Say Nothing

Say Nothing contains the awful story of murder amid the Northern Ireland Conflict and a reflection on what caused it, those who were primarily involved, some of the worst parts of what happened, and other details of this dark era in the history of Ireland.

38-year-old Jean McConville had a tough life, to begin with. She had given birth to 14 children and lost four of them. Her husband had recently died of lung cancer, leaving her to raise her ten children alone with little money in a small, deteriorating home.

But things got much worse when a knock came that night. The intruders burst into her home and told her she was coming with them. The kids recognized some of the group as their neighbors. The moment they took her away, no one saw her then.

Why would this ordinary mother disappear? It turns out she found herself a victim of the Troubles, also known as the Northern Ireland Conflict. Northern Ireland’s Catholics made up about half the population, but they were long victims of relentless discrimination at the hands of Protestants in the area.

Many Catholics left, but some felt they had no other choice but to turn to violence. Unlike Southern Ireland, Northern Ireland was still part of the U.K. They were under the control of the British government.  So a group of Northern Irelanders made up their mind to rid Northern Ireland of the British by force.

They formed the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). With the hope of uniting Ireland again.

Their preferred method for provoking the British Government was the car bomb. Sadly, these IRA car bombs caused mayhem and bloodshed on a huge scale in Northern Ireland and England. They preferred them because of the ease of transportation and camouflage. On Bloody Friday, the IRA used 20 car bombs in Belfast that killed nine and injured 130. The IRA maintained they were only meant to damage buildings and government infrastructure. Soon members of the IRA started to regret that the people of Northern Ireland seemed to be the only ones suffering in the conflict. So Gerry Adams, one of the top decision-makers of the IRA, and sisters Marian and Dolours Price set out to correct the imbalance. The sisters and several others parked car combs in London outside of British institutions. They injure people were a total of 250. That day, the Price sisters were arrested. Marian and Dolours were sentenced to 20 years in an English prison. They demanded they were transferred to Northern Ireland to serve their sentence, but to no avail. So they decided to go on a hunger strike. As the sisters deteriorated rapidly, the British Government started to…