Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Chapter Seven offers information on key British figures in the conflict. Keefe recounts a brief life story of Frank Kitson, a zealous and eager soldier in the British Army who launched a notable military career fighting British colonial wars in Africa. Specifically, in Kenya, Kitson began strategizing against insurgent violence via “counter gangs” (68), cohorts of rebels that switched sides and provided insider intelligence. He then moved onto Malaya (Southeast Asia), the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman in the Middle East, and Cyprus, before writing Low Intensity Operations at Oxford University. This handbook on counterinsurgency stressed the need to gain intelligence and “win the hearts and minds of the local population” (70). Having established himself “as perhaps the preeminent warrior-intellectual of the British Army” (70), superiors promoted him to brigadier and sent him to Northern Ireland.

Satisfactory intelligence had certainly been lacking for the British. Soldiers did not even know what ranking IRA leaders looked like. Nonviolent civilians suffering from the chaos often stayed silent and refused to directly aid the British. As much as this lack of intelligence slowed British objectives, bad intelligence from sources such as the RUC botched missions the British Army attempted to carry out. For example, soldiers snatched and interned hundreds of men based on outdated suspect lists and soldiers’ best guesses about who was who. Internment itself was a failure; news of raids leaked and many IRA volunteers, Dolours Price among them, fled in time to avoid confrontation.

Not everyone, however, was so prepared or lucky. British forces blindfolded a man named Frankie McGuigan and 11 compatriots. For a full week at a prison in Derry, interrogators physical harmed, starved, and deprived the men of sleep under the guise of “interrogation in depth” (77). 

The year 1972 marked the apex of IRA and British Army violence in Northern Ireland and came with significant developments. In March, police arrested and imprisoned Gerry Adams. He was initially jailed, like so many others, on the HMS Maidstone, a ship prison in Belfast Lough, but was relocated upon the completion of a larger prison on land, Long Kesh, just outside the city of Belfast. Shortly after the transfer, Dolours and Marian Price showed up to take Adams “to a meeting with other members of the republican leadership on a matter of utmost delicacy” (83). The British had authorized the release so Adams could attend negotiations for a cease-fire. The cease-fire began in June and ended in July, lasting only two weeks. It was a brief reprieve from violence and a reminder of normal life for the war-torn city’s residents. After the truce, however, some of the most notable IRA violence further destroyed the city. A largescale bombing raid targeting British-owned infrastructure and commercial property killed nine people and wounded another 130. This event is remembered as “Bloody Friday.”

Divisions among the Irish themselves further complicated and threatened operations. The two branches of the IRA, the Provos and the Official IRA, known as the “Stickies,” targeted each other. This tension, however, often unintentionally implicated innocent bystanders.

Keefe provides one example. Monk-turned-Provo Joe Lynskey, a friend of Dolours Price’s, ordered the murder of a fellow Provo and blamed it on the Stickies. Looking for the culprit, Provo gunmen unintentionally killed an uninvolved patron at a makeshift bar called the “Cracked Cup.” Provos soon learned of Lynskey’s treachery and court-marshaled him. Dolours Price, now a member of Gerry Adams’ elite squad called the “Unknowns,” drove Lynskey to his death, sad to lose her friend, but committed to independence via strict IRA protocol.

This short chapter follows up on the McConville children after the disappearance of their mother. Though neighbors gave a wide birth to the family and local police failed to make any meaningful investigation, the BBC came to the McConville unit in January 1973 to interview the kids. They were still operating under the delusion that their mother would soon return home, but as their situation grew grim and they grew hungry on Jean’s meager pension, several children began to steal provisions and run wild. Helen and Agnes, in their teens, attempted to play the parenting roles. Archie worked locally as an apprentice, but none of the other children had income. Their grandmother, “Granny McConville,” lived in town but was no help; she regarded the children with as much contempt as her missing daughter-in-law. In February, social services intervened to relocate the children.

The chapter ends with a reflection from Michael McConville. The week after Jean disappeared, a stranger came to the door and reported that he had been ordered to deliver a few items to the children. He handed them three of Jean’s rings and her handbag. Though his brothers and sisters held onto the hope that their mother would return, Michael looked back to conclude that this delivery made him realize that his mother was gone forever.

The “Freds” were loyalist and republican informants who double-crossed their respective paramilitaries to aid the British Army—one of Frank Kitson’s counter-gangs. Hughes found out that two young Provos, Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee, had been captured and converted to Freds. Wright, especially, had done serious damage; he reported the identities and chain of command within Hughes’s D-Company. Despite their betrayal, however, recapturing these former Provos had benefits. Hughes learned about the MRF from Wright. Just as the young men had initially switched sides to save their lives, they switched back to do so again, becoming triple agents and supplying intelligence on the British.

With this new source of information, Provo leadership was able to identify major tenets of British strategy. One essential operation was a door-to-door laundry service operated from a renovated van. Before bringing in clothes for cleaning, the van brought them to an office in the center of the city to be analyzed by British authorities who took note of chemical contaminants and changes in orders at various addresses. The MRF also owned a massage parlor where patrons engaged in valuable, indiscreet gossip. In the fall, Hughes decided to “launch three near-simultaneous strikes” on these entities in order to “wipe out the whole intelligence-gathering apparatus in the space of a single hour” (105). Gunmen open fired on the van, the office, and the massage parlor. The disruption marked a major victory for the Provos.

Though Hughes had promised Wright and McKee immunity in good faith, the IRA ordered Dolours Price, again in her capacity as an Unknown, to drive the two men into the Republic for their court martial and execution.

Momentum shifted again. A British operation successfully captured Adams and Hughes at a call house in July 1973. Their captors beat them in and out of consciousness and brought them to Long Kesh prison.