Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland


Book: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
Basic Information : Synopsis : Characters : Expectations : Thoughts : Evaluation : Book Group : New Words : Book References : Good Quotes : Table of Contents : References

Basic Information:

Author: Patrick Radden Keefe

Edition: ePub on Libby from the San Francisco Public Library

Publisher: Doubleday

ISBN: 0385521316 (ISBN13: 9780385521314)

Start Date: April 9, 2021

Read Date: April 20, 2021

519 pages

Genre: History, Irish, Osher

Language Warning: Low-Because of violence and some language

Rated Overall: 3½ out of 5



History: 4 out of 5


Synopsis (Caution: Spoiler Alert-Jump to Thoughts):

Keefe works through the period of time in Northern Ireland called The Troubles. He looks only at the militariant Catholics and follows through some of the notable ones, such as Dolours Price, Marian Price and Bernden Hughes. This is done through the perspective of the kidnapping, death and disappearance of Jean McConville. This all centers on what part does Gerry Adams, the principal politician in Northern Ireland.


Another component of the book is the part which the Belfast Project of Boston College played. This is a set of secret archives where militant IRA volunteers recorded their actions and which was not to be disclosed until after their passing. This set of archives was made known and subpoenaed, much to the consternation of all those who participated in them.




Cast of Characters:
  • Jean McConville-abducted. Single mother of ten.
  • Dolours Price-IRA person who coordinated the London bombings. Hunger fast to get released to a Northern Ireland jail instead of an English prison.
  • Marian Price-Dolours Price’s sister as well as her sister-in-arms
  • Gerry Adams-political leader of Sinn Fein.
  • Brandon Hughes-point man for Gerry Adams. Hushes was directly involved in bombings and shootings with the IRA.

Expectations:
  • Recommendation: OSHER
  • When: January 2021
  • Date Became Aware of Book: January 2021
  • How come do I want to read this book: Osher book group is reading this.

Thoughts:

2019 National Book Critics Circle Award (nonfiction) for Say Nothing. From Wikipedia


Keefe calls this a work of narrative nonfiction. What is “narrative nonfiction”? Is it truly nonfiction? Or does a narrative play a bigger role than a presentation of facts? He says that he did not invent any dialogue. The thoughts are what was presented to him.


He does not try to give an overview of the Trouble.


Prologue: The treasure room

The Burns Library of Boston College houses the most protected resources of the College. These are kept in the Treasure Room. The book opens with two detectives who had come from the a branch of the Northern Ireland police to gather interviews which were recorded under confidentiality from people in the IRA. They were not to be exposed during the people’s lifetimes.



Book one:The clear, clean, sheer thing.


An abduction

Jean McConville, 38, was abducted from her apartment where she was a single mother of ten. The last words that his mother had said to him were “Watch the children until I come back. At the time, it was unknown who or why she was abducted.


Albert's daughters

The Price daughters were raised up on Irish tales of glory and fighting. Their father was a leading person in the fight. So Dolours grew up thinking that this was the most natural thing in the world: that every child had parents who had friends who’d been hanged.


Grew up in Andersontown.


There is a timeless element to the Irish fighting stories. As a consequence, it could be difficult to pinpoint where the story of the ancient quarrel between Britain and Ireland first began.


Patrick Pearse- an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist, republican political activist and revolutionary who was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. Following his execution along with fifteen others, Pearse came to be seen by many as the embodiment of the rebellion. From Wikipedia


Like Pearse, there was a thinking by the Irish that bloodshed was a “cleansing” thing. To the Irish like the Price, Northern Ireland was considered North of Ireland.


1969-a band of protesters were marching, non-violently to Derry. They were ambushed by Protestants.


To the Catholics, there was a perception in Northern Ireland, a caste system akin to the racial discrimination in the United States, the young marchers had chosen to model themselves explicitly on the American civil rights movement. This was written before Wilkerson’s book Caste was written. I wonder what Wilkerson would make of them thinking they were in a caste system. Wilkerson stated there was only three castes systems: Nazi’s/Jews, India, and blacks in the United States.


Eamonn McCann - Leader of the march to Derry


The basic fear of Protestants in Northern Ireland is that they will be outbred by Roman Catholics. Central to the concerns-who has power in Northern Ireland. Probably central to any concerns anywhere-is it us or them.


Wolfe Tone - Late 1700’s


The young Irish had been influenced by the Civil Rights Marches in the United States. They felt they could duplicate them in Northern Ireland in 1969. There was a sense among the students that the most intractable injustice could be undone through peaceful protest. I suspect that the Irish youth did not read the part about Bloody Sunday where the United States Civil Rights marches were beaten. Nor the other places where dogs were siked on them. Nor fire hoses, Nor the lynchings, ...


Evacuation

Jean McConville was raised in East Belfast. Her father had worked in. She was a Protestant, her husband Catholic. Sectarian tensions were less pronounced during the 1950s than they had been in the past or would become again, but even so, “mixed” relationships were rare.


