Irish Republican News · January 24, 2013

Dolours Price dies

Veteran republican Dolours Price, sister of Irish political prisoner Marian Price, has died.

Dolours remained a significant force in Irish republicanism until her untimely death in Dublin last night.

Following the introduction of internment in 1971, when hundreds of nationalists were arrested and imprisoned without trial, she approached Sean MacStiofain, one of the founders of the Provisional IRA and said she wanted to be a “fighting soldier”. She campaigned to join the IRA, not part of Cumann na mBan, the women’s wing of the republican movement. An IRA Army Council was convened and Price was sworn into the organisation, followed by her sister. Both played a significant role in the IRA’s armed struggle.

In 1973, she and her sister were sentenced to life imprisonment in England, and immediately embarked on a 200-day hunger strike seeking their repatriation to a prison in Ireland.

During the hunger strike, which was called off in 1974, the sisters were force fed.

Following her release on compassionate grounds in 1980, Dolours returned to Dublin and she married Belfast actor Stephen Rea in the early 1980s. The couple, who divorced in 2000, have two sons.

Her sister Marian Price was interned in 2011 by an order of the then British Direct Ruler Owen Paterson. Marian continues to suffer serious ill health as a result of her hunger strike and remains the subject of a worldwide campaign for her release.

Their brutal treatment in English prisons continued to affect both sisters’ mental health, and Dolours has received treatment for post traumatic stress disorder.

In recent years, she was highly critical of the Sinn Fein leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and of the peace process. She has made a number of statements denouncing Mr Adams for allegedly denying his IRA past, and her involvement in a historical archive project for Boston College became the subject of a PSNI subpoena and multiple legal actions.

It is understood she died peacefully at her home last night in Malahide, County Dublin. Ar dheis De go raibh a hanam.

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