Maida Vale became the London home of Dolours Price and Stephen Rea in 1985, marking a direct breach of the residency terms attached to Price’s release from prison. Around the corner from the BBC studios and only a few miles from the Old Bailey, the flat placed the couple in the city Price had once helped bomb. The neighborhood thus stood at the intersection of her contested freedom, Rea’s acting career, and the political past that the British government would not formally set aside.

Setting and Significance

The book locates the couple’s flat in Maida Vale, around the corner from the BBC studios and a few miles from the Old Bailey. These landmarks give the address a particular charge: it was both a practical base for Rea’s London career and a home in the city where Price had been involved in bombings. Their residence made the terms of Price’s release more than a legal abstraction; daily life in London was already in conflict with the restrictions imposed on her.

Residence in Defiance of Release Terms

Price was technically violating her release by living in Dublin and travelling with Field Day around the Republic, and she repeatedly asked the British government to cancel the residency requirement or allow her to visit her husband in England. In May 1985, a police officer stopped the couple’s car in Folkestone, on the Kent coast. When asked where they lived, Rea and Price gave a London address: they had taken up residence in Maida Vale. The stop exposed a move that had already happened, rather than a proposed visit to London.

Government Response and Aftermath

The secretary of state for Northern Ireland recommended changing Price’s release conditions to accommodate the fact that she was already in England. An aide warned that imprisoning her again could provoke an adverse reaction among Catholics in Northern Ireland and might lead her to stop eating; a Special Branch report found no real basis for regarding her as a threat to Great Britain. Margaret Thatcher nevertheless refused to amend the terms. Her government instead tolerated the contradiction, allowing Price to remain in Maida Vale while avoiding an explicit concession that she had prevailed.

From Armed Campaign to Electoral Politics

Price’s London residence belonged to a larger change in her political life. She had abandoned violence as a means of pursuing a united Ireland, but not republicanism: she canvassed for Sinn Féin and supported Gerry Adams’s electoral campaign. Maida Vale therefore represents neither a simple escape from politics nor a return to her earlier campaign. It was the setting of a new domestic life, formed under restrictive legal conditions, as Price moved from armed action toward electoral work.