Traditionally, the marchers concluded their festivities by standing on the city’s walls and hurling pennies onto the sidewalks and houses of the Bogside, a Catholic ghetto, below. But this year[1969] the provocation did not go unchallenged, and violent riots broke out, engulfing Derry in what would become known as the Battle of the Bogside .


Divis Flats - part of a slum clearance project. Mostly Catholic.


The McConvilles were forced to move when it was found out they were Catholics living in a Protestant area. Divis Flats were a place which they eventually were able to live.


A riot broke out in 1970 where 1600 canisters of tear gas was shot at Catholics. One correspondent who reported on the siege described the gas as a kind of binding agent, a substance that could “weld a crowd together in common sympathy and common hatred for the men who gassed them.


An awful place for children to grow up. Reminds me of a Nanci Griffith song, It's a Hard Life wherever you go


An underground army

Description of Belfast from Dolours Price perspective. Also talks about the split between the Regular/Original IRA and the Provisional IRA(Provos)-the younger and more violent part of the IRA. Both the Price women joined the Provos.


Brendan Behan


The Provos would call themselves “volunteers,” a name that harked back to the doomed heroes of the Easter Rising and captured the sense that patriotism is a transaction in which the patriot must be prepared to pay dearly.


Gerry Adams


When British troops were killed, Albert would freely acknowledge the humanity of each individual soldier. “But he is in uniform,” he would point out. “He is the enemy. And the Irish people believe that this is war.” He was against death, he insisted, but ultimately this was a question of means and ends. “If we get a united socialist Ireland,” Albert Price concluded, “then maybe it will all have been worth it.”


Bloody Sunday . U2 has a song by this title about Bloody Sunday


St. Jude's walk

Many in Northern Ireland came to rely on tranquilizers and drugs. McConville family had two dogs named Provo and Sticky. After Jean McConville’s husband's death-cancer-she fell into depression. Doctors found, paradoxically, that the people most prone to this type of anxiety were not the active combatants, who were out on the street and had a sense of agency, but the women and children stuck sheltering behind closed doors.


Jean McConville found a wounded soldier outside her door. She tried to comfort him since she felt he was someone’s son. She was labeled a “Brit Lover.” Dangerous thing to be too close to the British.


The dirty dozen

Hughes was a wanted man by the British. They used death squads to hunt people like him. Not to bring him in, but to kill him.


Brendan Hughes - also known as "The Dark",[3] and "Darkie" was a leading Irish republican and former Officer Commanding (OC) of the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).He was the leader of the 1980 Irish hunger strike.


Hughes worked off of creating momentum of events. Another person noted that good operations are the best recruiting sergeant.


Hughes liked a line from Mao Zedong: The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea. To Hughes, he cultivated his relationships with his city where he would be able to go in and out of places at will. He cultivated the community, knowing that without the sea, the fish cannot survive


Gerry Adams and Hughes were friends during this period of time. When Hughes had an artery severed, Adams brought a doctor to sew up Hughes. The two formed a bond: Adams was more ideological; Hughes more of a soldier and tactician.


According to this Keefe account, Adams was a commander in the Provisional IRA. Adams was more wanted than Hughes.


The little brigadier

Frank Kitson-British counter intelligence. Got his start in Kenya as the British Empire was shrinking. His job was to perform counter-intelligence among the tribes. As he navigated the dense bush, he was struck by how quickly you could adapt to the most alien milieu. In a memoir of his time in Kenya, he wrote, “Everything is strange for the first few moments, then after a time normal existence seems strange.” True-even being outdoors may seem different for a little while, then that is normal.


As Kitson learned his trade, he would induce more and more tribesmen to trust him. He notes that trust is a bond that can be cultivated.


In Kenya, Kitson found his calling. In any task-if it is a war or a project, the question should be What would success look like? How would you define victory? I do not think we have defined that in Afghanistan or any other endeavour. Also as a corollary, do we define a victory too low, then it feels wrong to say we have won. Too high and we never win.


While Hughes likes the Mao quote, Kitson counter to it was to find the fish either through rod or net. If that does not work, then do something with the water.


Several paragraphs about the British going in and rounding up people.


Simon Winchester - newspaper reporter for the Guardian. But also someone whom Kitson feed information to so that news would appear how Kitson wanted it to appear.


The cracked cup

Gerry Adams is captured and put onto the prison ship HMS Maidstone. He adopted the tactic of not owning up to his name, making up a pseudonym. The integregators could not question him until he said who he was. He was still beaten, even though the British knew who he was. This tactic is one who would adopt throughout his career, even as a politician when being questioned about his involvement in the IRA. The British wanted to negotiate. A precondition the IRA had to negotiate was for the release of Adams. A ceasefire was negotiated.


Then there were two dozen bombs planted in Belfast by Hghes’ IRA. Too many. Hughes had wanted to send a message, not harm civilians.


Talked about Joe Lynsky. He had been having an affair with the wife of another IRA member. He ordered that member shot. It was found out that Lynsky had done this. He would be court-marshalled (shot). It was his friend Dolours Price who escorted him to the court-marshall.


