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Description
Henry Sinnerton is a Belfast schoolteacher who has known David Ervine for many years and who has worked closely with him in the writing of this biography.
“There is not a more impressive politician in Northern Ireland than David Ervine.”Senator George Mitchell
In the wake of the loyalist ceasefire of October 1994 many were surprised by the appearance, as if from nowhere, of a new, personable breed of spokesmen, who were open-minded and down-to-earth. None have impressed more than David Ervine, whose ready wit and refreshing manner have given sympathetic expression to a new unionism.
His journey began in a working-class terrace house in east Belfast, where he grew up identifying closely with the community of which he was part. Leaving school before his fifteenth birthday, he began his working life in an atmosphere not just of tension but of violent confrontation. At 19 he joined the UVF, believing that this was the necessary way to defend his community. He was arrested in 1974 for possession of explosives, and convicted. He served his sentence in Long Kesh, a wasteland that he and other prisoners transformed into a place of personal and political growth and development.
Released in 1980, he stood in local council elections as a Progressive Unionist Party candidate in 1985, and when the militarists of the UVF were seeking a new way forward, it was to Ervine they turned.
In this fascinating biography of a remarkable man, Henry Sinnerton tells the inside story of the personal and political path taken by David Ervine, one of the most courageous architects of conflict resolution in Northern Ireland. |
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