Dolours Price: The IRA volunteer who became a haunting voice from the shadows

Countries & Cities · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Dolours Price was a prominent IRA volunteer who led the 1973 Old Bailey bombing. After serving time, she became a fierce critic of the peace process and Gerry Adams. Her life, marked by trauma and secret confessions, remains a central, controversial narrative in the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Born in Belfast in 1950, Dolours Price grew up in a staunchly republican family. Her father, Albert, was a former IRA member, and her mother, Christina, was active in Cumann na mBan. Price joined the IRA in 1971, eventually becoming part of an elite, secretive unit known as The Unknowns. This group was tasked with clandestine operations, including the transport of individuals across the border to be disappeared.

In 1973, Price led a series of car bombings in London, known as the Old Bailey bombing, which injured over 200 people. Following her conviction, she engaged in a 208-day hunger strike, during which she was force-fed by authorities for 165 days. Released in 1981 on humanitarian grounds due to severe health issues, she remained politically active, though she later became a vocal opponent of the Good Friday Agreement and the leadership of Sinn Féin, specifically Gerry Adams.

Price's later years were defined by her willingness to break the silence surrounding IRA activities. She participated in oral history interviews for Boston College's Belfast Project, providing detailed accounts of her involvement in the 1972 murder of Jean McConville. These recordings became the subject of a protracted legal battle between the college and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which sought the material for ongoing investigations. Price died in 2013 from a toxic interaction of medications.

Her legacy persists through intense public scrutiny and media representation. Her life and the disappearance of Jean McConville form the core of Patrick Radden Keefe's best-selling book, Say Nothing, and the 2019 documentary I, Dolours. While her former colleagues often dismissed her claims as the result of political bitterness, her testimony provided a rare, if harrowing, window into the internal mechanics of the IRA.

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