Occupied Ireland.It has long since been destroyed by the British 

Government and their secret service agencies known as SS UK .

-----------------------------------------

The National Union of Journalists has expressed grave disappointment at the announcement by the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland that a decision has been taken not to prosecute in the Martin O'Hagan murder case. 

NUJ Irish Secretary Seamus Dooley said the union was disturbed by the announcement. The DPP was quoted as saying the decision was made after careful consideration of "available evidence". 

NUJ activist Martin O Hagan, a Sunday World journalist, was shot dead in Lurgan in 2001. 

Mr Dooley said: “This union does not accept that the State can walk away from this case. The murder of Martin O'Hagan was an outrageous act of violence which cannot go unpunished. 

"We will continue to campaign for a full investigation leading to the conviction of those responsible for the murder of our friend and colleague.  

"Martin's family, friends and colleagues remain determined to see justice done in this case".

Almost 12 years after journalist Martin O’hagan was murdered, the DPP now says it is unlikely that anyone will ever face justice

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FAMILY, friends and former colleagues of the murdered Sunday World journalist Martin O’Hagan have expressed their anger after learning his alleged killers will not be brought to trial.

Sunday World editor Jim McDowell said he was “disappointed and angry” at the Public Prosecution Service’s decision to drop the murder case.

Yesterday’s decision comes after the PPS said evidence given by Neil Hyde, an assisting offender, could not be corroborated.

Eight people who were suspected of the murder will now not be prosecuted because of a lack of supporting evidence.

Four had been charged over their alleged involvement.

Hyde had been charged with the murder of father-of-three Mr O’Hagan (51), who was shot in September 2001. The killing was claimed by the Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used by the LVF and UDA.

After murder charges were dropped, Hyde signed a contract to assist police in their investigations. He was interviewed about his knowledge of the murder and Barra McGrory QC, said: “I know this decision will be disappointing to Mr O’Hagan’s widow, family, friends and colleagues but the evidence that can be given by an assisting offender must be carefully evaluated and the test for prosecution applied on a case-by-case basis.”

He referred to “the dangers of convicting on the uncorroborated evidence of an accomplice”.

Mr O'Hagan's brother Fintan said the family was bitterly disappointed.

“There is a witness who wants to tell a court who killed Martin O'Hagan, yet the PPS are depriving that witness the opportunity of telling the court his account and further depriving the court of the opportunity to consider the truthfulness or otherwise of that evidence and depriving the family, and indeed the public, of the opportunity to see justice in action.

“Justice need not just be done, it needs to be seen to be done,” he said.

Family lawyer Niall Murphy said they would be considering options which include making representations to Attorney General John Larkin QC over an inquest and potential civil litigation.

Mr McDowell ( left) is leading the campaign to bring the reporter’s killers to justice.

He said: “This decision comes back to the old adage that there may be law in this country, but whether there is justice — that’s another matter.”

In March 1999, just months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson was assassinated when a bomb exploded under her car. The attack was claimed by a loyalist paramilitary group but, over the last ten years, there have been several government inquiries into Nelson's murder. The latest one, which has been ongoing since 2005, has dramatically alleged that there may have been some security service collusion in the killing. Rosemary Nelson came to prominence for representing high-profile Republican and nationalist clients. It was no secret that her life was at risk and she had received many death threats - but had always been refused police protection. She had even claimed publicly that her life was being threatened by members of the RUC - allegations which have always been denied by the police.As well as investigating the events leading to Rosemary Nelson's murder, author Neil Root drew on first-hand interviews with those relevant to the case. He also examined the striking similarities between her murder and the assassination of lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989. This is a complex and terrifying story of British State terrorism in Occupied Ireland.

PM apologises for MI5's role in murder of Ulster lawyer but wife slams report into police collusion in his murder


38-year-old was shot dead in front of his wife and children at home in 1989
Report by Sir Desmond de Silva QC published today reveals the killing might not have happened without the involvement of security agencies
Widow Geraldine has repeatedly called for a full public inquiry
David Cameron admitted there was collusion between police and loyalists responsible for the killing but only ordered a review of the case



By MATT CHORLEY, MAILONLINE POLITICAL EDITOR


PUBLISHED: 09:48 GMT, 12 December 2012 | UPDATED: 10:57 GMT, 13 December 2012



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The report into the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane was publsihed today. The 38-year-old was shot at his north Belfast home by loyalist paramilitaries the Ulster Defence Association in 1989



David Cameron said the Government was ‘deeply sorry’ yesterday after a report into the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane found the security services colluded with the loyalist terrorists who killed him.


A review of the case by Sir Desmond de Silva, QC, found the father-of-three would probably not have been executed by the Ulster Defence Association without the encouragement of British agents.


Sir Desmond said state employees ‘furthered and facilitated’ the shooting of the 38-year-old, who was gunned down in front of his family in 1989.


But his finding that there was no evidence of an over-arching conspiracy involving ministers or security chiefs to target Mr Finucane sparked calls for a full public inquiry.


The widow of murdered Belfast solicitor Mr  Finucane slammed a report into his death as 'a sham... a whitewash... a confidence trick'.


Geraldine Finucane said Sir Desmond de Silva's report was 'not the truth' and renewed her call for a full public inquiry.


In a Commons statement today, David Cameron admitted Mr Finucane might still be alive had police and state agencies not colluded in his murder.


The Prime Minister said the 'appalling crime' was the result of 'shocking levels' of state collusion and apologised on 'behalf of the government and the whole country'.


The de Silva review into the 1989 killing found that state employees actively 'furthered and facilitated' the loyalist murder of Mr Finucane.


But the victim's family have criticised the review, insisting only a full public inquiry will reveal the truth about his murder.


