The Blindboy Podcast - Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

Episode Date: November 13, 2018

Thoughts from Spain, and and interview with Human and Civil rights activist Bernadette Devlin McAliskey Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Buenos dias you filthy Williams! How are you getting on? You'll notice that this week it sounds slightly different because I am not in my fucking studio at home. I am over in Spain on a writing week, hence. Spanish noise in the background. I'm currently sitting in a. A very beautiful park. Looking at a collection of pigeons. And there's these small little. They're like wrens.

Little brown boys. And then over in the distance. There's these lads that look like parrots. They're literally as green as the grass and their their whole shtick seems to be

walking around the grass picking up worms or whatever the fuck they're at but being perfectly camouflaged so they must have evolved some type of

symbiotic relationship with the grass where they're perfectly camouflaged there's a there's a there's a French bulldog having very silly fun

with a border collie and yeah I'm I'm over on a on a writing a writing week because that's

that's what I do that's what I do it's like my job is writing and doing this podcast and who the fuck says I need to be in that's what i do that's what i do it's like my job is writing and doing this podcast and who the fuck says i need to be in limerick to do that so i come over here to write with the goal of having maybe 2 000 words a day and the purpose of it is as i've mentioned before if i put myself in a situation where the birds are different the ground is different the trees are different, the ground is different, the trees are different,

the sound is different, when everything's different, my brain is in a continuous state of excitement. You know, the type of shit that gives you mad dreams. So that helps me with creative writing and achieving a state of flow. I had an interesting day yesterday. Because I don't... Because I have no people really to talk to over here because I don't speak Spanish

I find myself there's a man dismantling his bicycle beside me that's very loud, I apologise yeah, because I don't fucking talk to humans over here I find myself gravitating towards animals so I started off my day yesterday

with trying to feed one of those little brown finches. And one of them, one of them just looked incredibly sick. And I looked up his symptoms online and it was some type of disease that causes him to have growths in his throat. So eating is painful and be quite lethargic. And yeah, I was watching all the other little wrens

around him just fucking push him out of any circle where there was a bit of food going on you know, real vicious, reminded me of old men who comment on the journal that he, when homeless people are mentioned or refugees are mentioned. Then later on I was writing in, there's this place I go to where I write a cafe and it has a population of feral cats that are tolerated by the establishment and people feed them

and I was typing away and this gorgeous little kitten comes up on the table and then jumped up and attacked my hands which he believed to be some type of beige spider then I turned around and there was a pigeon that was trapped beneath behind a kind of a plastic screen he was trapped between a fence and a plastic screen and on the other side of the plastic screen there was uh the kittens were stalking in a very psychopathic fashion, just staring at this poor trapped bird. They couldn't access him because the plastic screen was there, but it was kind of a voyeuristic murderousness.

And they were just waiting. So I was half pissed because I'd been horsing into their fucking two euro beers. So I ended up having to climb the fence to rescue this fucking pigeon and nearly fell over so that was interesting then as well what else happened not because I was mouldy

but I was sitting down writing in the cafe and there wasn't a lot of people there it was just me there and then I crossed the way a table full of women talking and i had my earphones in and i got up off the table and the earphones were stuck in the table and ended up falling on my arse and all the women laughed at me which you know what i was very happy with how i handled that, I just laughed, so that was a good bit of inner learning, a few years ago that would have mortified me, but I didn't give a fuck,

people fall over, who cares, it's funny sometimes, and in that moment I was the object of laughter, some might call it public humiliation, I don't think so, so this morning, I had a mad morning, I got up for a lovely, a delicious run, 10km run, and I run on an empty stomach, deliberately, because you start off starving, and then as the run gets in you just get more fucking energy and I think your body just kicks in and it starts using body fat as energy for the run

but anyway I'm about 7km into the actual run and I'm loving it now this is heaven for me I'm in a meditative state in the here and now. The weather here, by the way, is absolutely gorgeous. It's about 18 degrees.

Which for me, like in Ireland, that's grounds for a barbecue. Over here, all the Spanish cunts are wearing their fucking winter clothes. I'm wearing a t-shirt and shorts. But running down by the river at about eight in the morning and it was just aesthetically absolutely gorgeous the sun shining sun on my back um stunning and coupled with the fact that i'm in a state of complete and utter meditative flow. So while I'm running and appreciating the genuine beauty all around me and the here and now beauty of the journey of the run, I was reflecting on very existential things.

Like, I was consciously aware of how happy I was, aware of, you know, how fucking lovely is it that I'm up in the morning having a lovely run. I'm listening to some days in the 80s disco music in my ear. The weather is gorgeous. I feel healthy. I feel alive. I feel happy. And I'm taking all of this in.

And on top of that, while I was doing it, I was reminding myself of how important it is for me to live my life to its fullest right now because when I'm older I won't be able to do you know I won't have the mobility I mightn't have the energy so I was very much reflecting on the privilege of being healthy and being able-bodied and being alive and being at the peak of my existence to be honest you know taking all this in as as a purposeful way of you know on a previous podcast i mentioned about victor frankl and the importance of finding a sense of meaning in your life now i don't to be honest i don't believe in god or

religion like that so i i don't have any supernatural sense of meaning my sense of meaning to keep living has to come from the here and now the present moment so that's what i'm doing when i'm out running like that and reflecting on the privilege of my able body and truly appreciating how wonderful and how happy i am to be out running that's me finding existential meaning to give me purpose in my existence so that I can be happy and I'll be honest my happiness was a 10 out of 10 in the middle of that run so I'm flaking along having great crack with these existential thoughts and then I turned a corner and there's a bunch of police tape and big commotion and I see right there in front of me a fucking dead

body, a person dead on the road with the white sheet over him in a spot that I had 20 minutes previously I had ran past, and I was on my way back. So, yeah, I think I'd come across... It was most likely a car accident. I didn't see a car smashed up or anything. It could have been a pedestrian that was hit. I don't know, because, like I said, the police tape was all around it. There was reporters there with video cameras. I'm not sure what actually happened but

during this during an actual moment where i'm reflecting existentially on the very privilege of being alive i'm confronted right there and then with an actual a person's death and a body lying on tarmac covered completely in a white sheet and i didn't really feel anything at the time you don't like because it's it's so shocking it's like being in a video game i didn't take stock emotionally of what had happened I just simply was like holy fuck dead body and then I turned back because obviously I couldn't go through it because it was cordoned off and continued on the rest of my run cognitively being aware of what I'd just seen but not emotionally kind of taking on board what I'd just seen and then of, of course, as the minutes go on,

you start to emotionally go, fuck, that's someone's life over, gone. That's a family somewhere in Spain and they're having the worst day of their lives today. And it truly, it really walloped me into the face with the utter importance of trying to live your life

in the here and now existence living in the present moment as much as you possibly can, truly appreciate, you know, if you have the privilege of being able bod you have the privilege of being able-bodied the privilege of being healthy there's no excuse not to fully fucking embrace it because that person got up this morning and now they're dead you know and that's life that is the

the chaos of reality and existence do you know what i mean and then having finished the run and i got back to my apartment and this is this is the maddest fucking thing i i have an app that i use to track my run you know so when i start a run i press the button on this app and it tracks my speed, it tracks the calories I've burned, it tracks my heart rate, it tracks my distance, all of this. And then as soon as I get home, I look at my phone and I realise I'd forgotten to track the run. And was overwhelmed with this massive sense of fucking disappointment. Overwhelmed with this massive sense of fucking disappointment. As if I hadn't gone on an actual run. So even though I'd had not only.

A very physical meditative here and now reality experience of running. And then confronted with human mortality my experience still needed to be validated by electronic means so i felt as if the run had not happened because i had been conditioned and i suppose to look at this you there's a psychologist called pavlov whenever you hear the term pavlovian it refers to the work of Ivan Pavlov. And Pavlov's thing was, I think it was called operant conditioning. But basically, in a Pavlovian sense, I have conditioned my running to be dependent upon the reward of seeing it digitally happen on the screen. And this in my brain seems to trump the actual experience of physically running so i had to kick myself up the arse and cop on like i genuinely felt as if

i hadn't gone for a run i was disappointed in myself because my phone did not say that the run had happened despite having a very real morning do Do you know what I mean? It doesn't get more real than that. It doesn't get more real than doing 10 kilometers on an empty stomach, fucking feeling the breeze, the sun, the smells, being so aware of it that you're meditating on your own existence and then coming across the human body. That is peak reality

right there and then for all of that at the end of it that needed to be validated by a fucking app tis madness lads my vape's been a cunt my vape's been a proper cunt

hold on I hope you're not disturbed by the noise this week anyway em yeah so that's that's how I'm getting on in Spain em rest in peace to that poor person

whoever it was you know I haven't a clue I don't have the English language ability to check the news, but I don't know what happened. But anyway, so this week, because I'm over in Spain and the current sound quality, it's not too bad. But I wouldn't do a full podcast this way. But I wouldn't do a full podcast this way.

