I grew up in the conditions of occupation where I seen people being shot, I seen people being arrested, tortured, interned without trial, and I responded to that. And of course, when I joined the IRA, you know, I was trained up in arms and explosives and was very, very much involved in that campaign. But you always seen yourself as a soldier, a combatant, a guerrilla fighter, whatever it is, with the goals of what you're attempting to obtain is freedom and peace and the British involvement to end in Ireland. The objectives were very clear in what we would say - we had to use the means to do that, and that was through arms.
Some people would say that to get involved in the IRA and to pick up a gun and to shoot, as in your case, a member of the SAS, that that required a degree of hate...
You can't say that because I support British football teams and, you know, I watch, I read British books and things like that - there's no Anglophobia, hate against anything British. It was just about the British occupation. The British soldier that I was involved with, he was killed in 1980, I didn't know him as a person, I didn't hate him, as a person, as far as I seen he was a person who represented the British occupation. He was there to promote the repression within my community. When he died, of course, I knew when I went to trial that he had a wife and two kids, and of course, I mean, you understand that. When I reflect upon it now, yes, I understand that this man shouldn't have been killed: but again I was not responsible, it was the British policy within the country to put that young man who was, I believe, 28 years of age, on the street with a gun in his hand, and it was the politics of the society where we live in that put me on the streets.
What vision did you bring into the community once the war was over and the peace process had begun to roll?
What I have brought into this community, I believe, is the experience. I've been in that position of a fifteen-year old boy on the street seeing what I'm seeing, seeing my family being attacked, and wanting to do something about it. It was very clear to me then that the only course open was war. What I see now is that we do have different alternatives - and to say to young people that I don't want them to do what I did, I don't want to see young boys or young girls at fourteen years of age, sitting in the back-houses learning how to strip guns or putting bombs together. I believe the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement and what I believe the republican movement is doing, is building bridges, trying to move the process forward. As we say, 'bite the tongue', look at the bigger picture in relation to, you know, building the future.
