I have to say that I approached this nine-episode series – shown on Disney+ here in the UK – with more than a bit of trepidation. The trailer made it look like a highly stylised, even glamourised, depiction of what it might have been like to be a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the height of The Troubles. It even had a few knockabout gags in there, too.
How can you be this way about a period of modern history that saw so many killed, maimed and traumatised forever?
I have friends who live in Belfast, and when I visited that city I was struck (and ashamed) by just how little I knew. Here over the water in mainland England, we grew up without knowing too much of the truth of what it was really like to live in Belfast or Derry, where most of the violence took place. There are endless stories to tell about The Troubles, because they stretched decades and featured so many interesting characters on both sides – deeply flawed, narcissistic, dangerous and often violent, but each maintaining that what they were doing was for the good of the people, the cause and their respective country.
This series – adapted from the prize-winning book Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe – focuses on the sisters Dolours and Marian Price (Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe) and their rise up through the ranks of the IRA. Previously espousing non-violent protest and marching for rights for Catholics at the end of the 1960s, much to the disgust of their IRA father, the teenage sisters were radicalised when they were violently attacked on a march.
Delours, in particular, is portrayed here as a strident, confident and resourceful character and soon she’s persuading the IRA’s top brass to accept women into the struggle. The man she has to ultimately convince is an earnest young man called Gerry Adams (Josh Finnan), who it is alleged is the leader of the West Belfast branch of the IRA (in fact, Adams is a HUGE character in this series, and at the end of each episode there is a disclaimer telling us that the real Gerry Adams refutes all claims that he was a member of the IRA). We have to accept this version of the truth in order to proceed throughout the series.
Soon, the sisters Price sisters rise up the ranks mirrors the escalation in violence. They stage robberies dressed as nuns to a rock soundtrack, they drive people over the border so that the IRA’s in-house brand of justice is carried out in the middle of the night, and they travel to London to carry out deadly bombings. We see IRA generals like Adams and Brendan Hughes (a brilliantly charismatic Anthony Boyle) jump in and out of safe houses like folk action heroes. My worst fears were confirmed – although slickly staged, very well acted and often thrilling, it was really felt like a glamourised account of that time of what it was like to be what many would argue to be a terrorist.
But then the second half of the series… it was a much more interesting study of guilt. Throughout that first half, we saw an older Delours (played by the peerless Maxine Peake) give her account of what really happened to an archive project (the infamous Boston Tapes). And it was this time of her life that Delours really started to unravel – creaking under the weight of guilt after driving so many people (including her friend John) to their death, and the confusion she felt after she, Brendan and many others thought that Gerry Adams – now apparently a respectable politician for Sinn Féin – had sold them out to reach a peace settlement and, subsequently, further his own respectability.
This was really good, interesting stuff, full of nuance I had hoped from the first half. Delours was now a wife (to Irish star Stephen Rea, no less) and a mum, but she was drinking heavily and taking far too many prescription drugs. Even in her addled state, the fire still burned brightly but this time she began to ask why she did what she did back in the day. What was it all for? Was it worth it? The lives she had ruined all in the name of… what? Is armed struggle the only way to achieve sustainable change? Big questions.
Another narrative strand that the series kept revisiting… that of the disappearance and murder of mother-of-10 Jean McConville. We saw her extracted from her home in the very first scene, a terrifying ordeal for her children who were eventually split up into care still hoping that she might be alive and someday come back to them.. Despite their efforts, her body wasn’t found until 2003. To say Delours was complicit in her murder was, according to Delours herself, an understatement.
I’ve often thought about stories and people from The Troubles – and in any long, unresolved conflict around the world – the protagonists sometimes become addicted to the war (and often structured and run like crime organisations) and sometimes forget the cause that compelled them to take up arms in the first place. That’s when innocent people like Jean McConville and her family get unwittingly caught up in the whirlwind.
Paul Hirons
Say Nothing is broadcast in the UK on Disney+
