PAROLE COMMISSIONERS STONEWALLING

Posted By: December 17, 2012

I came to America forty years ago. One of the early protests I helped to organize was outside the United Nations – to protest the inhumane and racist mistreatment of the Price sisters imprisoned in England. The late Paul Dwyer and I spoke. The other speaker was Albert Price,the father of Marian and Dolours, whom we had brought out from Belfast. For years later, I would visit Albert when I went home to Ireland.

And now, after all these years, I am protesting the mistreatment of Marian Price.
This is the sort of thing that for centuries has ensured that Irish-Americans  would retain an ongoing visceral fury at British injustice. The British establishment professes bewilderment at the “ intransigence” of Irish-Americans  — that they are “still going on about The Famine, etc.” Well, for a current  explanation for our fury, look no further than the mistreatment of Marian Price — made all the more outrageous since it is happening in the middle of the Irish peace-process: “For if they do these things with a green tree, what shall be done with the dry?” (Luke 23:32).
A singularly gratuitous example of the anti-Marian cruelty is the apparent stalling, even stonewalling,  of the Parole Commissioners regarding Marian’s “ application for release.” “Parole Commissioners” may well now enter the Irish-American lexicon in the same breath as The Famine, Gombeenman, Cromwell, etc., etc. … And don’t blame Irish-Americans, but the reason: gratuitous mistreatment of the Irish.