I am going to play for you the interview that I did with the amazing, incredible Barnadette Devlin McCalliskey. And Barnadette Devlin McCalliskey is a legend in Irish civil rights. You'll know if you're listening to this podcast how much I was looking forward to this interview it was a huge honour to do it personally it feels like I was privileged enough to have recorded an actual historical document because

Bernadette had the opportunity to speak for about two hours about things I've never heard her speak about and I've looked at all her interviews. It was a powerful evening. It happened in Ulster Hall and coincidentally it was a day after the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement in the north of Ireland. Could have heard a pin drop all night, very emotional night and I'm just privileged and happy to be able to share it with you so that's what you're going to be hearing in about 5 minutes

before that I don't have my ocarina with me, which I fucking should because I'm over here in Cordoba, as I like to call it, but Cordoba is the correct pronunciation and I actually got my fucking ocarina here about four years ago so I don't have an ocarina

with me, so we'll have our ocarina pause there's a pigeon at my feet, I'd love to get him to coo into the microphone I don't know how to make a pigeon coo what I'll do is I've got

a glass of sparkling water in front of me or aqua con gas as they call it over here and i'll in order instead of the ocarina pause i'll tap my vape off the glass now if you're new to the podcast and god fucking help you if you are because this is the oddest episode so far, digital adverts are inserted at a point in this podcast, selling you shit you don't need, ACAST do it, they're the company that hosts the podcast, it's outside of my control, so you may or may not hear a digital advert, but if you do, you're going to listen to it but if you don't you will be lucky enough to hear

me tapping my vape off a fucking a glass of of sparkling water with ice so lucky you

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at torontorock.com. That was the Spanish glass pause I'm recording this as well in a very inappropriate piece of equipment I don't have like a dainty little microphone I have a very large piece of equipment with a foam thing on top and massive headphones I look like a bad Cold War spy

and I'm achieving some rather strange looks from the Spanish which isn't difficult to be honest the very act of sitting on your own in a cafe is enough for the Spaniards to think you're nuts because

they don't sit on their own going to a cafe or eating is a communal event over here. Which I used to admire. And then I found out it's kind of the colonial roots behind it. Like, I want to do a separate podcast on this at some point. But, like, if you, like, over here when you get a piece of food, they'll sprinkle ham, or jamon as they call it on your food, like we would salt and pepper, and they all sit around a table and pick from each other's food, you know, and I was reading

and I found out the reason that is, is in Cordoba where I am right now, this used to be the caliphate, the Islamic caliphate of the world, you know, that thing that ISIS want this place in Spain used to be that it was run by the Muslims up until the 14th century and then a thing called the Reconquista happened where

and actually it's worth noting, like it was a centre of science and the world's first university was here, you still see bits of it around in the architecture, like if you listen here'll hear them a little bit of a fountain in the background the whole place is surrounded by these gorgeous little fountains which are remnants of the islamic medieval past of this place but when the reconquista happened and christian spain took spain back we'll say from the islamic Moorish people who would have been North African. This massive suspicion continued on.

Now, when the place was being run as a caliphate, Christians and also the sizable Jewish population, they were allowed to live here and they were given free and fair treatment. I believe they were subject to attacks, but they were treated free and fairly. But I believe they were subject to attacks but they were treated free and fairly. But when the Christians took back over that wasn't the case and the Muslims and Jews were very much subjugated. Now the thing with the Muslims is that because they were of

Moorish extraction they had darker skin. So they were subjugated. It's the roots of kind of white supremacy and racism. You can kind of, modern white supremacy and racism, you can kind of trace to the Reconquista of Spain in the 14th, 15th century.

Earlier, because of, it was the association of whiteness and purity with Spanish power, trying to kick the Muslims out who formerly ran the place. So they were subjugating the Islamic population via the colour of their skin and trying to associate whiteness with purity and religiosity and royalty. And then the Jewish population was subjugated because the Jewish people would have looked, they would have been white too. They were subjugated via the food.

So the practice of sprinkling fucking ham on your food here and eating communally has its roots in a way of kind of weeding out Jewish people and Islamic people. It's like if everyone is sitting around a table, if you don't eat the ham, because pork is forbidden in Islam and Judaism, if you don't eat the ham then that outs you as either a Jew or Islamic. So there's the sinister roots of the gorgeous ham that they sprinkle on my breakfast. How the fuck did I get to get from the ocarina pause to this?

So anyway, I'm going to go into the interview now with Barnardette Devlin. If you enjoy this podcast, if you want to support it, contribute to it on the Patreon page patreon.com forward slash

the blind boy podcast and if you like it you can give me the equivalent of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month it makes a huge difference to my life

that's my regular source of income so please do if you enjoy it if you don't want to and you just want to listen for free, you're entitled to that. There's a Spanish woman shouting behind me. Alright. I hope she's not saying anything private, because I can't

understand. She could be talking about the back of my head. Alright. God bless. Go fuck yourselves. Here is the interview thank you very much what is the crack? these people

don't know me they do of course thank you for the listeners at home because there's going to be yanks and brits

and fucking all sorts listening to this, the only way I can describe Bernadette, you're our Martin Luther King. That's the most simplest way to say it. And on that note, Bernadette, is Gerry Adams in the IRA? Is he in the IRA? That's just a stock question. I ask everyone that. It's OK. I'd have to say, as he used to,

I have no first-hand information on that, your Honour. You're the youngest woman ever elected to Westminster, except Mary Black. Yeah, I was until Mary Black came on. I tell you this, she's a very good follow-up act, is she not? I think, I think she's great. I think she's very... Have you spoken to her? No, I've never actually met her because I don't, I don't be in Westminster anymore. But no, I follow her. I've watched her, you know, I've watched her you know, I've watched her politics I've watched her speaking and you know, she's great so, and I'm sure there are plenty of

young women out there who will give it a run for their money take the age down to 18, if we get to vote at 16 take it on down another bit certainly wouldn't be any more childish than what passes for politics at the minute at 16, take it on down another bit, certainly wouldn't be any more childish

than what passes for politics at the minute. Okay, so 50 years on, right? What's that like? What does that feel like? Like the first marches, as I believe it was what was it the Derry housing group yeah I think you know the thing that that you find hard to believe when you look back

is how long ago it was I have difficulty figuring out how come it was 50 years ago and I don't think I'm 50 years older than I was when it happened really because you don't see it and then I remember you know I was I was just a student in 1966 when you had the 50th anniversary of 1916 and at that time we thought that was ancient like that was remembering history all of that was way way away in the history books and yet i'm still here and most of us not all of us are still campaigning and yet for young people in their 20s that must be just so

far back in history that they they don't know they don't know a big pile about it or they're looking at things you know night and at the minute because because there's different things on the radio and television around it people are seeing things for the first time you know like the the police attack on the 5th of October yeah and it's funny that's one of the things that every time I see it, I still get that shiver down my back because that's the first time. That was the first time that right in front of your eyes something totally unbelievable would happen. We had no...

You know, after it happened, you kind of get a transgenerational memory that says how did we not know that's what they would do but we didn't you just were mesmerized apart from also terrified because no part of you no part of anybody that started out in Duke Street and started to walk up the street had any inkling that the police were going to punish us like that, come at us from the front, come at us from the back, corral us onto that street and beat the daylights out of us. We had nothing to prepare us for that except that our fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers could have told us, and probably did, and we weren't listening. Yeah.

again people talk about the civil rights and you remember that at that time it was very very it was a very broad movement and do you know what it wasn't asking for a lot the thing that surprises you most is that

what was it the demands which one of them was very funny because it was one man one vote and everybody knew it wasn't just votes for men the demands, which one of them was very funny because it was one man, one vote. And everybody knew it wasn't just votes for men. It's 100 years now from votes from women, but everybody knew that women were in there. But it was almost before feminism in a way, or a second wave of feminism. So I don't ever remember me saying, hold on a minute

boys, what about votes for women as well? One man, one vote did everybody at the time. And people find it very hard to believe that in 1968, you didn't have equality of voting rights. Yeah. That, in fact, like if you look, jumping forward to now, how many greedy landlords there are, they seem to turn up everywhere. But the country's now full because there's a shortage of houses,

a shortage of social housing, shortage of affordable housing all over the island of Ireland. And given that we were campaigning of social housing, shortage of affordable housing all over the island of Ireland. And given that we were campaigning for equality, fair distribution of council houses and social housing, the waiting list for housing again is as bad as it was then. And the new problem is about private landlords charging fortunes. But imagine if every landlord in Belfast had as many votes as he had housing units. That's the way it was in 68.

So if you had a slum landlord who let old buildings out and tenements and rooms, then he was paying the rates on the whole building and he got a vote for every housing unit so some people in dungannon or derry or belfast had as many as 100 votes but none of the hundred tenants had a vote at all so how are you going to get housing reform yeah landlords weren't going to vote you know turkeys weren't going to vote for Christmas so the landlords weren't going to vote for rent control and then also because the housing was tied to the votes, the council wouldn't build houses because if you had a council house, you got to vote because you paid your rates. So they wouldn't build houses because it would give people votes.

So it wasn't that Catholics had no votes and Protestants had it was that ordinary people poor people had no vote because the private housing market was designed not to have them pay rates but of course on your rent the landlord charged you enough to cover the cost of his rates so you were still paying but you had no vote but the political impact was on the Catholic population because the Unionists didn't want to build public housing social housing for Catholics that would then give them votes yeah because then they wouldn't vote for the unionists. So it all got, it was all tied up in that. So almost every sort of liberal and progressive person, many of them were actually rank and file members of unionist parties, were in favour of the reforms. And you often just wonder if before we

even got the length of Duke Street or or Cull Island to Dungannon March, if when the housing action people had asked like they're asking now in Dublin and Cork and Limerick, if the people had been listened to about homelessness and had been listened to about housing between 61 and 64 and 64 and 68 and somebody had done something about it, there'd be no civil rights movement. Yeah.

And if there'd been no civil rights movement, there would probably have been no war or maybe something else would have caused more up him but we paid a big price in the society in order to protect landlords really in 68 and that's what it was about and to stop democracy but I still find it hard to believe that it was

50 years ago it was yesterday or maybe the day before maybe last week it's interesting that you say, you know, you were saying there, you were thinking

that the young people today are looking at that and maybe not relating to it as much, but one thing that I've been seeing this week in particular online, because of the context of the current we said the take back the city housing action that's happening in Dublin, how many people are

only finding out this week holy fuck it started because of a housing protest essentially you know and it's it's kind of empowering people to show that that one little spark is what can lead to something larger you know yeah i do you know something i've always said this, deceive when you decide to do something. And the reality is that most people, when something is wrong and somebody decides to put it right, mostly the reason for them doing that is the wrong bit is hurting them. And sometimes that's the problem, that the people it's not hurting don't do anything

till the people who actually can't take it anymore have to do something. And then they come out and they do it. And maybe other people join in. But you see, once you do what you know to be right because you can't sit and look at what you know to be wrong see once you do that and people do it together something inside you changes you know you get a sense of if it's not you know it's not power in the way powerful people think of power it's the power of people it's a power of solidarity it's a strength and

a courage that comes from being together and once you get it into you, it's very, very hard to knock out. Yeah. Once it's hard, you know, and that's where the people who want to stop you. You know, there's things I discovered all my life. If you're not quite sure if you're on the right side or the wrong side of the line, find the nearest line of policemen and see which way they're facing. A lot of the things that what I'm finding people are interested in now is the intersectional nature of how it started right and

Like we said the March to Derry and that being inspired by the March to Alabama Like what were you looking at at that time? Like and as well like were you inspired by would say the student protests in France and stuff around the time as well Yeah, well, you see the whole thing kind of came together. The thing about the 60s was that young people were, or parents used to all say anyway, and they were right, young people were revolting and they were, they were revolting in all kinds of ways, in their personal lives, you know, the things that people would nearly forget now, my generation of young teenagers

never, ever answered their parents back. I don't mean, you know... I mean, never answered them back. And what that meant was, you spoke when you were spoken to, and you did not disagree. You did not voice an opinion to an adult, to somebody who was your older and better, unless you were asked for it, and you were rarely asked for it

and in the 60s then young people just started it was you know it was it was rock and roll it was music it was dress it was drugs it was sex, it was running, getting, it was education, people getting out and away from home, third level education became available to people. So things were happening everywhere, even in Dungannon and Cookstown and Coal Island and Washing Bay. You know, this was... and the rest of the world. Television was new. Yeah. And now, you know, people are talking languages that people like me don't understand about podcasts and stuff.