Orphans

The news now realizes that the McConville kids no longer have any adult supervision after a month after the abduction. Nobody was helping them. Not the neighbor nor the Catholic Church. A social worker came by before Christmas and took notes. The police did not get involved. A couple of months later, somebody came by and gave the kids her purse and rings.


The Freds

Traitors in the Provo’s. The MRF, British secret group, called these traitors, “The Freds”. No one knows why that name. Once a traitor was discovered, Normally, they would have been court-martialed, found guilty, shot in the back of the head, then dumped by the side of the road. But the British did not appear to know that Hughes had discovered this breach in the IRA’s security—and Wright and McKee would do anything, now, to save their own lives. Hughes put together how the British did their intelligence and then attacked the various locations all at once. At the end of the operation, both McKee and Wright were court-martialed. Both Huges and Adams are captured.



Book two Human sacrifice.


Close England!

Keefe goes through the logistics behind the Bloody Friday bombings, including the part Dolours Price played. Previously, the bombings had been done in Northern Ireland. These would strike the heart of England. According to Keefe’s account, Adams was in on the bombing. The bombers considered them morally absolved because they phoned in a warning. They felt it was incompetence of the police. All of the bombers were captured at the airport.


The Belfast Ten

In prison. Hughes wanted to escape. Hughes would escape in an old mattress on the back of a trash truck.


Went through the trial of the bombers. They were all convicted, except for one person who ended up cooperating. When they were sentenced, they started a hunger strike.


The toy salesman

Hughes gets recaptured. While out, he got British headquarters wiretapped. Upon his arrest, he was offered the opportunity to become an informer.


The ultimate weapon

The bombers were imprisoned in Brixton Prison. But they did not intend to stay. They [the bombers] had already stopped eating by the time they entered Brixton, refusing to take anything but water. Some of the other convicted members of their bombing crew dabbled with short-term hunger strikes, but Dolours and Marian intended to strike until death if necessary. Keefe talks about the Irish tradition of self-sacrifice to bring home a point. “It is not those who inflict the most but those who suffer the most who will conquer,” MacSwiney declared.


The Price women became propaganda pieces for the Provo’s. They were force feed which became another piece in the propaganda war. When asked, Albert Price said An awful lot of people come onto earth, eat, work and die and never contribute anything to the world,” ….. “If they die, at least they will have done something. This became a game of chicken between the British and the Price women. Who would give in first? Eventually the British stopped force feeding them.


When another Irish striker-but not connected with the bombings died, the British gave in the their demands to be held in North ireland.


Interesting striking. As I am writing these notes, Alexei Navalny had just ended his hunger strike in Russia in opposition to Putin. The Russian hunger strike did not seem to accomplish much except to draw world opinion to the situation. While the Price strike got them closer to what they wanted. I wonder why one was successful and the other was not.


Captives

Finally the social workers intervened and placed the McConville children in orphanages or “liberated” the older ones. This was not a happy time for any of the children as the orphanages were full of sadism and pedophiles.


Also talks about Adams and Hughes time in prison.


Bobby Sands - imprisons. Elected to Parliament. Died on hunger strike.


Both Adams and Price’s fathers hung out at the Felon’s Club. Gerry Adams felt about the older IRA men that defeat suited them better than victory. Interesting comment.


A clockwork doll

The Price sisters arrive at the Armagh prison. But the sisters were also ready to retreat, take a break. Age has a way of curbing one’s appetite for frontline revolution, and they were growing older. Security was looser.


Their hunger strike had done something to their mentality, particularly towards food. Enough so that Marian Price was released to a hospital on April 30, 1980. She then checked herself out after two days. But for the first time, they [the Price sisters] were uncoupled. Dolours Price felt like she was a clockwork doll, moving through time without her sister. Dolours was deteriorating.


Talks about Bobby Sands. He went on another hunger strike. He got elected to Parliament. This was a substantial change from IRA/radical politics as the IRA had always had a disdain for political change. There was a sense that one’s revolutionary fervor could be diluted all too easily by the system. This created a crisis for Thatcher. What alternatives does she have? Sands dies. Then nine more die.


But before Sands died, Dolours Price was released.


Field day

Dolours started to recover. Her release is with conditions-not to leave Northern Ireland. She petitions to be allowed to go to Dublin and is granted. She starts to live there. She takes free-lance jobs writing. She eventually connects with Stephen Rea, the actor, and they marry. She knew him both in her school days. Also it was his play she saw the night before the Bloody Thursday bombings.


Rea was in London doing theater. Price joined him there, eventually. This was in violation with her terms of release. Thatcher would not change the terms. But neither was Price arrested. Rea would often be asked about his wife, which his general take was to stop the interview. One time an interviewer asked him if political change could happen without violence. “I don’t know,” Rea said. “Does it ever/ This is an interesting take. When does change happen without violence? Even if the violence is not from those who want the change. Sometimes, such as the Civil Rights marches in the 60’s, it is from those who do not want change.


