Bloody Sunday

I had a very moral view when I was younger.
I thought everybody cared.
I think it’s part of a Catholic upbringing,
that idea of universal solidarity.
That was a journey for me . . .
I didn’t think the government was bad.
I genuinely thought they just didn’t know
and if I just went to London to tell them, people would say,
‘Do you hear that young woman there? We need to do something about that.’
But then I realised: the bastards, they do know and not only do they know,
they don’t see anything wrong with it.

I care passionately about justice, about ideas, about principles.
I love this work I do now, working with people on the margins.
Living on the margins is where I get least bored.
My only interest in rules is to see how far they can be pushed.
I am always interested in the boundary beyond which we’re told things won’t work,
in where the tension is that requires change, to make those things work out there.

                Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Irish civil rights leader
                Excerpted from The Irish Times, September 2016