Well, you're on one now. But in those days, television was a big thing. So we could see what was happening in the world. We saw all those things. There was big things that happened. There was the anti-war movement around Vietnam because you could see the horror of that war. There was all the black civil rights movement.

Then there was, we didn't see a lot about Eastern Europe at that time, but the European student movement. And there was also, in the 60s, the beginning of some of what were also kind of parallels to Northern Ireland. There was the Quebecois movement, the movement of the French-speaking Canadians for the right to speak their language and for the right to it be organized and respected in Canada that led on then to the kind of free Quebec movement and there was always and ever the kind of free Quebec movement.

And there was always and ever the rights of the Palestinians. So all of these things were happening, and we grew up when there was an international rise of progress and liberal thinking and revolting, and we were all... You know, it... and revolting and we were all you know it we were it was like osmosis you know and then you began to see your own life in the light of that you know you began to say there are people and there are people in Alabama looking for votes we don't have any yeah you know there are people in alabama who aren't allowed to walk in their own streets neither are we uh so so so our link which is very interesting just the american one's very

interesting because where it puts us in position with many irish immigrants yeah in america but but we identified very closely with with the black, with Martin Luther King. I mean, I remember when Martin Luther King was assassinated, and so they played his speech all the time on television, and I remember listening to that, not saying there's a man who was talking to his people and he got killed for it, he was talking to me, you know, he was talking to me about my life and I think there were lots of people in the north of Ireland who were the same as that. Martin Luther King was talking to us yeah and and we were listening to him and interpreting what he was saying in the context of where we where we lived

and then you know the students uh people's democracy was kind of the kind of part of the people's democracy was kind of part of the way we did people's democracy. But do you know what we did too? I didn't know this until later. Do you know the way when people hear music and hear a new song and then they start to sing it, but they don't really know the words and they haven't got the music right that's what we did nobody told us you know that the the black civil rights movement and the non-violent

movement you know people said non-violent we meant that we thought that meant you just didn't hit anybody but we were too far into it when we realized that that was a discipline that a lot of people actually went to nonviolent training meetings before they went on marches yeah we just went on marches and promised not to hit anybody and then then our tempers broke. One story that has gone very kind of viral online about you recently is when you went to New York and you were given the key to New York City. Can you please tell us that story? Yes.

Well, I went to New York in 69 and people you see people always remember the bits of the story that they like forget the whole story after what became known as the Battle of the Bogside the when we fought to keep the police out of the Bogside and the reason we did that was that after I'd been elected in April the RUC at the time because the battle was not between Catholics and Protestants with police in the middle the battle the civil rights battle when it got into a battle was really between the civil rights protesters and the police and then the the loyalist working classes got caught up in in that year but that's the way

that happened the police weren't keeping to sectarian sides apart and after I was elected in 1969 I'm not even from Derry but it's just a big part of me I didn't kind of I have to say Lord Skarman once said I appreciate miss Devlin that you are not at the cause of the problems but you have a remarkable propensity for being So I was in Derry. Whenever I'd been elected in Mid Ulster, there'd been a celebration there, and then we had a celebration in Derry. But as a result of my election,

mostly the police then went on the rampage in the box side and as part of that Sam Deveney was badly beaten up by the police and people knew that they they broke into people's houses just ran down the streets smashing windows and broke into people's houses and Sam Deveney was beaten up at his own fireside and Sam Devaney was beaten up at his own fireside and subsequently died. Just a man sitting at his own fire. And so by August 69, whenever the whole parades were on, people were genuinely terrified of what would happen if the police came back in again because we had barricaded the place and so we fought for three days and that's when the army came in

the British government sent the army in to separate the police from the civilian population and then I was speaking on a platform, and it was the way I said it, I think, that it was basically interpreted anyway. It wasn't what it meant. I thought we needed a rest. But what I was trying to say was the Army should never have come in. You could see what they were doing. But putting the Army in here was actually going to make this worse

and a wee bit of prophetic wasn't prophetic vision i just think if you think hard enough you can see what's coming and i said you know at the end of the day we're going to have to fight the army too so i got sent to america Get her out, get her out. So I went to America. Was that for the Irish Americans? Wow. What were the Irish Americans thinking about what was happening? Well, I tell you, I went to America,

and I used to say when I got back, I know, it's not a secret now because we're podcasting and this place is full, I know that when I went to America when I was taken across the border and down to the Finner camp

and driven by an Irish army officer whose wife put me up in their house and gave me a toothbrush to go to America with and put on an airplane I had no passport I know because I'd never been anywhere never applied for one and yet so there's no other way I could have gone to America other than with the diplomatic immunity of the state.

No other way I could have gone. Of course, I didn't know that at the time. No other way I could have got in. No ragamuffin with long hair and dirty jeans gets into America just because they turn up and say, I'm just straight off the barricades. Can I come in? So you weren't thinking that. So I arrived and important Irish-Americans

were there to meet me, some really good people, Paul O'Dwyer and others, and there were a number of already existing Irish-American groups. And I was like a pass the parser. I was just going to move from one place to another and there was big meetings and people throwing money at you millions of dollars yeah but you were also took to meet important people so New York was the first and I met Mayor Lindsay who was twice my size and you know, tall tall man and we drank whiskey out of cups.

First time I ever saw anybody drink whiskey at cups and saucers. And I'm looking and saying is this an American cultural habit? So next time you see politicians having cups of

tea, there's probably alcohol in them. It's for the photo op, so that you don't have to set the glass, hide the glass when they're taking the photo. So I'll stand around taking, and I'm wondering what kind of a country is this?

Do they drink whiskey out of teacups? I have to own up now and say I drank whiskey at that time. But then I got the keys. There's a big presentation. I got the keys Freedom of the City of New York. So I kind of looked at it

stuck it in the bag. I also got the Freedom of San Francisco and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia has come home with this bag of trophies. And I'm not a kind of mantelpiece person. So I'm looking at them, and most of the bad stories in my life

start and end with Eamon McCann. So, so I'm saying, who also was one of the people who shipped me off to America, let me say I haven't forgotten that Mr. McCann. But so I'm saying to Eamonn, and Eamonn said, why don't we send them back to the people who need them? So he was actually going back. And we then arranged that when he went back, he'd have a ceremony, another ceremony. Yeah. Which was that having been given the keys to the city of New York,

then he would present them on my behalf to the Black Panthers who needed the freedom of the city of New York then he would present them on my behalf to the Black Panthers who needed the freedom in the city of New York so we gave them back we gave them to the Panthers and there was much less to do because then when when I was back in San Francisco and returned to San Francisco key in the same way yeah people passed no remarks but we now I never ever got the keys to any more cities like what was the reaction of Irish America to that like because I mean that's talk about embarrassing them like well you have to first of all you have to remember not all Irish America isn't

homogeneous there were you know I there were Irish Americans I worked with who were in progressive and liberal movement but Irish America organized as Irish America was fairly conservative people be organized and doing good work for the county but then they would be what what I would now call all-class alliances so the only thing they were really unified on was the county and the country yeah and they certainly didn't want to hear they used to say don't talk up we don't want to hear anything about black civil rights we don't want to hear anything about socialism we don't want to hear anything about feminism just

tell us about Ireland and then I would say okay I'll just it's full of which was a lie which was a lie but I would talk about I would try to say to them because I couldn't not they would say things and I was young I mean that's not an excuse

but I was young I'd never been there I hadn't been exposed to this and so I was mesmerised by it. I'd be sitting in, you know, a fairly comfortable New York home. Not a wealthy New York home. But when you were coming from Tyrone to a comfortable New York home, I kept mistaking them for small boarding houses. Yeah.

You know, like local country hotels or bed, because they had so many rooms in them, and more toilets than I'd ever seen in my life. Houses, you know, places in Northern Ireland still had outside toilets. Yeah. you know, there were places in Northern Ireland still had outside toilets. And I was going and being put up by families who had four or five toilets, bedrooms with their own toilets, which are now commonplace, but they weren't then.

And they had something else. Almost invariably, they had a woman who helped. And they discovered the woman who does in America these houses had had a woman who did dishes laundry Hoover and she didn't belong to them and that she wasn't a family member people in America didn't wash their own dishes but the woman would in almost invariably be a woman of colour. Yeah. Puerto Rican woman, a black woman. American feminists were usually white middle-class professionals who also had a woman who did. And I would be talking to them,

and then I'd be drawing the parallels, and then the people I'd be sitting at their table or I'd be sitting at their table or I'd be speaking at meetings to them sounded like orange men. They really did. The things they said about black people were things that the loyalists said about Catholics. Didn't want to work. Black people are poor because they don't want to work. They're poor because they're stupid. They're poor because they're lazy.