Rea was connected with Seamus Heaney whom I have read some of the translations he has produced.


Gerry Adams ran for Parliament and won. Dolours Price campaigned for him.


The bloody envelope

Talks about the role which Father Alec Reid played with the IRA as well as negotiating with the British. He felt it was his job ... was to speak for the victims


Reid believed that there were opportunities, even in the darkest times, for grace; that in the direst scenarios, one could still follow the example of Jesus; that war could call forth the very worst qualities of humankind, but also the best. “You meet God in the midst of the Troubles,” he would say. This sounds like a good messenger.


Reid felt that Physical force is a sign of the desperation of the poor.


Blue ribbons

Hughes was released from prison and was disoriented by the changes he found-life was different and so was his city. Prison has a routine, but the city does not have as much. With Adams as a politician and disavowing any involvement in the IRA, it was Huighes who people saw as being the substantiation that Adams was not part of the establishment. Hughes was still actively part of the IRA. But, Hughes wondered whether, as a pure soldier, he had been overtaken by history and grown outmoded.


Talked about Price and Rea. They had two boys. When Adams’ voice was banned from the airwaves, Rea took his part, saying his words. Rea believed that Whatever people thought of Adams, they should at least hear what the man had to say, Rea argued: “The problems will never be solved unless we are allowed to know what all the elements are.”


Part of a film which Rea was in was called The Crying Game. It was about Irish terrorism. In what seems like the theme of the book, Read says a line that there is Redemption through suffering. That’s my fave.


When the 1994 ceasefire occurred, there was a feeling by those who had fought so hard, so long and sacrificed so much that what they had done was not being valued. The one thing which the Irish got was the acceptance by the British of Sinn Fein as a legit political party.


There was a committee established to find those who had just disappeared. The McConville children had never recovered from their mother’s disappearance.



Book three: A reckoning.


A secret archive

Clinton visited Northern Ireland a year and a half after the cease-fire was signed. A year later, a bomb was set off igniting another round, followed by a year later another cease-fire. This one held.


In 2000, Boston College acted to establish a library of memories which would not be released until those in the interviews were dead. The John J Burns Library would store and secure the materials. Ed Moloney would collect the interviews; Anthony McIntyre, known as Mackers, would do the actual interview. Mackers was an IRA person who had been released from prison in 1992. Another person, Wilson MacArthur would interview those on the loyalist side. This whole thing was known as the Belfast Project.


There were assumptions about this project, the first is that it was a secret and that nobody would know about it. Second and probably the biggest is that it would be protected by the First Amendment since it would be housed in the United States, not Britain. Both assumptions would prove to be bogus. The key principle was “consent”: if, at some juncture, a majority of people in the North wanted to unite with Ireland, then the governments of the U.K. and Ireland would have a “binding obligation” to honor that choice.


In the cease-fire accord, there was no provision for the creation of any sort of truth-and-reconciliation mechanism that might allow the people of Northern Ireland to address the sometimes murky and often painful history of what had befallen their country over the previous three decades.


On the ledge

Divis Flats was being demolished. Hughes was living there. Adams and Hughes had had a falling out over the Good Friday Agreement. Mackers interviewed Hughes for the Belfast Project. To Hughes, he was following Adams' direction. When Adams disavowed his role in the IRA, he seemed to also disavow his responsibility and guilt in the orders he gave. This left Hughes with the guilt of having killed people. To Hughes, Adams seemed, instead, to glide along from one photo opportunity to the next, like a man who was not in any way shackled by his own past.


To Hughes, those who fought were dying a slow death “I would hate for young people now to have this romanticized version of the events of that time.”


Rickey O’Rawe had never spoken out to question this version of history, deferring to what he came to think of as the “carefully scripted myths” that had solidified around these dramatic events. O’Rawe was the hunger strikers spokesman/negotiator. Thatcher had given them almost everything they wanted. The strikers were willing to accept this. But the IRA wanted more. Six men died from the strike. In introspection, O’Rawe wondered if it was not for the deaths of these men, then would Sinn Fein have been accepted as a legit party? There will be those who will say that the end justified the means, that the achievement of peace was a pearl whose price was worth paying. To O’Rawe, if this was true, then Adams was both a political genius and a sociopath.


Hughes was candid in these Belfast Project conversations because he knew they would not be heard until he died.


Touts

Touts-informants. Becoming an informer makes you an outcast-both of the people you are informing on and those who you gave the information too. How to meet with informants was dicey in Belfast. The British (and to some extent the Irish) felt that everybody was recruitable.


The chapter talks about several instances of touts.


Hughes gave a recollection that McConville was an informer. She had a radio to communicate with the British. She was warned once. Then continued on being an informant and was executed. He said he did not know she was going to disappear. He said that it would be Adams who made that decision. The Unknowns would have carried out the order. Dolours Price was one of the people who transported McConville.


