Former bomber scorns Provos BY CHRISTOPHER WALKER CHIEF IRELAND CORRESPONDENT MARION PRICE, the former Provisional IRA bomber, yesterday accused her former revolutionary colleagues of being reduced "to an armed militia of the British State". Her bitter oration over the grave of Joseph O'Connor, a leading Real IRA member murdered in broad daylight last week by Provisional IRA gunmen, confirmed that Northern Ireland faces a new republican feud. It has the potential to be more bloody than that between the Official IRA and breakaway Provisionals in the 1970s. Ms Price, who in her role as a member of the Real IRA's political wing, the 32 County Sovereignty Committee, has become a leading fundraiser from the US, cut a striking figure as she poured scorn on attempts by the Provisionals to deny Mr O'Connor's killing. Earlier, she had watched as a paramilitary colour party defied hundreds of RUC officers in the republican Ballymurphy district. They stood rigid in their balaclavas and black berets as three shots were fired over O'Connor's tricolour-draped coffin. Observers said that such scenes had not been seen at a funeral in the city for a decade. Later there was applause from the hundreds in the crowd in Belfast's City Cemetery as Ms Price, sister-in-law of the Hollywood actor Stephen Rea, said that O'Connor, 26, had been gunned down by "pro-British elements". Ms Price, convicted in the 1973 bombings of the Old Bailey and three other targets, added: "Let there be no doubt: contrary to the deliberate misinformation being peddled by the Provisional movement and aided by RUC sources, those responsible for this foul murder have been clearly identified. Shame! Shame on you!"