And I'd say, no, that's... Hang on a minute, that's what people say about us. But we know it, we're not. And you know it, we're not. So what makes you think that's true about them? And how would they get when you would bring that up, when you would confront them with that? They would be, you you know as people are they would be uncomfortable

they would be angry they'd be i think you were ungrateful uh some of them would start to get defensive. So when I led a trail, you know, some of the Hibernians and the Republicans of an ilk said that I waved a trail of destruction across America that wasn't sorted out till the man that's not an IRA went over with the blessing of the Democratic Party and put Humpty Dumpty together again. And I think that's one of the things which I find hard to forgive him and Sinn Féin,

was that they went and put that inward-looking Irish-American thing back together again when I had, along with all, not just on my own, helped to split it apart and make people see that, you know, if they were going to be on the side of justice or progress in Ireland, they had to be on the same side in America. Yeah. Or else they had to recognise that what they thought was patriotism and progress in Ireland was anti Protestant for get right you need to make up their mind which side they were on and so you know I gave the keys to the Panthers I refused to meet as my

other claim to fame I refused to meet the mayor of Chicago, because we're getting wise to this. You know, I'd already done New York and Philadelphia. I have a key under here. A bell under this arm. But when I arrived in Chicago, the police were there,

and I thought, the game's up. They're waiting for you, Bernard. You're going to be sent home. But it was an escort, a police escort into Chicago City in this limousine. And the person, I said, where are we going? He said, we're going, yes, we're going to the mayoral reception with Mayor Daley.

I said, no, no, we're not. Because we called the chief of police in Derry, Mayor Daley. I said, no, no, we're not. Because we called the chief of police in Derry Mayor Daley for a nickname. Because of the 1968, young people here won't remember that, but Mayor Daley, there's a democratic convention in Chicago for the American Democratic Party, and the young students all protested at that. That's where the people were shot at that protest. And they were shot at and Mayor Daley called in the National Guard against them. So I wasn't meeting with that guy and people came down you know you know what that was like well you wouldn't but it was I'm

I'm sitting and I have to tell you at this point I'm sitting in the clothes of a woman I didn't know because I went in my jeans to America and they had difficulty finding a woman who was only five foot and Claudia Dreyfus came into my life for three weeks because they found this young woman who kindly lent me her clothes for three weeks so I'm sitting in somebody else's good dress in the back of this Porsche limousine and these guys saying to me you've got to get out you got to get out you got to get out and meet the mayor and I'm not getting out I'm not meeting I'm not I'm not shaking hands with no mayor deal I am not getting out I'm not I've had enough of this shit I'm not going anywhere

and they turned finally they gave up they turned the limousine around they took me straight back to the airport they put me on because they back to the airport. They put me on, because they probably sorted that out, they put me on an aircraft and officially I never got into Chicago again. Yeah. And that was the power of... Now, I was in and out of

Chicago, but not with official Irish America and the Chicago Democratic Party what was in it for like why were these mayors like what was in it for them what they want were they trying to appeal to the Irish American vote were they trying to show it because to me it just sounded very performative like it was it was showtime yeah it's really what it was for them it was gathering up it was showtime yeah it's really what it was for them it was gathering up it was consolidating the Irish American vote it was I it was I had wish it was showtime

to them and and it was money time yeah because there was a lot of when I was in America there's a lot of chat you know but it's the is the IRA and it was hardly any IRA really about in 69 but if the IRA was getting the money the Democratic people organizing that the Irish American people organizing that the churches they were you know it was one for her and one for us and one for us and one for us and one for us and one for her and I used us and one for us and one for her. And I used to keep trying to get people to say, look, you can't be taking

money of people. I didn't have money, you see. So always I pled monopoly from when I was a child. I've always lived in fear of going to jail directly. Do not collect 200 pounds so there was

something about all this throwing money and collecting money and gathering money which had nothing to do with me I was this cash like oh this was cash yeah and I tell you what you you know I stood in Detroit and all of the ancient order of Hibernians of America had gathered up and for one small moment I had a check in my hand for one million dollars and then it went to the church. Well for fuck's sake. Exactly. Went to the church and the reason it went to the church was that I had refused to speak in the hall because they wouldn't let the black kids in and they said it was a fire thing. And then I had a solution for that.

Said, look, I usually speak outside anyway. So why don't we all go outside i'm going to go outside and speak outside and then the rest of you can come out yeah and there'll be no problem so then they were able to discover he was a balcony like here there was nobody in i i was up here i could see it so then they let everybody in the black kids all came in. And then because you're not wise when you're young, I did something that wasn't wise in terms of, no, just in terms of putting a person in a position I shouldn't have put them in, which was, there was a tenor singing John McCormick songs. Yeah. And singing, you know, I'll take you home again, Kathleen, and whatever.

It was lovely before it started, but... He was asked to come on and sing a song again to close it. So now all the black people had been allowed in and were all in there. And the man came out and he said to me, you know, which was a nice thing to do what would you like me to sing and i said i'd like you to sing we shall overcome and i'll sing it with you and it was at that point the color of the tenor's skin became important yeah because he was black

of the tenor's skin became important. Yeah. Because he was black. And I knew when I said it that I'd probably cost this man his job. Oh, fuck, okay, yeah. If he doesn't sing, what is he going to do? If he does sing, what is he going to do? So I started to sing first, and he joined in.

And you could feel the tension in that place and the singing started up here with the black young people and then people in the crowd started to sing but when I looked down amongst the dignitaries who had the best seats at the front only a very few brave people stood up. Yeah. And when the singing was done, an important person came up and took the check off me and said, I think that would be in safer hands. And it was sent home to the Catholic Church.

I used to chase them every year to say, what did you do with the money? What did you do with the money? Jesus. chase them every year to say what did you do with the money what did you do with the money they got a million dollars for the re the rehabilitation of offenders or whatever it was but people were much more interested in whether any of it and then just so you don't forget you know what was done with it and people young people don't know this today. When I gathered up as much of that money as I could, it rebuilt Bombay Street, which was the place.

That's where most of that money went, was the rebuilding of Bombay Street. And we're going to open the bar for you for about 10 minutes and give you a little bit of an interview to have a point. And then we'll be back on in about 10 minutes. Is that all right? Thank you. Thank you. One question I got asked and something I'd like to know. You were present at Bloody Sunday.

Yeah. What was it like when the first shots were fired? What did that feel like it's funny that you know there are things you remember and traumatic things and they don't cause you trauma. Bloody Sunday is one of those things that whenever I think of it, and after Bloody Sunday up until we all had to go to Sava, it was very interesting that we never spoke of it. I remember talking to Eamon McCann one day about, you know,

whenever the Sile Inquiry started, and both of us realising that we had, you know, and there'd be some conversations between the two of us over those years, we had never, ever spoken to each other about Bloody Sunday, ever. So you could see how, even though we weren't aware of it that we had all been traumatized by that day because because of the way it happened and because of the enormity of what had happened and it's what sets Bloody Sunday out apart from everything else. It was a day that by deliberate political strategy the British government decided to kill innocent civilians. You know and that, and people didn't believe you but you saw it with your eyes,

so you knew that's what happened. And on that day, we had all come down marching down the hill, and it wasn't so much marching, it's a big steep hill, so the steepness of the hill carries you down it. So the people who are fittest get run into the front and the people who are least fit try to keep their footing to keep up with the march. So you're kind of at a pace down the hill and as we came towards,

because we were going to go to the Guildhall Square, we were coming down that street that that road was blocked, but the plan was then to turn and go to Free Dairy Corner. And I was kind of, because I always used to, you'd be hawked up, you'd be at the front, but because I walk slower than everybody else, by the time you'd get to where you're going, I'd be at the back.

Yeah. And then I'd be gossiping along the road. And so they came back for me, I was only halfway down the hill, to say they needed me on the lorry at the front with the loud hailer to pull the crowd to Free Derry Corner so that's what I did and we had got the most of the crowd now that wee bit's a riot and starting at the flash point where we weren't allowed to proceed but we had got over to Free Derry Corner, and I was standing on the platform. Now, I don't care what anybody says, I was higher than anybody else. Everybody else is on the ground.

I'm on the back of a lorry, so I'm up above them. And I know that the first shot I heard I can still hear it I'm standing there on a lorry looking down like I'm looking down on these people and somewhere here I only heard it in my left ear but somewhere there there was one single shot and I heard it and the only place it could have come from was the walls. And when they put all the Savile stuff together, the only people up there were the soldiers. And that first single shot I know came from there.

Now, Lord Savile said, I imagined it, came from there. Now Lord Savile said, I imagined it, or I was confused, or whatever he thought I was doing, I was not. One single shot started the dairy firing, and when that shot went off, the next shots I heard of came from there. And I actually heard myself saying don't you know heard it because that was only one shot and this was a burst of shots and people got panicking I said you just see them getting down? And I started to say, stand your ground and don't run. They're only firing over our heads. Because, again, a bit like the 5th of October, the idea that they would not be firing over your head,

that they'd be firing into the crowd to shoot people, was unthinkable. But the words were only halfway out of my mouth when I could see down the back that right at the back people were beginning to scatter and crouch down. I could just see people almost like a wave. And people who were, you know, you see people's faces looking up at you. Now they're all, but it's from the the back and people are crouching and starting to

run away and there's more fire so it's very funny feeling but almost as if the first words are coming out of my mouth my brain is trying to get them back in because I'm telling the people not to run yeah and when they're halfway out of my mouth I am now telling them to stay down and stay crouched down so that the soldiers don't think they're standing up so I'm saying don't think they're standing up. So I'm saying, don't run. They're only firing over our heads. And then I'm saying, get down, stay down,

and get clear away to safety. And that's taken just them few minutes that I'm telling you now. And I'm seeing people run away, and then I have this sense and realization I'm still standing on the back of a lorry. And people, the place is nearly clear. And then the penny drops with me. Are you going to stand here? If I stand here, I'll be shot too.

And I get down under the lorry, but I still have the mic in my hand. It all happens that quick. I'm holding a microphone, and I'm saying, Don't run, do run. And then I'm under the lorry myself and I'm sitting at the sitting underneath the wheel of it and by this time the place

has cleared and I'm looking down that street and I can't really see because you just see him the whole way down and I still have the mic and I see people who don't seem to have moved away down there. And I'm saying, don't be afraid, but crawl away and then I realize, it can't. Can't. And one of the things that came out of that that was incredibly frustrating is

you tried to take that story to Westminster. Yeah. Which resulted in you slapping Reginald Malding. Exactly and people remember that you know and I didn't hit him hard enough and there is no doubt about that and you shouldn't you shouldn't speak ill of the dead but apart from the fact that he was telling

lies he was the most obnoxious man like one of the greatest regrets we have in Ireland But apart from the fact that he was telling lies, he was the most obnoxious man. One of the greatest regrets we have in Ireland is that that footage is not on YouTube. That's right, that's right. How did it happen? Where were you? How close were you to him? Well, I'll tell you how it happened.

