Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

“The last words that his mother had said to him were ‘Watch the children until I come back.’” 

Jean McConville uttered these words to her son before the IRA disappeared her. They communicate the everyday, familial concerns that a mother maintained even in the midst of warfare. Her children would forever remember Jean as a good mother and project a sympathetic image in light of accusations that Jean was an informant. In this quotation, she assumes that she will return home. The children maintain this desperate delusion for months after she disappeared and despite evidence to the contrary. The larger story of a widowed mother abducted from her home, leaving 10 children orphaned, communicates the personal tragedy that the Troubles wrought in Northern Ireland.

“Perceiving, in Northern Ireland, a caste system akin to the racial discrimination in the United States, the young marchers had chosen to model themselves explicitly on the American civil rights movement.” 

Before the Troubles erupted into violence, peaceful student protesters articulated an ideological and practical freedom struggle that they shared with other working-class populations across the globe. They related the marginalization of Catholics and social immobility of urban workers across religious lines to other global conflicts spurred by bigotry and industrial capitalism. Though these late-1960s-era protestors wanted to emulate Martin Luther King Jr. in their rhetoric and action, when they confronted violence, many reconsidered the efficacy of nonviolent tactics and committed themselves to an entirely opposite strategy.