Marian Price

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For the U.S. politician, see Marian Heiss Price

Marian Price (b. 1954) was one of the Price sisters jailed for her part in the IRA London bombing campaign of 1973. Price was part of a unit who placed four car bombs in London on 8 March 1973. The Old Bailey and Whitehall army recruitment centre were damaged with 200 injured and one man died of a heart attack.

The two sisters were apprehended along with Hugh Feeney and seven others as they were boarding a flight to Ireland and, they were tried and convicted at the Great Hall on Winchester Castle on 14 November after a six hour discussion by a jury. Although originally sentenced to life imprisonment (which was to run concurrently for each criminal charge), their sentence was eventually reduced to twenty years.

She and her sister Dolours Price, along with Gerry Kelly and Hugh Feeney, immediately went on hunger strike in a campaign to be repatriated to a prison in Northern Ireland. The hunger strike lasted over 200 days, because the hunger strikers were force-fed by prison authorities.

In an interview with Suzanne Breen, Marian described being force-fed:

"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 resumed a private life, emerging only in the 1990s - as a vocal opponent of Sinn Féin's "peace strategy". Of the Good Friday Agreement she said: "It is not, certainly not, what I went to prison for [1]."

Price gave the graveside oration at the funeral of Joseph O'Connor[2] [3], a member of the Real IRA in Belfast murdered by the Provisionals[4].

She is now a prominent republican and member of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and spokesperson for the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association.

[edit] Further reading

  • Clutterbuck, Richard. Kidnap and Ransom. Boston: Faber & Faber, 1978.

[edit] External links