For people who are listening who don't have the context... So you had that trauma of people then realized that 13 people had been killed and then when i got out behind that lorry i ran the whole way to neil mccafferty's house was just up the hill and neil mccafferty's mother's house was where if we weren't congregating in dermy mcclenahan's house we were congregating in in neil's mom's house and we were congregating in Nell's mum's house and just word was coming in then and I kind of knew because I'd seen you know it was in my head I knew those people couldn't get up and run away because they were dead but it's like everything else you don't want to run into Nell McCafferty's house and think guys I think people are dead Because there was a panic on and then

people were trying to ring the hospital and that went on for a couple of hours. But quick realisation, 13 people were dead. And families been told and going to the morgue. And then the next day, of course, there was a parliamentary emergency to be it yeah and so I had to leave Derry and get to Westminster for the debate and there was a there's a rule in Westminster you know it's it's very primitive place in many ways that they have these traditions and rules are not written down but they're the custom of the house and in an emergency debate something like that the minister will make a statement and the opposition minister will make a statement and then

the next person who should speak is a member of parliament with the immediate interest in the matter and in that case that was me I was the only member I was the only person in that Parliament who had been a naive witness to what happened so after the the two people spoke I should have been called to speak and you stand up and sit down, stand up and sit down. It's primitive. But the man knows, you know, it's not that he's looking around to see what we'll be doing, you know, who is their hand up.

He knows who he's going to call to speak. So what anybody has to stand up and sit down for, but you do that. So I wasn't called to speak, and every time I stood up again, I wasn't called to speak and I want and every time I stood up again I wasn't called to speak and then they closed the debate and before they closed the debate because I I don't know my homework before I went you know once I find myself in the place I read the book on

what the rules are because I'm actually big on rules I have to give you I'm actually big on rules. I have to give you... I'm going to stop for a minute to give you a word of advice. If you don't read the rules and know what the rules are, you don't really know when and how and where you have to break them. So you need to know. You need to know. You need to know. So... Just, can you move your...

So I use... The front of the mic, if you don't mind. But... Yeah, that's... So I used... Used the rules and I got up and said, you know, objected to them closing the debate because I hadn't had an opportunity to speak and I had a right

to speak and then they were closing it anyway and then I got up and point of order and said you know it's against the rules for the speaker to close the debate and then I said I I object, you know, just each time that you had to go through this process. And I said, well, is it an order, since I am not allowed to speak, is it an order for the minister to get up in this house unchallenged and tell lies. Well then, that was a terrible thing to do. The Speaker said, and this is the way they talk to you, the Honourable Lady for Mid Ulster, that was me. The Honourable Lady for Mid Ulster most not call a member of parliament a liar it's not light and you must withdraw that so I said well because didn't want to get

thrown out I said but but I I assert my right as the only eyewitness my right to speak that's what did it the Speaker of the House said the Honourable Lady for Mid Ulster has no rights other than those given to her by the Speaker which was him and I said the Honourable Lady for Mid Ulster which was me has whatever rights in this house it is within her power to exert. And I walked down the steps. And what I was... What it was in my head to do was lift their mace

and throw it on the floor. But when I got that length, I realized I couldn't lift that. So out of the tail of my eye I saw the face of the lyre and just at that point I said I tell you what I can't lift that but what I can do I can put the fear of God in you for about 30 seconds and that's why I had that and

like what type of slap was it like was it a was it a ceremon type of slap was it? Like, was it a... No, but, like, was it a ceremonial slap or was it, like, hold on a minute, you're getting a slap? No, I have to own up. It's a good job it wasn't on YouTube because it was a kind of a ham-fisted slap.

OK, OK. Because of where he was sitting, I had to get him a bit nearer, so it caught him by the tie first and I kind of caught him by the tie and then just hit him a slap but

do you see when I had him by the tie it struck me that I shouldn't have slapped him at all I should have just twisted the tie and that would really have scared him that that went through my head but by that time the bit it should have been on YouTube when I did that you see the Tory Biggsison, who was sitting near the minister on the front bench with the spaces, he jumped up and he hit me.

Yeah, you didn't read that bit. Frank McManus, to the rescue. He bounded down from where he was sitting, and he was a boxer in his youth. Brilliant. And he hit Biggs Davison. And Biggs Davison fell back, you know, quite stunned onto the bench that he'd got up from. quite stunned onto the bench that he'd got up from, at which point this old Labour boy who used to sit where Dennis Skinner kind of sits now, and I forget his name,

but he was a wee portly man, said she. He was a wee... And my memory at that point was that he went over where the stunned Biggs Davis was sitting, and it will stay in my mind forever, kicking him in the shins and said... Brilliant. ..call yourself a Catholic.

Which I didn't know that Biggs Davis was a Catholic. And at that point actually the speaker suspended the whole house because it was a brawl. But that was, and if you read Hansard there's nothing in it about any of that except that the speaker suspended the house due to a disturbance. But that's what was going on. And then there was, do you know what there was if you read the media at that time?

So that was two days after Bloody Sunday that then was in the next day's paper. There was absolute outrage in the British media that I had hit a minister. Oh, for fuck's sake. But there was no outrage in the British media that 13 people were killed.

Yeah. None. And the lie that he told, and it is now proven to be a lie, and the lie that every editor in every newspaper and every hack journalist in every newspaper was complicit in telling was proven 30 years later

to be a deliberately manufactured lie to disguise the fact. There's a clip that I saw online immediately after that incident, and it was infuriating because it showed me the media twisting the narrative. And you were on the steps of Parliament, you were being interviewed, and a reporter said to you, how do you respond to the undemocratic and unladylike behaviour? And right then I was like, yeah, he's just trying to twist. Unladylike.

How did that feel? Well, I have no idea which part of him thought that I was ladylike at any time. I just know, you know, it doesn't... It never, you know, it wasn't my forte to be ladylike. But, you know, he'd obviously not heard, you know, of people like Gráinne Weill or Constance Markievicz or any of those ladies or any of the suffragettes.

You know, it was as ladylike as you get. I got a question here which was in concern of the left and feminism, which was the Irish left and 70s feminists never agitated against the Magdalene laundries and the mother and baby's homes, yet were at the forefront of the opposition to apartheid in South Africa was this down to blind spots concerning the Catholic Church in Ireland well I think about I don't think I don't think it was I think again you know when we look at the when we look at the world today and the world going back, the reality is, and this is the real harsh reality of life,

you know, people, I remember being asked when I was in America if I felt oppressed as a woman and if I was a feminist, and that was in 69 or 70, and, you know, and I remember my answer yet. I said, I don't know. And please don't tell me because I'm still working through all the other layers of my oppression. I can't have another one, thank you.

So there was an absolute in many ways lack of consciousness of what was going on. As as I say we as young people and it's easy to speak of you know what was this Irish left that people are talking about you know what it's it's the Irish left has never been a big you know not certainly in this in 68 that wouldn't have been enough for them to fill the ulster hall but so I think it's easy to look back on people who are

doing things and say ah but you didn't do this and you didn't do that there was not a consciousness of what was happening you You know, the kind of things that we know now, people didn't even know in many ways to ask the question. And I'll tell you something... Do you mean they're like the Magdalene laundries were kind of hidden? They were also hidden what, you know, people didn't... People who were in the Magdalene laundries suffered greatly. Everybody had an idea.

They weren't called the Magdalene laundries. I mean, when I was growing up, I knew there was one over by Beyond Armagh. Ma, the people, I'm going to try and set the scene for you a bit. I grew up in, my father died when I was young, and my mother was the head of the house of six children and five of us were girls. It was a very female house, with only one boy, and he was the youngest. And I grew up on an estate. And people talked about safe houses during the war. But my mother effectively kept a safe house. Not for people on the run in the war, but for women who would be beaten up by their husbands.

She never saw it like that, nor did we. When we were children, sometimes we woke up and some of our neighbour's kids were in our beds along with us. But we knew that was nobody's business. Sometimes all our children shared our breakfast. We knew that was nobody's business. Sometimes all our children shared our breakfast. We knew that was nobody's business. And there'd be women in our house, and there'd be hushed conversations, and we'd be sent to make the sandwiches.

As children, we knew that the men in those houses were the reason that the women and the children were not in them. were the reason that the women and the children were not in them. Ours was one of the only houses on the estate I grew up in where children didn't get beaten. Beating children was what parents did as an integral part of rearing them in the 50s and 60s. Beating your wife was what men did routinely to keep them in their place.

So the context in which you grew up was that the Devlins were eccentric because nobody in their house could beat. And my mother was eccentric, and she sent us to school with a note for the teacher. And we used to be cringing when we'd have to bring it to school. That note said, you do not act in loco parentis,

do not assault my children. And we were known in the convent school in Cookstown as the Devins who couldn't be slapped and we were known for it but it was it was such a bizarre thing because it was commonplace for children to be physically assaulted, for women to be physically assaulted. It was, in that context, also not uncommon for children and women to be sexually assaulted, and probably male children as well, though it was less noted. And in the background of all of that,

women, young women who were pregnant were a disgrace. It didn't matter how they became pregnant. They were, it was like a disgrace fell on the whole family. You never heard of it. We would have, on the estate, we'd have known. I can remember, you know, the girl who lived over there, the girl who lived there, who disappeared. Yeah. And sometimes they came back. And as you got older and wiser almost part of your growing up was you got into the secret that she didn't disappear she didn't go to an aunt in England she didn't go to help somebody she had a baby but she didn't come back with it and sometimes she didn't come back at all and there were homes you say well where did she go you went to homes so the the total intellectual moral awareness of what those places represented

and how reprehensible they were. And then the brutality, individual cruelty that wound into them was seen when people were able to look back at it. But it was such... But people talk about it being hidden the easiest place to hide anything is an open sight of people who don't know what they're

looking at and I think we underestimate the endemic nature of cruelty, sexual repression, physical oppression, in the name of religion that went on in this country as everyday commonplace behavior. as everyday commonplace behavior. So it wasn't at the left. You know, it's easy now to say, who didn't do what? And I don't mean to say that in a way that excuses anybody in terms of positions of power and authority we were that ignorant we were that suppressed and indoctrinated with

the power of God that we were unable to see what was in front of our eyes until now. And now we look back and rightly hold those who allowed it to happen to the highest level of accountability. But I don't think that you can say, you know, where was the Irish left you know where was the human rights movement you know where was any anybody in the context we know them now the real question is where the hell was God He caused it. It was in the name of God. In the name of God those things were done. The way you're speaking about it, it's kind of drawn parallels with... one thing that young people in Ireland are quite concerned with at the moment is that direct provision

will be our Magdalene laundries. Yep. And how do you feel about that? Are you looking at direct provision? be our Magdalene laundries. Yep. And like, how do you feel about that? Are you looking at direct provision? Are you, cause currently you're working with a step organization, which you work with migrant populations. You know, we don't have direct provision in the North.