In Mackers’s view, “the disappearance of people is a calling card of the war criminal, whether it’s in Chile or Kampuchea.


moral injury - when you have to compromise your morals in order to complete your objective. Wikipedia: refers to an injury to an individual's moral conscience and values resulting from an act of perceived moral transgression, which produces profound emotional guilt and shame,and in some cases also a sense of betrayal, anger and profound "moral disorientation"


Price suffered moral injury. She would question, is this what we killed for? she would ask herself. Is this what we died for? What was it really all about.


Price did not tell of her part of the McConville abduction and disappearance.


Bog queen

This chapter goes through trying to find the “disappeared” graves. In the Chilean civil war, Ariel Dorfman observed that “You cannot mourn someone who has not died.” In Northern Ireland, you never knew what happened to those who disappeared, rather than being left on the street for dead. There were 16 disappeared people in Northern Ireland.


People were given limited immunity for disclosing where bodies were. Bodies were found. Most/All were informers. As far as McConville, no one was admitting what happened to her. All said she was an informer. Adams met with the McConville children, but never admitted involvement.


The chapter heading “Bog Queen” comes from a Seamus Heaney poem called the Bog Queen. Ireland is made up of bogs which help preserve bodies.


An entanglement of lies

In 2002, IRA broke into a prison which housed the secret files of British intelligence. This included all of the files of informants. This was to figure out out who the top informant in the IRA was-Steak Knife. It turned out this high level informant was the person in the IRA who was in charge of killing IRA informants, Freddie Scappaticci. But he was not the only paid informant. Adams right hand man, Denis Donaldson was also an informant.


Keefe asks the question: an agent is a murderer, and his handlers know that he is murdering people, does that not make the handlers—and, as such, the state itself—complicit? British Army sources would subsequently claim that Scappaticci’s efforts saved 180 lives.


British intelligence had colluded with loyalist paramilitary organizations, killing fellow British citizens. They [Irish Catholics] had been dehumanized by the conflict to the point that organs of the British state often ended up complicit in such murders, without any sort of public inquiry or internal revolt in the security services.


When Thatcher was made aware of the illegal acts being carried out and asked what boundaries there were. None.


Later a storm had passed through and some beach sand was eroded. A passerby saw some fabric sticking out of the sand. When he pulled a human bone came out-Jean McConville.


The last gun

The IRA is disarmed. Hughes died. Others were now telling the IRA story, connecting Adams with the IRA. The secret of the Belfast Project’s existence was now out. People, not just scholars, were requesting access to it.


There were also misunderstandings of when the tapes would be released. On the loyalist side, it was understood that it was only when all participants were dead, not just the person who said it.


Price was struggling with a form of PTSD. She would get upset and talk with journalists when she encountered articles from IRA or former IRA members which were meant to shade what happened.


With the Belfast Projects, the leaders tooks certain things for granted and prevented them from asking important questions about how to manage the process if the whole thing unraveled and their most paranoid, worst-case-scenario fears came true.


The mystery radio

The finding of McConville’s body relieved the family on one side, but there now arose difficulties.. Was she an informant? When was she kidnapped? Differences of facts and findings lead to differences of opinions.


The Boston tapes

Both the British and Ireland had stored archival material at Boston College, sealed for thirty years. But now the British were subpoenaing the Belfast Project archives. Boston College gave up the Hughes tapes.


One issue is that Boston College was not on sound legal footing to withstand a subpoena. Each of the participants had made promises, but not always followed through or over extended what they could deliver. Talks about the back and forth of the legalness of fulfilling the requests. The courts sided with issuing the subpoena.


Also there were many academic issues with the Project. Most of the people at the college did not know about it. There was no board to oversee the project. The history department felt slighted and did not support the Project nor how it was put together.


While Dolours Price did not talk to Mackers about McConville, she did talk to Moloney about her. Price insisted McConville was an informant. While Price did not know the particulars, she was questioning why kill a mother of ten? Was what she did so heinous to destroy eleven people? She said that three volunteers-two of which she named, one of the people shot McConville. Price noted that “As an IRA volunteer, … I was often required to act contrary to my nature.” Sometimes she had to obey orders that were not easy to obey. At the time, she always did as she was instructed.


Adams was arrested by British police based upon Price’s recorded recollections. He spent four days in prison, then was released on insufficient evidence.


Death by misadventure

Marian Price participated in a 2009 attack on soldiers, twelve years after the Agreement had been in force. First soldiers killed.


Talked about Adams' cover stories about him being arrested.


Dolours Price died of an overdose on Valium. At the funeral Eamonn McCann said “Sometimes we are imprisoned within ideals.”


This is the past

A North Ireland report in 2015 stated that all of the paramilitary organizations of the past were still operational. It also stated that the IRA controlled Sinn Fein. This indicated that Northern Ireland was still a divided area. But the report also noted that the organizations were playing a large part in transitioning from armed conflict to political progress. The existence and cohesion of these paramilitary groups since their cease-fires has played an important role in enabling the transition from extreme violence to political progress This may be because of the monopoly and its enforcement of its powers.


Ivor Bell went on trial for the abduction of McConville.