The 38-year-old was shot in front of his wife and children at home by loyalist paramilitaries from the Ulster Defence Association in 1989.


At a press conference after the review was published, Mrs Finucane accused the British Government of suppressing the truth while attempting to blame dead individuals and disbanded organisations while exonerating ministers, serving officers and existing security agencies.


Mrs Finucane said: 'Yet another British government has engineered a suppression of the truth behind the murder of my husband, Pat Finucane.


'At every turn it is clear that this report has done exactly what was required - to give the benefit of the doubt to the state, its Cabinet and ministers, to the Army, to the intelligence services and to itself.


'At every turn, dead witnesses have been blamed and defunct agencies found wanting. Serving personnel and active state departments appear to have been excused.


'The dirt has been swept under the carpet without any serious attempt to lift the lid on what really happened to Pat and so many others.


'This report is a sham, this report is a whitewash, this report is a confidence trick dressed up as independent scrutiny and given invisible clothes of reliability. But most of all, most hurtful and insulting of all, this report is not the truth.'






More...

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Embrace of a killer: Former IRA terrorist Martin McGuinness greets Hillary Clinton as she arrives in Ulster while loyalists riot in Belfast over restrictions on Union flag







Mr Cameron told the Commons said the review had found the Army and Special Branch had advance notice of a series of assassinations planned by the loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), but nothing was done.


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Pat Finucane's widow Geraldine today arrived at the House of Parliament with her children John (left), Michael (centre) and Katherine at the Houses of Parliament in central London to read the review of the report into her husband's murder



The review found a 'relentless' effort to stop justice being done with Army officials giving the Ministry of Defence highly misleading and inaccurate information, Mr Cameron said.


Successive UK Governments are accused of a 'wilful and abject failure' to properly control secret agents within paramilitary groups.


Mr Cameron said: 'It is really shocking this happened in our country. Collusion demonstrated beyond any doubt by Sir Desmond, which included the involvement of state agencies in murder, is totally unacceptable.


'We do not defend our security forces or the many who have served in them with great distinction by trying to claim otherwise. Collusion should never, ever happen. 


'On behalf of the Government and the whole country, let me say again to the Finucane family I am deeply sorry.'


The review found no evidence that any Government was informed in advance of Mr Finucane’s murder or knew about the subsequent cover-up.


Sir Menzies Campbell, former Lib Dem leader, said he had never heard a statement in the Commons which filled him with more 'revulsion'.


However, today Mr Finucane's son John said he could not believe that there had been a public inquiry into newspapers hacking mobile phone messages but not into state involvement in the death of a British lawyer.


‘We're talking about the murder of a lawyer in the UK,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.





‘I rather flippantly announced last year that I thought it would have been easier if my father's phone had been hacked rather than being killed. That's not in any way to disrespect the victims of phone hacking.


‘But if we can have an inquiry into something as important as that, this case is the murder of a lawyer which the British government have admitted there was collusion, you don't then deal with that, such a fundamental attack on democracy, by holding a non-statutory review behind closed doors.’








David Cameron told the Commons the report revealed 'shocking' levels of state collusion



Mr Cameron has apologised more than once for the collusion between police and the loyalists responsible for the murder.


But Mr Finucane added today: ‘An apology is not in the correct running order. You don't apologise for something but then not fully admit what it is you're apologising for. I think that's what the Prime Minister has done.’


The Finucane are unhappy that in 2001 the British government agreed during peace talks to meet honour for public inquiries into deaths. Of five recommended, four were held but in Mr Finucane's case it was rejected.


Mr Funucane said: 'The only case that's outstanding is the case of my father. This review, we feel, is the embodiment of a broken promise of the British Government. We do feel that if they are sincere in dealing with this issue then they need to grasp this issue and they need to deal with it in a credible fashion.'


The loyalist paramilitaries shot Mr Finucane 14 times as he sat eating a Sunday meal at home, wounding his wife in the process. The couple's three children witnessed the attack.


The former head of the Metropolitan Police in London, Sir John Stevens, has previously investigated collusion claims surrounding Mr Finucane's death.


Shortly after starting the new inquiry, the Stevens team charged former Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch agent and loyalist quartermaster William Stobie in connection with the killing.








Sir Desmond de Silva QC has completed his 500-page report into the 1989 killing, which is published today









Former Met Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens published the results of his four-year inquiry into Pat Finucane's murder in 2003. The report confirmed that rogue elements in the security forces were involved in a deadly plot with loyalist paramilitaries to carry out a series of sectarian murders in Northern Ireland



But in November 2001 the case collapsed and he was shot dead outside his home within weeks.


In September 2004 a loyalist accused of murdering the solicitor pleaded guilty to murdering him. Ken Barrett entered his plea at the beginning of his trial.





Prime Minister David Cameron, who ordered the de Silva review, will deliver a statement to the Commons



In 2004, retired Canadian judge Mr Justice Peter Cory, asked by the Government to investigate cases of suspected collusion, concluded that military and police intelligence knew of the Finucane murder plot and failed to intervene. He recommended a public inquiry.


That year, Barrett was sentenced to 22 years' imprisonment.


In 2004, then Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy announced an inquiry under new legislation introduced in 2005.


The Finucane family opposed the Inquiries Act 2005, arguing it would allow government to interfere with the independence of a future inquiry because a government minister could rule whether the inquiry sat in public or private.


As a result, plans to establish an inquiry were halted by former Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain.


In October 2011, the Government ruled out a public inquiry into Mr Finucane's murder but put forward a proposal for a leading QC to review the case. That review is to be published today.


VIDEO: David Cameron's statement to the House of Commons...












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VIDEO: Geraldine Finucane's scathing response to report 












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