We have many bad things. We don't have direct provision. Direct provision and many of the young people maybe here in the north, because I can't see in the dark, not that I can tell southerners from northerners in the daylight. But you know what direct provision is, yeah? Yeah. No. Direct provision in the south of Ireland is that people who come seeking refuge and seeking political asylum and seeking protection are all housed in what they call direct provision. what they call direct provision so they are all essentially interned you know and if you're looking at the northern parallel it's like being interned in the early days of internment when you're all

put in the one place and and hot months and whatever and the biggest direct provision is is in in the former butlins mos. And people are there for years. And they have so little control. It is a prison. And to describe it as anything other than prison, if it's not a prison, it's a form of concentration camp. Yeah.

You know, it's in there and thereabouts. People have no control over their thereabouts. People have no control over their own lives. They have no idea when they're getting out. They have no capacity to earn. They have no real family life. And

their mental health is then destroyed by that. Their self worth is diminished by it. Having survived the things they survived to reach what they thought was protection, they are being slowly tortured, destroyed and being dehumanized by direct provision. Why? It's the Irish government's attempt to send them away and not encourage other people to come. Exactly. It's so that other

people won't come. And I tell you this, at the time of the famine, when you look at what the population was in 1845, and it was disseminated and destroyed by famine, there are not enough people on this island. There are room for more people on this island. There's plenty of room for people here. We could take another million people, and still a million. Not 500 Syrian refugees and two from here and four from there.

The reason we don't have the resources for a million is that about 1% of the population here have hoarded everything for their greedy, corrupt selves. Yes. But direct provision is our Magdalene laundry, is our worse, even worse, because it's been done with the hindsight and knowledge that we now have. You know, if there was any excuse, and there's none, to say that in the ignorance and stupidity of what the clergy believed to be God's Word caused that in the past, we now know that it's wrong. I mean, the most superstitious clergyman must know by this stage that the Magdalene laundries and things that happened were wrong so

then how do you make an excuse how does a secular government make an excuse for direct provision it's it's a it's not it's a fundamental breach of human rights that should not be tolerated. One thing I'll say, the fact that when I mentioned it to the room, there was genuinely people here who'd never heard of it, right? It's like there's actual internment happening on this island, and if you don't know about it, that means the state and the media are doing a brilliant job

of hiding it away. So, like, make it visible. Do whatever you can. There's a lot of groups at the moment, what they're trying to do is help kids in direct provision just have clothing for school and things like that, you find out about your local direct provision group try and help through that way and make it an issue make it an issue even though you know we're in the north of Ireland here learn about it it's happening on the same

island you know no one wants internment like yeah right and when you said there Bernadette that like you know Ireland has got space for more people which it does if you said that on the internet like the Irish right would go

fucking ape shit oh I know how are you feeling about this emergence of the Irish right or the alt-right or whatever they want to call themselves? Well, going back to where we started the conversation about revolting young people, when we were young and the civil rights movement here

and things were rising, we were part of and we were seeking justice in a world that, for a whole lot of different reasons, had at that time the rise of new liberal, new progressive, new solidarity thinking. And I think what young people need to know now, because I think it's much more difficult, is that you're working for justice against the rise of the right.

Yeah. And that's happening the world over. I think we're looking at, I think the period that you might want, you know, that it's most similar to is that period from the 28th crash, the Wall Street crash, right through to the 30s and the rise of fascism in Spain first because if we had if we had finished it in Spain before it took hold everybody everywhere else we'd have done the world a favor but we're looking at and when we were young there like we used to think everybody over the age of 25 was fascists just as a word

hasn't changed just a word that you used. But fascism is real, and it's raising its head again everywhere. And it's more important then that young people speak out. And I don't mean just young people, but you are the leadership of today and tomorrow people like myself are old people who got wise very painfully and have some of that wisdom to share but the future is not mine the future the future belongs to you. I'm biding my time here till I pay for my sins. No chance. No chance. But I think the rise of the right, and we're seeing it. We're seeing it in America. We're seeing the manipulation

of ignorance and fear and unmet expectations. You know, there's a world out there that's been shown to people through the media, and people are being asked to look like this and own this and have this and be this. And you can't. Not because there's anything wrong with you. All that imagery is about flogging you shit so they can make money. And then they keep the money, and you stay even poorer because you've just bought all their shit but there's no work there's no money and and then because because the dream can't be lived it's

the other person's fault it's the black person's fault it's the other person's fault. It's the black person's fault. It's the gay person's fault. It's the foreign person's fault. It's the person on benefits fault. It's the person with mental health problems fault. It's anybody that isn't you fault. And so you're being twisted and turned against everybody else. And your fear and your anger is being diverted towards other people. And that's happening, you know, things don't happen across the entire world at the same time by accident. That's happening because somebody's feeding it and ideas are feeding it. And it's not, you know, it's not, you know, you see the stereotypes. You know, Dubai in the boots that doesn't, that hasn't got his grammar right, that's putting graffiti on the wall and breaking people's

windies. It's not him. He's the consequence of it, not the cause of it. It's the suited and booted up here who are feeding it because it's keeping them up there while people here are turned against each other. And so you need to stop it. And you need to find ways of supporting each other to stop it. So when somebody thinks it's funny to make misogynist remarks about women in your company, and they're your friend, you have to say, you know, that's not good enough.

You have to stop it. Everywhere you see it, you have to stop it. APPLAUSE When we were backstage, I was asking you about... We were discussing the nature of trauma. And I was asking, would it be okay if I asked you about the time you had an assassination attempt

and you said yes that would be okay yeah that's okay yeah can we talk about that? yes we can talk about that so what was it like being shot nine times? It was interesting.

It was interesting. It's funny that I can talk about that much more easily than I can talk about that memory. That memory of bloody sunday is more traumatic for me than in the time that i was shot and i think it was because you know as we were saying it's because i didn't see bloody sunday coming i didn't see the 5th of october coming see the 5th of October coming but by the time people came to our house and kicked the door in and held my two daughters one at that time four and the other nine at gunpoint while their parents were shot I knew they were coming, if you know what I mean.

I didn't know they were coming then. But Miriam Daly had been shot. John Turnley had been shot. Noel and Ronnie Bunting had been shot. And we knew that the penalty for defending the rights of prisoners, human rights of prisoners, human rights of prisoners, was putting civil rights, human rights campaigners in the firing line. And we kept on doing it. And that's why I sent you the question. It's nearly not what did it feel like to be shot, but was since

you knew at some point the penalty for doing this was that we were going to be shot. And John McMichael went on television and said we would be shot. So when the people came to our door, it was for us a day that was always coming. And because you understood the context of what was happening, coming and because you understood the context of what was happening I think for us the trauma was somewhat less I mean the emotional trauma afterwards not the physical trauma of it than for people who got caught up in a bomb or something who didn't know what was going to happen to them. But what it was,

I was shot nine times. And again, the real point of this is, the UDA just didn't decide to come to our house. It was part of a campaign that they had been involved in. The British Army and the RUC knew they were coming on the day they were coming and the time they were coming. Yeah. And they let that happen. They let that go ahead. And after we were shot and left to die on the floor of our own house and our children there, the soldiers that I spoke to going home, going into my house that night.

And I know why I was shot. The hunger strike had ended, and after Christmas, the whatever deal was not done, and that's a whole new story, but it was clear that within the prison itself Bobby Sands and others were unhappy with what had happened this deal that was supposed to be done didn't materialize and that there was going to be another hunger strike and I in fact was coming from a H block meeting that was discussing this

problem and fear and what we would do if it happened and I almost knew that it was going to be my turn to be shot because I was a PR and and was good at what I was doing so the key person to take out of the equation before the next hunger strike started had to be me. And we were taking precautions at home because of that. But when I came home from that meeting, and I live in the country, pulled my wee car up very close to the wall because it was a frosty night,

I could see the soldiers and i spoke to them and i said have you no homes of your own to go to that's what i said to him if you know homes your own to go to lying out there outside decent people's houses and i can still see their wee eyes peeping up at me and their camouflaged faces, but nobody spoke. I went in. It was about one o'clock in the morning, a really cold night. I said to Michael, soldiers are lying outside our house. Now, we live in the bog. We lived in the moss. It was a lot of long laying and an isolated place. And then I got into bed and went to sleep.

And the next morning, and there are things, you know, there's a touch of terrible humour in the midst of tragedies. But when we look back on it, sometimes we have to laugh at the chaotic nature of it. But Michael heard the car coming and pulling up right behind mine. And he looked out the window and he saw the three men getting out of the car and coming round the front of the house. And one of them had a sledgehammer. So he's shouting at me to get up, get up. They're outside the house. I don't

like being wakened and I'm not really good at this. And I'm saying, I know, you know what it's like? I told you that last night because I thought he was talking about the soldiers. He was saying, get up, get up, they're outside the house. he was talking about the soldiers because he was saying get up get up there outside the house he was talking about those men but I thought he was talking about the soldiers I saw so what really woke me up was the sound of the sledgehammer hitting the front door which bounced the door open and the first gunshots were fired then through the hall door at Michael who was trying to hold it shut and then they came

Smallwood stood and held my two daughters Roisin and Deirdre in their bed at gunpoint Roisin was the older of the two and Deirdre in their bed at gunpoint. Roisin was the older of the two. She got the younger one into her bed with her and covered her head up so she couldn't see what was happening. And she kept, I remember her saying in her statement,

she kept watching the gunman. So, funny thing, I did that myself. That kind of belief that if you're looking the people in the face, they're not going to do anything to you. was doing that and Watson and Graham it was like a firm of solicitors when you heard of them in the court Watson Watson Smallwood and Graham they came on in and Michael tried to draw them into the kitchen and and he was he was shot there and then Watson came into the bedroom and I just lifted Fintan who was the youngest and I realized when I lifted him if I'm shot he'll be shot too so then I had to throw him he was only a toddler he wasn't two and it was just as I threw the child away that Watson came in very close behind me and I think he was startled by the fact that I was standing up with my back to him so close to him because he fired straight away

and I can still remember in in slow motion each place I was hit and how I fell back and I and not that it's a comfort to people but you know and I've told people so be who have had relatives killed in whatever little comfort that is that I was totally aware of the impact of being hit and I could smell I could smell the gunfire is very strong sense of smell and vision I could smell, I could smell the gunfire, it's very strong sense of smell and vision. I could see the blue light of the, you know, the flashes of the gun. And I knew I was being hit, but I couldn't feel the pain. And I didn't feel any pain until I was actually being trundled

across on a trolley from the helicopter to the military hospital. And that was about, must've been about a good hour later. But while we were lying, they shot us and they walked. Now they were roaring and shouting when they put the door in and came into the house. But they walked out casually like you'd walk out of a pub. And just when they walked out, I heard the English voices saying, put your hands against the wall.

