''Say Nothing' is a brilliant programme on the Troubles - we spent far to long saying nothing'
'Say Nothing tells the story of the Price sisters - and it's one of the best programmes I've seen'
The smash hit Disney series Say Nothing is one of the best programmes I've seen so far on the Troubles.
It tells the story of the devout IRA members, the Price sisters, their roles in the Provos campaign of terror and their involvement with the Disappeared.
One of them, Dolours , who was married to the actor Stephen Rae is dead while the other Marian is still alive.
In case you didn't know, the Disappeared are a group of 17 people who vanished off the face of the earth during the conflict in the north and many were missing for almost 50 years.
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They were each individually abducted, tortured and executed by the IRA and buried in anonymous graves on waste ground, bogs and beaches in the Republic.
Most of them were accused of being informers while others simply breached IRA rules. The most famous of them you would have heard of it Belfast mother of ten, Jean McConville. The 37 year old was taken from her family by a gang of Provos and brought to a beach outside Dundalk where she was shot dead.
The IRA had accused her of passing information for food and money to the British Army, an accusation her family vehemently denied. They claimed she identified IRA members in the Divis flats where she lived to the Brits.
Dolours Price admitted Jean was among a number of the disappeared who she drove to their deaths including her one time friend IRA partner Joe Lynskey.
She denied killing any of them although the programme alleges her sister Marian killed Jean McConville which she has publicly denied saying she is suing Disney.
Most of the Disappeared were killed in the period from 1972-75. For years their families had no idea what happened to them, where they were buried or how they died. They all knew they were never coming back but they each had no grave to go to, to pay their respects or to grieve for their loss.
It caused huge resentment and anger among the families of the Disappeared and their failure to get any answers especially from the IRA. It was only when an Independent Commission to find the Disappeared was set up that republicans began co-operating.
All but four of the missing bodies have now been found and recovered. Jean McConville's remains were found on a beach by someone out walking their dog.
The discovery brought a huge sense of relief to the McConville children and finally some closure.
Investigators think they may have recovered Joe Lynskey's body from a graveyard in County Monaghan a few weeks ago on foot of new information. They are waiting for DNA results. They had previously been searching a bog in Monaghan looking for him.
There are still three unaccounted for. They are 19 year old Columba McVeigh, from Tyrone, Seamus McGuire from Lurgan and former British Army Captain Robert Nairac who was kidnapped by the IRA from a pub in south Army while working undercover.
The IRA blamed him for a SAS shoot to kill policy in the area which caused the deaths of a number of IRA members.
The former Louth TD Fergus O'Dowd appealed over the weekend to former IRA members to pass on the necessary information to locate these bodies to the Independent Commission. He said it was extremely important for all these families to get closure and that they bury their loved ones in their own family graves.
The Say Nothing series shined a spotlight on some of the darkest days of the Troubles and also shows the zero tolerance policy of the IRA leadership when it came to informers. It also contradicts former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams' lifelong denials that he was a member of the IRA.
Both Dolours Price and the former notorious IRA Belfast Commander Brendan " the Dark" Hughes are on record as saying before they died that they took all the orders from Adams and no one else.
There is little doubt that the best day's work both Adams, Sinn Fein and the IRA did was the Good Friday Agreement.
Twenty six years on and against all the odds we have seen lasting peace on the island and a deal with the UK that if the majority of people in the north want a United Ireland, then it will happen.
Over 3,000 people lost their lives during the Troubles and over the 30 years hardly a day went by when someone wasn't killed. This land for all its issues is a far better place without the violence. And in the words of John Hume, you have to unite the people before you unite the land.
We spent far too many wasted years saying nothing.
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