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Home Page > Blogs > News blogs > Periscope > Latest 'Get Gerry Adams' effort is led by deeply troubled woman -- Dolours Price has long history of mental illness after force-feeding

Periscope by Niall O'Dowd

Latest 'Get Gerry Adams' effort is led by deeply troubled woman -- Dolours Price has long history of mental illness after force-feeding

Posted on Tuesday, October 02, 2012 at 08:20 AM

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Political activist and former volunteer for the Provisional IRA Dolours Price
(Photo: Pacemaker)

Long ago and far away there seems little doubt that Gerry Adams was a senior figure in the IRA in West Belfast.

How could he not be? His neighborhood was under siege from the British Army and every able-bodied man back in the days when the Troubles were at their height was involved.

What is interesting about recent attempts to get Adams to admit the past is how the context is never given.

Decades of complete Unionist misrule led to a tinder-box situation after civil rights marchers were batoned and beaten off the streets in 1968 and 1969.

It all inevitably exploded and then all hell broke loose when the British Army was called in to defend the indefensible status quo we had Bloody Sunday and a fully fledged IRA campaign. That was the Northern Ireland that Gerry Adams grew up in

Dolours Price, now Gerry Adams chief accuser was caught up in it too, coming from a strong Republican family.

In March 1973 she was arrested on board a plane going to Ireland just as a 300 pound bomb detonated at the Old Bailey courts and one person was killed and many injured Her sister Marian was arrested alongside her.

Her time in prison did not go well. She and her sister went on a hunger strike and were force- fed for 200 days an horrific experience which has caused much of the mental trauma she experiences today.

Almost 40 years on, Dolours Price the former wife of actor Stephen Rea, is sadly still suffering the effects.

“She had a history of psychiatric problems and substance abuse,” said journalist Ed Moloney.

“She has been diagnosed with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], had been hospitalized repeatedly, and....(is) taking strong psychotropic drugs.

Indeed, on the day she spoke to [The Irish News] she was on day leave from St Patrick’s psychiatric hospital in Dublin.” Moloney said referring to the controversial interview she gave to that newspaper where she first alleged Adams sent informers to their death.

She is unrepentant about her past and makes no bones that she wants to destroy Adams and the process if she can.

The Irish Sunday Times quoted her this weekend saying she defended her acts while in the IRA and actually enjoyed them. “It was an exciting time, there was no real order or structure to everyday life, the war had taken away all normal routine ... I should be ashamed to admit there was fun in it in those days,” she said.

The same Sunday Times article notes that in 2001, Price was found guilty in a Dublin court of stealing prescriptions. “She seems to have an alcohol problem but is taking steps to address it,” said Judge Thomas Fitzpatrick .

Five years later Price was disallowed access to Maghaberry prison, where she was visiting a dissident republican prisoner “She was verbally abusive and threatening and was in no condition to be allowed into the visiting area,” said a senior Prison Service source.

She has also received three convictions for theft in recent years and has attempted suicide.

Little wonder Adams does not feel it is politic to pursue her accusations against him in court.

Last weekend he stated: “I am not of a mind to trail Dolours Price through the courts . . . she is unwell.”

Those who are putting her up to the statements she is making, given that she is a seriously ill woman have a lot to answer for it seems to me.

She should be allowed time and space to try and recuperate from her many problems It is sad to see her used as a “Get Gerry Adams” vehicle by sections of the media.

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RedBranch | Oct 09, 2012, 02:55 PM EDT

Missing the point! sean you are a white man in a black man's country in the middle of Asia pontificating about a country on the other side of the globe. Come on home...

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seanomelb | Oct 08, 2012, 06:58 PM EDT

Missing the point as usual RedBranch

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seamus60 | Oct 08, 2012, 01:11 PM EDT

Redbranch. I would have, had they not sold out the 6.

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RedBranch | Oct 08, 2012, 10:15 AM EDT

seamus BAC = Dublin. Do you recognize the Irish State?