And at that minute, I thought it was the soldiers who killed us. I was still thinking that I saw these soldiers, and I thought that a neighbour had heard the shooting and come over, and I was waiting to hear more shots, to hear the neighbour be killed, but I heard a gun drop when I knew a gun had been dropped on the bonnet of my car and a voice said fuck this for a double cross now I believe that that voice was Andrew Watson's that that's who said that So the army arrested people who did not expect to be arrested. And then the guys came in, and they were paratroopers.

And they ran away again, and they put up a flare, and the Argyll and Southern Highlanders came and administered first aid. And then Hugh Pike, the chief of the Paris, gave a press conference on our front street and we, no, you know, Hugh Pike, head of the Paris, never went to give a press conference for anybody else that was shot in Northern Ireland. And Michael and myself were taken to Musgrave Military Hospital

and we remain the only two non-combatants who weren't British soldiers in the whole of the troubles to have been taken directly to a military hospital. And the reason for that was because we didn't die. And nobody knew what we knew or what anybody else knew or what had happened. And much like Bloody Sunday, until the army got its story straight, everybody had to be controlled. And we're still looking for the truth of who up there, you know, never mind Watson, Smallwood and Graham,

were found guilty, pleaded guilty, and did their stint. But the real culprits, same as Bloody Sunday, the same as the people who ran special agents, were whoever in British military and British politics and British intelligence were playing poker with the lives of people in this country for 40 years. For 40 years, it looks like British intelligence were running the provost, were running the UVF, were running the UDA. I remember a wise man once said to me, every time you see, you know, you're looking at the armed organizations, there'll be one working for the CIA, there'll be one working for the Brits, there'll be

one working for free state intelligence, there'll be one counting for himself, and the fifth one's in the coffin that they're carrying. and it's sad but when you look back and see what's now coming out of what the government the government who's supposed to be responsible yeah for for the safety of all its citizens equally whether it likes them or not was paying people to join onlawful organizations, was letting those people plan and get away with murder. There are victims who can't get justice because national security doesn't allow us to know

that the people involved in the killing of them were paid by the government you know where where where do you where do you start to find the truth about all of that and yet until we do and until we see justice done there be no peace to be you know we're managing the absence of war, but there'll never be progress until we are able to hold the government to account for whatever it thought it was doing here. Because it left 40,000 people down. That's heavy stuff, Bernadette.

Yeah. Fucking hell. The moral is, you see, when they say, well, I have a good idea, let's form an army, say, no, thank you, let's just, let's keep, as McCann says, the sound of marching feet. Let's form an army. Say no, thank you. Let's keep, as McCann says, the sound of marching feet. Let's keep our feet on the street and we'll get where we're going. Run for Parliament, she says. And if anybody suggests you should run for Parliament, she says. And if anybody suggests you should run for Parliament,

I'd cut that short, just run. LAUGHTER Do you feel that Sinn Féin have written themselves into the civil rights movement? Well, I have to say they made a good effort. Gerry Adams is in the back wearing a hat. It's interesting. He is. I tell you, and I said it before,

the civil rights movement was started as a broad-based movement. As a child, it wasn't really, it was a young person, I didn't start it. I tried to say that to Lord Skjarman, that's when he said the bit about the Troubles. I didn't start it. But those who would now claim bragging rights for it would want to reflect more on where it all went wrong and how much we still have to do than to be trying to position themselves as the leaders of something many of those claiming leadership of were in nappies when it was happening because it wasn't them they didn't exist did the republican movement exist yes it did most of them weren't in it. Some of them were. And those who then went on to be the present Sinn Féin and the provisional Republican movement were the people who walked away and started a whole new ballgame because they didn't like the Republican movement's policy

of civil rights and democratizing ulster and that's where you got the officials and the stickies and there's a wee bit of irony about the you know the powerful shinfe and now that came out of the provisional republican movement claiming the legacy of the organisation they left because he didn't like what it was doing. But do you see when you get... Do you see when you lose the run of yourself? Anything's possible. And Sinn Féin is losing the run of itself

who would like to ask a question it can be about anything that's the joy of a podcast the question doesn't have to be about politics it can be about inflating beach balls. This gentleman here at the front. Oh, over yonder. Who's got the microphone? Is the microphone acting the prick? Is it? Oh, dare you. How are you? What's the craic? I'm very well. I just want to say to Bernadette,

as a young woman that's just graduated from Queens, studying politics, you've been a fucking inspiration. From the moment I seen that video of you on the steps of Parliament, I went, fuck me, that's who I want to be when I grow up. I still haven't managed to grow up, and I'm 24, but I'm working on it. My question I want to ask is just just given your stance on the Good Friday Agreement and your views on European Union what do you think about Brexit and what it would mean for the north of Ireland? That could take a fortnight. Let me try and answer this short I tried to say to Brexiteers, Legziteers,

Remainers, Remoners and the lot that the starting point of the question is what's wrong with the country and that's not entirely dependent on whether we're in the EU or not. I think we used... I campaigned against joining the EU. I think the EU is certainly not everything that the Remainers would tell us that it is. But who in their right mind would walk away from a

bad situation with a worse person than the one you are running away from? So there may have been an argument if we can build an alternative Europe that is not based on the limitations of this year it's not about European Union capital it's not about sustaining the European Union's existing power structures because we have to have European solidarity we you know we have to have international solidarity. We're all part of the same place. And I'm not sure how we change, reform, revolutionise, break up and build a better

European Union that means something outside of building the revolution. But what I definitely do know, that voting no in a referendum set up by a delusional, done for, past its cell bed empire that thought it could regenerate itself outside of the European Union, a right-wing, racist, anti-immigrant, anti-human rights agenda, what possessed anybody that they could vote no, hand them that power on a plate, and then with the rise of the right and the fascism behind it of

British tourism they could create a progressive exit alongside it all I could say to people I loved dearly when they started to talk like that was, tell me that again? Madness. So tactically people needed to reject the British proposal. Every instinct you had would have to have told you anything that strengthens the hand of the British right is wrong. So even we don't like the European Union... APPLAUSE And then there were people who said... That was the dissident Republican line.

You know, the enemy of, what is it, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. When are you ever going to get over that bit of nonsense? The enemy of your enemy I may. So, but, that said, the issue that we need to organise around is not, are we in or are we out of the European Union? Because, as Connolly put it a long time ago,

in a bigger European battle, we serve neither King nor Kaiser. It's not about being in or out. It's about building a society here that links with solidarity movements everywhere else to build the kind of world we want and the kind of Europe within that. But leaving Brexit ain't taking us nowhere. Only into poverty. Thank you.

Any more questions? This gentleman here with the navy elbow. Hello. It's you, man. You're the only fellow with the navy elbow. Hello? It's you, man. You're the only fella with the navy elbow. You're looking around going, who else has got a navy elbow? You probably need it if you're putting a stand up.

Can you hear me okay? Where's the microphone? Where's the mic? Up here. Oh, lads, I'm sorry, sir. The microphone is over there up on the balcony. Hello? Does anyone have a question on the balcony?

Aye. See, I proposed a a question on the balcony? Hi. See, I proposed a kind of a lanyard system where it was going across, or even a drone, but, like... I have a question about what you mentioned about going down and slapping your man in the face in Parliament. Can you slow it down? I'm from Limerick, so can you...? Sorry. I'm from Glasgow, so I'll slow down.

You said... You went down and you slapped your man in the face. Will I tell you? I don't know what you're saying. I'm going to translate Limerick from Scotland... Go ahead. ..into Tyrone. Go ahead. So, you said you slapped your man in the face in Parliament.

Yeah. And then the next day... And then the next day... We'll get there. That... ..the headlines... The Netherlands. No, the headlines.

The newspapers. The newspapers, yeah. Took away from what happened on Bloody Sunday. So the newspapers... OK, now I get it. So when you slapped that man in Parliament, you were saying that the newspapers took away from what happened in Bloody Sunday. That was a statement.

Now, what's the question, sir? Do you feel you were manipulated by the state to react to your man in the way that you did? Do you feel you were manipulated by the state to react to your man the way you did? I love the theorising intellectual statements of the left. They're fecking brilliant. No.

No, no. Let me tell you in very plain, Teron English what happened. None of that. If I hadn't hit your man, they would not have filled the British newspapers with the horror of Bloody Sunday. They would have filled it with the lies of the Secretary of State. Unchallenged. So that's the first bit. I didn't take away from anything. It was when they were telling your man's lies, they at least had to add, but they were outraged about that bit, that the mad woman from Turon hit the man. was that that didn't go unchallenged. So the premise is theoretical, ideological, and non-applicable. Because it assumes that if it hadn't hit him,

all those journalists would have run out and said, massacre happened in Derry. No, they wouldn't. They would have repeated unchallenged that man's lie that's all they would have done imagine imagine hitting someone a slap and 40 years later the subject is a Marxist analysis. Hi, where's the, we have a downstairs mic, okay, okay now we're rocking. Hi, I think it's me. I'm gonna repeat the question that I asked earlier. Why won't you stand for Parliament? I was born in 69.

I've never had anybody to vote for, only people to vote against. And I'd like just once in my life to have someone to vote for. Was the question, you want Bernadette to run for Parliament again? I want Bernadette to set up her own party. And if she doesn't want to run for Parliament, run for Irish President, anything. Oh, yeah.

