Say Nothing author on The Troubles: ‘It's not just victims who are traumatised, but perpetrators too’

Emily Maitlis speaks to investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, who’s book Say Nothing about The Troubles in Northern Ireland has been adapted into a TV series, out now on Disney+.

Read time: 4 minutes

In brief…

• Patrick Radden Keefe speaks to Emily about Say Nothing, the new Disney+ series following some of the real life characters involved in the IRA during The Troubles.
• He says it is really a story about how the perpetrators of violence, as well as the victims, experienced trauma in the conflict.
• Keefe says former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams is in a lonely place after he opted for political, rather than violent, means in his attempt to achieve the IRA’s aim of a united Ireland.

What’s the story?

You may not have heard of Dolours Price. Nor had Patrick Raden Keefe, until he stumbled upon the female IRA bomber’s obituary in 2013.

The American investigative journalist was immediately gripped.

“I had thought of The Troubles as a very male story.

“I was just intrigued to learn that there was this young woman who had been the first real frontline soldier in the IRA, and that she'd gone on to bomb the Old Bailey and go on hunger strike and live this very colorful life,” he tells Emily Maitlis on The News Agents.

But it was not necessarily the events of Price’s criminal past that drew Keefe to her story.

“The thing that really sparked my interest was learning that later in life, after the Good Friday Agreement, she [Price] was starting to look back on some of the things she'd done in her youth with some misgivings and wonder, what was it all for?”

It was this idea - how the perpetrators of conflict experience trauma as well as the victims - that led him to write Say Nothing, a book that went on to become an international bestseller. “You might vow to never speak a word of the things that you do. But the truth is, it's not just victims who are traumatised in a conflict like this. It's often perpetrators as well.”

What is Say Nothing about?

The study of some of the real life characters at the centre of The Troubles has been adapted into a TV series for Disney+.

The Troubles was a long period of extreme political violence between Republican Catholics and loyalist Protestants in Northern Ireland that officially began in the 1960s. The fighting finally died down after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Say Nothing does not focus on all elements of The Troubles, such as the violence carried out by the loyalist, Protestant paramilitary groups.

Rather, it’s “really a story about the kind of the conflict between one's humanity and one's politics,” Keefe says.

“There are these people who have a very extreme, radical politics, a very pure belief, and then at the same time that's constantly in tension with their own humanity and their own impulses,” he adds.

As well as Price and her sister Marian, Say Nothing follows the story of Jean McConville, the mother of 10 whose children witnessed her abduction in broad daylight. They never saw her again.

It also looks at the life of one of Ireland’s most famous political figures - Gerry Adams - the Sinn Féin politician accused of previous involvement in the IRA.

“There is an effort to try and understand these people, where they came from, what situation they were reacting to, and how is it that a person who might have lived an otherwise quite normal, conventional life in their early 20s in the 1970s would join an organisation like the IRA and end up taking up arms against the state.”

Was Gerry Adams a member of the IRA?

Adams to this day denies that he was ever a member of the Provisional IRA - the militant wing of the Irish Republican Army responsible for much of the political terrorism, and thousands of deaths, during The Troubles.

But Keefe says evidence of Adams’ involvement as a senior figure in the IRA, has been extensively documented. Much of that evidence was used to write parts of Adams’ story in Say Nothing.

He tells Emily: “The only person who would tell you with a straight face that Gerry Adams wasn't in the IRA is Gerry Adams”

He adds: “If you try to suppress an awful truth and sweep it under the carpet, eventually it's going to come out. It's just going to fester there until it is revealed in some way.”

Adams may have allegedly been linked to terrorist activity, but he was still responsible for positive change, according to Keefe.

The former Sinn Féin president advocated for a political solution to The Troubles, rather than a continued armed struggle to end British rule in Northern Ireland. He is seen as playing a key role in The Good Friday Agreement.

He says: “[Adams] ended up doing some great things in terms of steering the IRA to the negotiating table and actually seeing in a way that a lot of his compatriots could not, that you weren't going to fight the British into the sea… there needed to be a political settlement to end the troubles.”

And that’s why Keefe says Adams is “in a lonely place.”

“I think it must be quite lonely to not be able to speak truthfully about what you were actually doing all those years ago,” he says.

But just because Adams continues to, allegedly, deny his past, Keefe says it is “important sometimes to look very hard at history and not necessarily buy the version of it that somebody is selling you.”

Listen in full on The News Agents

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