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Dolours Price is the ex-wife of actor Stephen Rea, as well as a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Dolours Price served seven years of a life sentence for her part in an IRA car bombing outside the Old Bailey in 1973. She and her sister Marian Price, along with Gerry Kelly and Hugh Feeney, immediately went on hunger strike in a campaign to be repatriated to a prison in Northern Ireland. The hunger strike lasted over 200 days, because the hunger strikers were force-fed by prison authorities.

In an interview with Suzanne Breen, Marian described being force-fed:

"Four male prison officers tie you into the chair so tightly with sheets you can't struggle," says Price. "You clench your teeth to try to keep your mouth closed but they push a metal spring device around your jaw to prise it open. They force a wooden clamp with a hole in the middle into your mouth. Then, they insert a big rubber tube down that. They hold your head back. You can't move. They throw whatever they like into the food mixer - orange juice, soup, or cartons of cream if they want to beef up the calories. They take jugs of this gruel from the food mixer and pour it into a funnel attached to the tube. The force-feeding takes 15 minutes but it feels like forever. You're in control of nothing. You're terrified the food will go down the wrong way and you won't be able to let them know because you can't speak or move. You're frightened you'll choke to death."

In 1980 Dolours received the Royal Prerogative of Mercy and was freed on humanitarian grounds suffering from anorexia nervosa in 1981. She married Stephen Rea after her release, who was hired to speak the words of Gerry Adams when Sinn Féin was under a broadcasting ban. Dolours Price, along with her sister Marian, remains active politically. For example, she regularly contributes to the on-line journal The Blanket, which is edited by Anthony McIntyre and his wife, Carrie Twomey. McIntyre is a former IRA blanketman who spent almost two decades in prison.

External links

• Stephen Rea: A New Appreciation
• Suzanne Breen interviews Marian Price
• Source material (2000 Electronic Telegraph article)
• On This Day: 1973: IRA gang convicted of London bombings, BBC
• The Blanket

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