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RedBranch | Oct 08, 2012, 10:13 AM EDT

Er, ah sean. I always thought taking the war anywhere was about taking the British OUT! OUT! OUT! Whats all this about negotiating table. History shows the Brits ready to negotiate from 1972.

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seanomelb | Oct 07, 2012, 09:15 PM EDT

Taking the war to mainland Britain shortened the troubles b hastening the British to the negotiating table. It,s only the bigots of neverland dragged out proceedings.

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seamus60 | Oct 07, 2012, 06:26 PM EDT

Dano, If saying the birmingham six were victims of Republicanism makes you feel better, go for it. I did`nt know Republicans had prisons at their disposal.

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seamus60 | Oct 07, 2012, 06:17 PM EDT

Dano, Who said anyone is more worthy ? Barneyjo. I think we are all entitled to wear it,but your choice the Omagh bombing a very good example of why. Just how long has backroom collusion been going on. Don`t worry about the other either cause I don`t think very many of those taking part in all these parades were at the Boyne either

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DanOLoingsigh | Oct 07, 2012, 04:57 PM EDT

Seamus - 'Not rallying to the victims of Birmingham’ you can say that again…in the hierarchy of republican victimhood the Birmingham 6, who eventually walked free, are more worthy than the unremembered ones, who didn’t…

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barneyjo | Oct 07, 2012, 12:59 PM EDT

@seamus60 - the relatives families and survivors of the Omagh would most certainly disagree with your analysis. Don the mantle of "victimhood" if you will, but do not insist that all Irish Nationalists wear it. I'm an Irish Nationalist. I live in "the six" I dont consider myself defeated in any way (I wasnt present at the Boyne myself d'you see :)!!)

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seamus60 | Oct 07, 2012, 12:10 PM EDT

Dano. The problem with ghosts from the past is something that will not dissappear shortly. We have to contend with over 3000 of them every year in the guise of victorious parades. You can hardly blame any of us either for not rallying to the plight of those people killed in Birmingham. We have already established no one had or has a monopaly on pain. However the very reason the war was ever taken to the streets of england was that the ordinary man and woman who couldn`t have cared less how many Irish men and woman were as unfortunate, would pay attention. No matter what the events in Birmingham, arresting ,torturing and imprisoning more inocent Irish people done none of the following victims any favours.

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DanOLoingsigh | Oct 07, 2012, 09:21 AM EDT

Bogside...Bobby Sands articulated the rationale of physical force republicanism, in all its irrefutable pungency…but this is not a sacred text…without mutual respect for all of the visions of the future, we all become hostages to the ghosts of the past…

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Bogside1234 | Oct 06, 2012, 11:14 PM EDT

Dano, We can all sit here and talk about Birmingham, LaMon, Bloody Friday, Bloody Sunday, Plastic bullets, the H Blocks you name it. What it all boils down to is the partition of Ireland. From the time of the treaty there have always been those who oppose british rule and their claim to any part of Ireland. That holds true from 1798 until today with those who continue to believe in physical force republicanism, it will always exist until such times as Ireland is one sovereign nation. At the end of the day the plantation of Ulster and partition of Ireland by successive british governments sowed the seeds for the war in the north and all the terrible events that have happened and were carried out by all sides. It is why Delours Price is the way she is today, maybe it’s the reason that soldier in england killed himself and his kids in the car. War is a terrible thing for everyone involved no one is exempt. I think Bobby Sands summed 800 years of conflict up with one paragraph on the second day of his hunger strike. “Foremost in my tortured mind is the thought that there can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically”.

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seanomelb | Oct 06, 2012, 06:49 PM EDT

When you've got nothing to say Dano it's better........

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DanOLoingsigh | Oct 06, 2012, 05:37 PM EDT

Sunningdale was definitely a missed opportunity…Both loyalists and P. O’Neill rejected it…Later that year 21 Birmingham men and women went out for a drink and never came home…only the Birmingham 6 are ever mentioned, sadly the other 21 lie unremembered and unremarked…too many slow learners on both sides…

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