This raises the question, who or whom should be accountable for the violence, including murder, of North Ireland citizens during the years of the Trouble? The situation was complicated because of the lack of cleanliness on both sides. Outrage about unprosecuted crimes abounded. Accusations of the unbalance of crimes prosecuted abounded.


A loyalist was also charged for crimes during the Troubles, Winston Churchill Rea. The tapes at Boston College were also procured. Mackers was not happy about this he said “would describe the PSNI stance as one of prosecuting truth, rather than procuring truth,”


It was tough for the state to prosecute without upending things or inditing itself. So people started sueing those who participated.


Mackers was also getting implicated. He had recorded an oral history. And now the British had requested his self-interview from Boston College. Interesting how Keefe frames this. The state could fish happily from his oral history and bring trumpted-up charges against him forever. Before Keefe had talked about him belonging to the illegal IRA, having a firearm in prison, and being involved in a bombing. These do not sound like trumped up charges to me. Mackers was in a desperate place because he was not on the IRA “friendly” list after Boston College, the British was after him and he was unemployed with children to feed.


Interesting questions Keefe raises: Should the state be accorded more leniency because, legally speaking, it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force? Or, conversely, should we hold soldiers and cops to a higher standard than paramilitaries?


Was it possible to appropriately calibrate the number of investigations of republican murders with those of loyalist murders?


The unknown.

This is a chapter about Keefe’s opinion about what he wrote.


Keefe is Irish, but never been to Ireland until starting to write a book. But Keefe ws not too interested in Irish causes. But I never felt any particular interest in the conflict in Northern Ireland. He had not written about the Trouble and was not inclined to. But he had an interest in collective denials-such as what was talked about in the book, particularly Adams, but was also brought out by McConville, Dolours Price, and BrendanHughes.


He thought that McConville was a good vocal point of his story. He noticed that Price had said there were three people who went to bury McConville. There was McClure, Price and an unidentified person. Keefe thinks he knows who the third person was. He was able to read Moloney’s redacted copy of Price’s interview. Based upon an interview with Mackers, he felt the third person as Adams’ personal driver. In Moloney’s blog, Broken Arrow, he denies Keefe’s conjecture.


He talks about the role Gerry Adams played. He doubts Adams’ denials about IRA involvement. But he does not go with Hughes and Price’s thoughts on abandoning the cause. Keefe feels that Adams was able to play the role of a chameleon changing colors as needed. The price was abandoning those who supported him.


There are consequences of Brexit. One may be a united Ireland since there will be a stronger border due to Brexit.


Evaluation:

Keefe claims to be a dis-interested writer about the Troubles of Northern Ireland. What he is more interested in is what he calls “collective denials”-when a large number of people or even a culture. He is fascinated by how the Provisional IRA was involved in many ruthless activities, but denied they were particularly ruthless. Even more so, he is interested in Gerry Adams' denial of being involved in the IRA.


He uses the disappearance of Jean McConville as an example and follows many related and unrelated lines of inquiry into the people and lives affected. He looks particularly at Brendan Hughes, Dolours Price, and some of Dolours’ sister Mirian. He ties these people in into the Bloody Friday London bombings, various disappearances of informers, as well as murders and uprisings.


Most of the book is based upon interviews with the participants, or people who interviewed them. Some participants, such as Gerry Adams or Mirian Price did not want to be interviewed. In researching the book, the Belfast Project archives of Boston College became known. He did not have access to them, but he did have access to those who conducted the IRA interviews.


Keefe does not claim this is a history of the Trouble or even how the IRA was involved in these. This is a good book to read to understand the times and pressures of the Provisional IRA. The last chapter contains his conjectures on various people’s involvement. Some of these conjectures are in dispute. (It should be noted that Keefe’s book is well researched, with a large set of reference notes.)


 
Notes from my book group:

The OSHER Book Club read this book, May 7, 2021.


What is “narrative nonfiction”? Do you think it is a better way to present nonfiction? How so? What dangers is there in presenting nonfiction this way?


What was the purpose of the Belfast Project at the Boston College? Did it fulfill its purpose? Where did it fail? How could there have been a better basis for establishing this project?


The Price daughters were raised on tales of the IRA fighting the British. How does this influence their thinking about what is a normal set of activities? Also what moral codes to use to remove the British governance of the area? What lessons can we learn? If you had a child who was raised up in Belfast during this time, what do you think they would learn?


In April 2021, our OSHER group read Caste by Isabel Wilkinson. Keefe says that in Northern Ireland, a caste system akin to the racial discrimination in the United States, the young marchers had chosen to model themselves explicitly on the American civil rights movement. Does this fit with the caste system Wilkinson puts forth? What implications does that have? Should this have been included in Wilkinson’s book as what a caste system is?


In 1969, the young people of Belfast and Northern Ireland went on a march, fashioned after the Civil Rights marches in the United States South. What expectations did they have? Was this march a failure when compared to the ones in the United States? Why? What made the ones in the United States successful while this one did not?


