Just spent the last few hours in the company of some very close friends and talking about some of the above points.(Not in a pub, I don't drink)

Firstly, the Provisional IRA in our eyes fought a war against an invasion force. We love our country, we want freedom in this land and we want it without killing or bombing.

Sorry about going back in time, but if Hitler made it over the water in the early 1940's and took away the English way of life as they knew it, I would support their fight against him, Christ if I was about then I would probably of went over and fought for the English !

You really needed to of been here to experience it, sorry if that sounds an old line. It was unpleasant and it wasn't just the provo's or their supports that got it in the neck. Internment without trail was a bastard, I saw families split up and divorce for the first time in my life.

My brother came out with scars all over his body from cigarette burns, picked up during torture which they admitted to in the case he took against them, (he got 1,000 pounds damages). He was never charged with any crime in his life.


I do not and never have hated the British people as a nation, they were great to me any time I was there. It wasn't so much the British as their turning a blind eye to the unionist running of the North and the way they treated us. Yes I am old enough to remember it.

My fathers business was burned to the ground as he was the only catholic tailor in a protestant area, he was not a republican, never held a political view in his life, hated my views. Do you know what it is like to watch a man cry as he watched the suits he worked on for weeks burning on their hangers ?

The police stood beside us as a family that night and told my father, what do you expect? your type has no business living in this area, the others laughed. He had traded there as had his father and grandfather and great grandfather before him for one hundred and twenty two years.

Yes I know some of you are saying, here is Divis with a sob story, just try to get into the mindset and imagine it is you. Yes I supported the withdrawal of bigoted, hate filled Ulstermen who wanted me and my family dead.

I am and will be a republican until my heart stops beating. Do I share the views some of you expressed about Americans like Mick ? No I thank and admire them for their voice and pressure on the British government to make changes in Ireland.

I simply cannot win anywhere. To some of you I am a provo bastard, to the diehard Englishman I am a trouble maker, to once good friends and close republicans I am a coward for my support of getting the bomb and bullet out of politics.

Just think whatever the hell you want to think, all the names you want to call me have already been heard.

And no offence, but I still defend the once Provisional IRA volunteers who are now getting on with their everyday lives and live and sleep with haunting memories.

Goodnight
DS