Billy Hutchinson of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) at his office in Belfast City Hall, ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

They need to be brought together in a controlled place with the people they don’t like. We need to facilitate discussion rather than shut it down. Hutchinson cut his teeth rioting on the streets of his native Shankill Road against the British Army in the early 1970s That day he got away with it. But,as laid bare in a new book about his life in loyalism, it would not be long before Hutchinson ran out of road and ended up in Long Kesh where he would reflect on the cauldron of violence and social upheaval that defined Northern Ireland in the 1970s.Councillor Watton is both well-known as well as highly respected, his willingness to speak out and challenge injustices felt by his community shows true courage and strength." Read More Related Articles For context, after the 1916 Easter Rising, Sinn Fein won a landslide electoral victory across much of Ireland in 1918 and declared independence. Eventually, the Irish War of Independence broke out in 1919, and ended in 1921. There were atrocities on both sides and around 2,000 people died. The Anglo-Irish Treaty brought the war, and British rule, to an end. He remembers the long days and nights of negotiation at Castle Building, Stormont in the run-up to Good Friday, April 10th, 1998 when the deal was done. “It was a special day,” he says, on a par with the emotional charge he felt when he, Ervine and others persuaded the loyalist paramilitaries to declare their ceasefire in October 1994.

With people sharing the same Unionist cause, however, it is just one thing after another. One wonders if the likes of Gorman could tell a similar story: his sparring with Adams ended with Gorman self-exiled to Donegal to escape the harassment of his former allies, who had driven him to distraction with fire engines and food takeaways falsely sent to his door.Mr Hutchinson said one of the legacies of the agreement was that it had succeeded in bringing about an end to most violence.

Posing with his friends relationship between the left and unionism played out in jail where, he says: “Provos would tell me I was part of the Protestant Ascendancy, but I just laughed, showed them my jeans and said ‘I haven’t the arse in my trousers’.” But the reality is that the places these men were born and brought up in West Belfast are just hundreds of metres apart – at some level the facts of their lives could be serendipitously different had they the fate to be been born on a different street. Hutchinson warned that having lived through decades of constitutional conflict, Scotland must ensure its independence debate remains peaceful.Morrison believes that the “big ideological battle” will be in the republic as a United Ireland comes closer. Hutchinson refers to the perception that the Government of Boris Johnson has undermined the union across the UK. He says: “I’m no Tory … but the one thing unionists expect is for the Conservative and Unionist Party to always want to retain the union.” There have been polls showing a majority of Tory Party members happy to sacrifice the union with Scotland and Northern Ireland on the altar of Brexit. Hutchinson (second from right) says 'banning people from talking about certain things is a nonsense' (Image: Supplied) Read More Related Articles

Random killings were a counterproductive tactic that characterised the rest of the early to mid-1970s, but it was justified within loyalist organisations as ‘terrorising the terrorists’. Paisley always denied such culpability but it’s an issue that still rankles with Hutchinson (62) who, while a little mellower than he was 20 years ago, remains a passionate politician.But as the book suggests, he “may have had friendships with individual soldiers who he had working for him – gathering information and so forth”. Soon after his release from prison Hutchinson became active in the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) and began working towards the establishment of the Northern Ireland peace process. During the early 1990s Hutchinson and David Ervine became more familiar faces in the media, presenting loyalist political demands. Both men were influenced by the example of Sinn Féin, who had demonstrated that an articulate media presence could ensure that paramilitary groups' demands might be heard. [14] Hutchinson and Ervine in particular became close personal friends as well as colleagues and also enjoyed a friendly rivalry with Hutchinson being a Linfield-supporting west Belfast man and Ervine from the east of the city and a Glentoran F.C. fan. [15] Along with Spence and Ervine, Hutchinson was a strong advocate of moves towards peace and he played a leading role in helping to convince UVF commanders to endorse the Combined Loyalist Military Command ceasefire in 1994. [16] Following the announcement of the ceasefire Hutchinson was part of a six-man delegation representing the PUP and the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) that toured the United States. [17]