They believed that Britain was in Ireland defending their own interests, therefore the Irish had the right to use violence to put them out. My argument was that that type of thinking was out of date.

The civil rights movement in the United States was about the same thing, about equality of treatment for all sections of the people, and that is precisely what our movement was about

These are the influences that everybody has. Some individuals might stand out because of one thing or another, but whether one's perception as a child of what was important or not is accurate, I don't know.

My father was a civil servant, fairly sort of middle ranking, low to middle ranking. He worked almost entirely in what was then called Administrative Labour, dealing with employment and unemployment issues

My father was unemployed and I was the eldest of seven children. We were very poor. And when you ask how did we support ourselves, the only funding that we had was unemployment payments.

I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.

We're much closer together in the world today than we ever were in the psot. Given that it is a much smaller world, we are in a stronger position to shape that world. As we enter the new century, and anew millennium, let us create a world in which there is no longer any war or any conflict.