Was Jean McConville right in trying to help the wounded soldier? Was she aiding the enemy? How does this tie in with Albert Price’s view that the soldier was a human, but in uniform and should be viewed as an enemy in war? What is the right thing to do? What would you have done?


In a conflict, What would success look like? How would you define victory? What would victory had looked like to the British? To the IRA? To the United States in Vietnam? In Afghanistan? What goals should be told to the people of a country?


Was how the British was managing the conflict in North Ireland ethical or moral? Was there a way for them to have engaged in a more ethical manner? Over time, the Irish Catholics were subconsciously thought of as not human. How did this matter on how the British worked through this conflict? How do you make a person to be thought of as being less than human? What implications does that have?


When the Bloody Friday bombings happened in London, the bombers had a warning phoned in. Was this enough to keep them morally absolved? If not, are there any measures which would have made the point without the explosions? How ethical is it to involve civilians in the conflict? Are civilians morally involved in a conflict in their country? If so, how are they to conduct themselves?


In prison, hunger strikes were implemented to try to get the prisoners status changed to reflect their view of something more like enemy combatants. Do you picture them as enemy combatants or criminals? How come? What would cause the differentiation?


Were the hunger strikes successful? What made them successful? At what cost? Do you think the strikers understood both the short-term and long term costs? What does it require to make a hunger strike successful? Why was Alexei Navalny hunger strike not successful? If he had died would that have been considered a success?


Stephen Rea was asked, can change happen without violence? How would you answer that? Can you give an answer to when major or structural change happened without violence?


Father Alec Reid felt that there were opportunities, even in the darkest times, for grace. Or that “You meet God in the midst of the Troubles,” Why do these statements seem so paradoxical? Are they true? How does grace present itself in dark times? Have you had this experience?


Reid also felt that Physical force is a sign of the desperation of the poor. How come? When there is violence what should we be looking for? Will understanding the roots of violence help us relieve the need for violence? What should we be looking for when there is violence in the United States, such as when the Black Lives Matter protests were sometimes disrupted by violence? Or the US Capitol building attacked? [Just to be clear, I am not making these actions the same, or casting blame on who started the violence.]


It was felt that as the hunger strikers died, pressure mounted on the Thatcher government to come to an agreement. After the sixth striker died, Sinn Fein was accepted. What calculus is there to govern the cost of a life in relationship to the saving of other lives? What calculus is there to say if a cause is worth the lives it will cost to achieve it?


Most people who were killed as informants were left on the street as a warning. A small number were killed and disappeared. Some people in the book said “disappearing” people was a war crime. What makes this a war crime?


Keefe says that Dolours Price suffered a moral injury, similar to PTSD. Moral injury is when you have to compromise your morals in order to complete your objective. Why does a person violate their “moral compass”? How does it affect you when you have felt a need to cross your moral boundary?


Keefe asks the question: an agent is a murderer, and his handlers know that he is murdering people, does that not make the handlers—and, as such, the state itself—complicit?


Eamonn McCann said “Sometimes we are imprisoned within ideals.” What does this mean? How was Dolours Price an example of this? Do we see any situations where people are imprisoned by their obsolete ideas?


A major question throughout this book is who should be held accountable for what types of actions after a conflict like the Troubles. How would you answer this? Can you give British soldiers a pass because they are operating under the state’s authority? Or prosecute IRA members because they are not part of the state? Does the victor have the right to prosecute the loser? Keefe talked about Mackers being prosecuted on trumped up charges, such as bombings, having a fire arm in prison, … Are these real or trumped up charges?


Keefe also raises these questions: Should the state be accorded more leniency because, legally speaking, it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force? Or, conversely, should we hold soldiers and cops to a higher standard than paramilitaries? Also how to be fair and proportional in the prosecutions?


Keefe stated that he was interested in writing this book to study collective denials. What does he mean by that? Where does he see there was collective denial? Did he come to any conclusions?


Do you think the current situation in Northern Ireland will last? If not, how will it change?




How do you want your life to change because you read this book?



Many of these questions are either from or adapted from LitLovers.

  • Why the title of Say Nothing?
  • Does this story work as a history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland?
  • Did the ending seem fitting? Satisfying? Accurate?
    • Which character did you identify with?
    • Which one did you dislike?
  • Every story has a world view. Were you able to identify this story’s world view? What was it? How did it affect the story?
  • In what context was religion talked about in this book?
  • Was there anybody you would consider religious?
    • How did they show it?
    • Was the book overtly religious?
    • How did it affect the book's story?
  • Why do you think the author wrote this book?
  • What would you ask the author if you had a chance?
  • What “takeaways” did you have from this book?
  • What central ideas does the author present?
    • Are they personal, sociological, global, political, economic, spiritual, medical, or scientific
    • What evidence does the author use to support the book's ideas?
    • Is the evidence convincing...definitive or...speculative?
    • Does the author depend on personal opinion, observation, and assessment? Or is the evidence factual—based on science, statistics, historical documents, or quotations from (credible) experts?
    • What implications for you, our nation or the world do these ideas have?
    • Are these idea’s controversial?
    • To whom and why?
  • Are there solutions which the author presents?
    • Do they seem workable? Practicable?
    • How would you implement them?
  • Describe the culture talked about in the book.
    • How is the culture described in this book different than where we live?
    • What economic or political situations are described?
    • Does the author examine economics and politics, family traditions, the arts, religious beliefs, language or food?
  • How did this book affect your view of the world?
    • Of how God is viewed?
    • What questions did you ask yourself after reading this book?
    • Talk about specific passages that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad...?
  • What was memorable?