Anything. Jesus. Would you have any interest in Irish President? No. Mickey D would nearly step aside for you. Michael. He would. He would. Michael D's doing a good enough job as it is.

And if I had a vote, which I ought to have but I don't have, if I had a vote in the current presidential election, I'd be voting for him twice. Well, no, once. Once. You're only allowed to vote once. But I think there's a serious point to the question. It's in our culture. We just have to get that way. It doesn't matter whether we're Catholics or Protestants or whatever.

It's in our culture to look for salvation from on high and to look to some god or some icon or some big person or some burned it or some to gallop to the rescue and if only she was sitting in the job it would be all right and that's not true it It's the job description. It's the structure of the job. It's the job itself that the problem is with. It's the way we organise what we call democracy.

It's the way we organise what we call power. That is wrong. And if we just keep voting people into a system that is corrupt and corrupting, and then cry because the people we sent into it betray us, at what point are we going to catch on that then everybody will betray us as we go through this or there's something wrong with the system we're sending them into. The amount of power to change society that currently resides in the government is minimal. Power currently lies in the hands of the people who own wealth in the multinational industries. They tell the government who'll pay tax and who won't.

Like you and me will pay it, they won't. They tell the government what the penalty will be if you vote this way or that way. We'll move this factory. We'll take our finance there. We'll close this down. Power... There is very little democratic power. So what happens is that you vote people into stormont.

God bless you. And you don't listen anyway. You don't listen to me. I told you that was a bum deal. I told you. That was a bum deal. That stormant. If you'd gone to as much trouble as I'd gone to taking that place apart,

you'd have had a very dim view of people coming, sticking it together again. And now it doesn't work. It doesn't work, not because Sinn Féin are collaborators not because the DUP are stupid these things these things don't help but they're not they're not the cause the place doesn't work. It doesn't work. So while I say thank you, and that's all very flattering, I'm not very good with flattery,

you don't need Burndit to form a party. You don't need Burndit to do anything. You need the person that's in you, that knows what you know know that believes what you know Which is why you think that I'm a good person and that if I could do something and then you need to do it yourself And you need to do it all yourselves Because I can't do it for you I can't Because I can't do it for you. I can't.

But it's in you all to do it. It's in you all to do it. Or you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be responding the way you... You want to feel the energy that we can feel up here. It's the best political rally I've been at in a lifetime. And yet you're not political people. You know, this is... This is real... You know, this is real people

with real feelings and a real understanding of what's wrong and what could be right. And it's not about their political ideology or the political party or who did this or who did that or who they should vote for this is people power and if we can get more people to begin to say look it's not about who voted for who it's about what can we do to stop things from happening and and it might be that you you write to the papers and it might be you get on the internet and it might be that you

you take over an empty house for homeless people to make make a point it might be that you read and get more understanding of what you want to do. But if your answer is, because that used to drive me insane in the 60s, you know, go to meetings and people would say, somebody ought to, you know, somebody would need to. And I'd say, yeah. Since you had the bright idea, how about that somebody being you? So, go for it. Go for it.

Run for something if you want. And if you don't think that, you know, think that, oh, you couldn't do that, stand for, you know, you run for council and let on, Jeremy. One last question question lads this this poor gent at the front with the Navy elbow thank you Bernadette I'd like to ask you on your perspective of when official Sinn Féin split and formed the Irish Republican Socialist Party and how that compares to new way of Republican Party splitting from Sinn Féin in the likes of Eirge and Saru and what your opinion is on that? Aye well that's a whole different conversation that would take you know

another take another evening. The Irish Republican Socialist Party, first of all, you had that Provo split. And again, you know, I was telling you, it's about going back to days of the Magdalene laundries and people didn't really know certain things. If you go back to the split, you know, the war was, and whatever you want to call it, troubles or war, but the civil rights movement and tensions were becoming flashpoints of conflict, and then that was being armed and so in that debate within the republican movement about self-defense and and whether attack was the best method of self-defense and the taking up of armed struggle

while that that split was there then effectively there was no provisional Sinn Féin. There are things that people forget. Sinn Féin, provisional Sinn Féin, did not have a functioning common in East Tyrone, North Armagh, South Derry, which during the war became big flashpoint areas. Sinn Féin didn't have a functioning political common in those areas until the hunger strike. That was 1982.

So when you're going back to the early 70s, the provisionals were an army, and what bits of Sinn Féin common they basically had around the country were to an extent, and I don't want to say this in a bad way, but they were effectively cheerleaders and support for the army. They didn't have a political ideology. They stole Roy Johnson's Federation solution and took it with them, just in case we'd need it,

because they didn't like the democratization of Ulster, but the federal solution didn't sound so bad. But there was none of the political education and political organising in Sinn Féin that is the Sinn Féin that you know now, or that is the post-Hunger Strike Sinn Féin. So in the mid-70s, you had a position where the politics were with the officials, who had kind of, well, from my perspective, in challenging the drift towards militarism and hibernianization, which I thought they were right in doing.

But they'd kind of thrown the baby out with the bathwater, to my mind, and said the national question itself was shelved. And it seemed to me that the national question pushes itself into the middle of everything because it's unresolved. And then Costolo started the IRSP around that question, that there had to be a place where the progressive politics and social movement politics of the left and the national question could come together

so we didn't have either uh self-determination must wait on democracy or democratization must wait on self-determination. And that attracted me, and I joined him in putting the ERSP's together. And in the very first year, there were meetings. When we had meetings, there were 500 people come to the meetings. The basis of it was there. The big argument that we fell out over was that the traditional model of republicanism was the the sister or brother who'd of organizations that you had a democratic political movement over here and you had a military organization over here, and that this

was a secret organization. I don't like secrecy. I think the big, I think, if you don't, you know, if you don't do the thing out in the open, don't do it at all. You may not want everybody to know your business, but on the day that everybody finds out your business, good, bad, or indifferent, you'd want to be standing over it. Otherwise, you're done for. You're open to manipulation, blackmail, whatever. So the day that... Don't put your hand in the till, but the day you do, know that there'll come a day

somebody will tell you you did it, and you have to say, yes, that was me, or else you're done for. So that was that argument. And my argument with Costello, it went on, and there were other people's arguments, was that if the IRSP was to be a democratic political organisation in the way it was, it could not tolerate dual membership of a secret faction,

armed or unarmed. You can't have secret factions because you can't have democracy. You can't have a political party where nobody in the political party knows who in the political party owes a first allegiance to another organisation that you're not allowed to know about, talk about, and you have no idea what they stand for. Especially if they shoot people. Especially if they're an army.

And that argument was not resolved. In the midst of it, then, the officials decided that having allowed the provisionals to develop, they couldn't allow the Earps to develop. And the whole militarisation started again. And those of us who argued, that's not what... you can't do that you have to be brave enough to build an open democratic progressive party with no

secret army because there were already enough armies and And I still don't know. I don't accept. I know what people say. But you see, once you take the weapon in your hands and fire it, there is no more revolutionary or less revolutionary way of pointing a rifle. It doesn't matter. You see, when you take the rifle in your hand and point it and aim it and pull the trigger,

see the person on the other end with the bullets going, don't make any difference to them whether you were in the USPS, the IRA, the UDA or the UVF. They're dead. And there were already enough armies. So within 11 months of that prolonged debate, those of us who believed the same as me lost the argument and we left.

Sometimes I think that we shouldn't have walked out at that point. We should have stayed and fought the argument more because what happened when we did leave we shouldn't have walked out at that point. We should have stayed and fought the argument more. Because what happened when we did leave was the disintegration of the Earps into everything that came after that. And perhaps a moment was lost. But is there any resemblance to that in my book? Such a note to end the night on. And the present dissident Republicans, as they're called, the fragmentation. No.

I think that most, and this is my own perspective, I think most of these small fragmented Republican organizations are made up of people who are understandably angry that the organization they were in over the years of the struggle did not deliver on the expectations and then turned on them who were a party of it. I think part of their anger is a denial that right up until the point where they individually or collectively woke up and smelt the coffee, they were part of in the organizations and complicit in taking it where it went. And then when the penny dropped, blamed everybody else except themselves for not paying attention. But most of the people in the dissident Republican movement are people who were in the main movement,

Our people who were in the main movement signed up to the Good Friday Agreement, signed up to bit by bit by bit until they came to the bit they didn't like. And when enough was enough, they left and blamed, forgot. They signed up to all the rest of it. And they're going nowhere. That's the road to no town. And any foolish belief, any foolish belief that they have that somehow they can put something together that will what?

Will what? That's a question I ask all the time. Will what? Will what? What do you think will happen when you go down the same road you went down before and end up in the same place as every

single Republican leadership in the country has ended up. Do you know Fianna Fáil come out of Sinn Féin? You just go back over the history, they all come out of Sinn Féin and at every time what happens is the leadership settles and a rump goes away over here and then after a while the rump tries the same thing and then they settle and at some point you have to realize your methodology is flawed. It keeps taking you round in the same destructive circle and no further, no nearer that vision of Tone and Connolly

and I don't mean that they don't have it it takes you no nearer it so you need to quit you know what was it Einstein said doing the same thing over and over again gets you the same results you have to

yeah you have to recognize that we are where we are, and to move to a better place, we have to do things differently. And the Republican movement isn't going to lead us anywhere we need a bigger mass broader political movement you will not militarism Dawson work give it up Dawson work doesn't work. Thank you all for coming here tonight. It was absolutely fantastic. I've been looking forward to this for a long, long time and I just I felt like a member of the audience. I was quite happy.

It's hard to shut me up. That was unbelievable. That was incredible. Thank you so much, Bernadette. Well, that was absolutely fantastic. If you're wondering what's wrong with the soul now I'm in my apartment in Spain this is the importance of me being in my studio lads because this just sounds like shit but anyway that was absolutely fantastic I've nothing to say other than it was a complete and utter honour to be able to interview someone as important as Barnardette Devlin-McAleskey. She's a legend.

And that interview was just spellbinding for me just to sit back and listen to it. It was just really, really humbling. So thank you again to Barnadette for doing that. Yort, have a good week. Enjoy yourselves. yart have a good week enjoy yourselves rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason

game and you'll only pay as we play come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com