hunger strike has died,’ her stomach seized and she wondered if it was Hugh Feeney or Gerry Kelly. The authorities would claim that Gaughan had died of pneumonia, but his family suspected that his death had been precipitated by complications associated with force-feeding, a scenario that was hardly difficult to imagine.
Roy Jenkins was starting to have what he later described as ‘forebodings of menace’. He had been thinking, lately, of Terence MacSwiney and the huge wave of recrimination to which his death had given rise. What kind of reaction might ensue if the Price sisters died? Jenkins was loath to give the impression that he would make any decision under duress, but privately he began to fear that if Dolours and Marian succeeded, he himself could be a target for the rest of his life. This wouldn’t just mean that he would have to forgo holidays in South Armagh. The Irish were everywhere. Nowhere would be safe: if those damned girls delivered on their intention, he worried, ‘I might never again be able to walk in freedom and security down a street in Boston or New York or Chicago.’ Reluctantly, Jenkins decided that he had no choice but to capitulate.
On 8 June, Dolours, Marian, Gerry Kelly and Hugh Feeney released a statement. ‘We went on hunger strike 206 days ago in support of our demand for Political Prisoner status and transfer to prison in Northern Ireland,’ they wrote. Roy Jenkins had assured them that they would be returned to Northern Ireland, they continued. So they had decided to terminate the strike. ‘Ours was never a suicide mission,’ they maintained, ‘since we did not set out to kill ourselves but only to secure just and indeed minimal demands.’
The transfer was not immediate. Instead of being shipped back to Ireland, Dolours and Marian were relocated to the women’s wing at Durham Prison. But one day in March 1975, at lunchtime, all the prisoners at Durham were ordered into their cells. Something in Dolours’s heart told her that this might be the day. She went to her cell and started packing. She put on her coat, gathering her few belongings. Then the governor walked in and announced that they were going home. ‘Or – not home. You’re going to Armagh.’
‘That’s near enough for me,’ she said.
Marian ran into her cell and they hugged each other so tightly they could hardly breathe. They shovelled the last of their belongings into bags, and the screws rushed them out into the hall. Dolours was so drunk with excitement that she hugged the prison governor.
The sisters were taken to an air force base. The flight took off, and England receded into the distance. On board the plane, a man in uniform made coffee. They had been flying over water for some time when Dolours looked out of the window and suddenly glimpsed green land below. She burst into tears.
‘That’s not Ireland yet,’ Marian said. ‘That’s the Isle of Man.’
They flew some more. Then Dolours looked out and saw green in the distance again. ‘Is that it, Marian?’ she asked.
‘I think that’s it,’ Marian said.
As the Price sisters disembarked, British Army photographers took their picture, the flashbulbs lighting up the early evening sky. The two women were overjoyed to be home, but distressed about the timing of their arrival. In February, Bridie Dolan, their aunt, had died. As a minor republican icon, she was treated to a big funeral; the authorities sent photographers to snap surveillance shots of the mourners. Four days after the funeral, Chrissie Price died of pancreatic cancer. Until very recently, it had looked as though the mother would outlive her daughters, not the other way round, and Dolours and Marian were distraught. They petitioned for compassionate leave to attend Chrissie’s funeral, but the request was denied. Instead they sent a wreath of Easter lilies. Four hundred people joined the slow-moving cortège from Slievegallion Drive to Milltown Cemetery. Albert walked alongside the coffin, his head bowed. The whole solemn procession was led by a young girl playing bagpipes. She wore the black beret and dark glasses of the IRA.
15
Captives
For weeks after their mother disappeared, the McConville children clung together, trying to hold on to the family home. They had to be there, in the event that Jean returned. But eventually the social welfare authorities intervened, and two cars arrived at Divis Flats to take the children into care. Helen McConville loaded her younger siblings into the vehicles, promising that they were going away only ‘’til