Reading Groups General Fiction Guide


Questions from LitLovers:

1. A saying at the time of the Troubles went, “If you’re not confused, you don’t know what’s going on." The times were certainly confusing: for those on the outside of the conflict, let alone those on the inside. Does Patrick Radden Okeefe clear up the confusion for his readers—for you? In what way has reading Say Nothing increased your understanding of Northern Ireland's decades-long (many say centuries-long) struggle?


2. Keefe has zeroed in on the murder of Jean McConville. Given the level of brutality and carnage that took place for so long, why might the author have used that particular episode as the opening of his book?


3. In what way would you describe (as some reviewers have) Say Nothing as a murder mystery?


4. Which individuals—in this book of real life people—do you feel more sympathy for than others? What about those individuals whose actions disturbed you? Despite all the carnage, are you able to find any humanity in those who committed acts of violence? Does it matter that they acted in service to a cause, one they believed in passionately?


5. Follow-up to Question 4: Dolours Price and others feel that the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement took away any justification for the bombings and abductions she had participated in. How would you answer her?


6. What is the significance of the book's title, "Say Nothing." What are the ways that phrase resonates throughout the book?


7. Since the peace accord, a "collective denial" has washed over the Belfast society. Is this obfuscation, a hiding of sorts, beneficial? Has it lead to a genuine, settled peace? Would an open reconciliation, through confession and forgiveness, work? What are the varying points of view, including yours?



New Words:

  • Oedipal (2): relating to or characterized by an Oedipus complex.
  • Lambeg drum (2): a large Irish drum, beaten with curved malacca canes.
  • basso profundo (2): a bass singer with an exceptionally low range.
  • Marzipan (4): a confection consisting primarily of sugar or honey and almond meal (ground almonds), sometimes augmented with almond oil or extract. It is often made into sweets; common uses are chocolate-covered marzipan and small marzipan imitations of fruits and vegetables. It can also be used in biscuits or rolled into thin sheets and glazed for icing cakes, primarily birthday cakes, wedding cakes and Christmas cakes.
  • Saracens (6): primarily Arab Muslims, but also Turks or other who were muslims as referred to by Christian writers in Europe during the Middle Ages. Also a troop carrier.
  • Shebeens (8): (especially in Ireland, Scotland, and South Africa) an unlicensed establishment or private house selling alcoholic liquor and typically regarded as slightly disreputable.
  • Erudite (11): having or showing great knowledge or learning.
  • Colleens (14): a common English language name of Irish-American origin and a generic term for Irish women or girls, from the Irish cailín 'unmarried girl/woman',
  • Anodyne (21): not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so.
  • MRF: Unknown acronym. But an elite, super-secret British force to hunt down IRA people.
  • Provisionals: A branch of the IRA which were younger and more aggressive in their tactics than the older ones who had previously fought.
  • Troubles: The period of the 1960-1990’s in Northern Ireland where the British and IRA fought a civil war, undeclared.
  • Republicans: Irish nationals

Book References:

Good Quotes:
  • First Line: THE JOHN J. BURNS LIBRARY occupies a grand neo-Gothic building on the leafy campus of Boston College.
  • Last Line: But their natural instinct is to fly back to the place where they were born.
  • Trust is a bond that can be cultivated. Chp The little brigadier
  • It is not those who inflict the most but those who suffer the most who will conquer. Terence MacSwiney, Principles of Freedom (May not be a direct quote)
  • Age has a way of curbing one’s appetite for frontline revolution, and they were growing older. Chp A clockwork doll
  • Sometimes we are imprisoned within ideals. Eamonn McCann, At Dolours Price funeral, January 2013
  
 Table of Contents:
  • Prologue: The treasure room
  • Book one: The clear, clean, sheer thing.
    • An abduction
    • Albert's daughters
    • Evacuation
    • An underground army
    • St. Jude's walk
    • The dirty dozen
    • The little brigadier
    • The cracked cup
    • Orphans
    • The Freds
  • Book two: Human sacrifice.
    • Close England!
    • The Belfast Ten
    • The toy salesman
    • The ultimate weapon
    • Captives
    • A clockwork doll
    • Field day
    • The bloody envelope
    • Blue ribbons
  • Book three: A reckoning.
    • A secret archive
    • On the ledge
    • Touts
    • Bog queen
    • An entanglement of lies
    • The last gun
    • The mystery radio
    • The Boston tapes
    • Death by misadventure
    • This is the past
    • The unknown.

References:


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