G08 David Armstrong

Okay, I’ve hit record there now. I think I sent you a consent form by email which we can get sorted another time, but I just wanted to get, just for the purpose of the recording, your verbal consent that you’re alright for this to go ahead and to, for it to be recorded and stuff.

Yeah, absolutely, no problem.

Okay, no worries, so yeah, thanks again for joining and if you could start then just by saying your name and today’s date.

Okay, so my name’s David Armstrong and today’s date is the twentieth of August 2020.

Yeah, that’s great, and then could you tell me when and where you were born?

I was born in Lurgan in Northern Ireland on the first of February 1975, a long, long time ago [laughs].

Ah no, no, not that long ago at all, and so you were, you were born in Lurgan and you grew up there, yeah?

I did, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and what, what was it, what kind of place was it growing up, like, what kind of, what was the neighbourhood like that you were growing up in?

Yeah, pretty good, yeah, Lurgan’s pretty, a divided town in that all the Protestants live at one half and all the Catholics live in the other half and kind of never the twain meet, so, yeah, so I had a very happy childhood, grew up, good schools, very safe place to grow up, but interestingly I grew up in the kind of Protestant tradition, I didn’t, didn’t know any Catholics at all growing up, just because at the time it was so segregated.

So there was very much, like, almost a dividing line down the middle of it, sort of thing, yeah?

Yeah, almost a kind of invisible dividing line, yeah, yeah, there was a kind of set of public toilets in the main high street and that was a, that was a sort of dividing line as it were.

Oh really, so you didn’t, you didn’t go past the toilets?

Yeah, I mean, listen, you did cos my, the church I went to was just past it, but that was kind of seen as a sort of, what’s called, in inverted commas, the other end of the town, if it makes, if that makes sense, so yeah, yeah, it was a sort of notional divided line that, in terms of where, where people lived rather than anything else.

Yeah, and what did your parents do?

My dad was a painter and decorator, he was a self-employed painter and decorator, and my mum was a kind of play leader at a play scheme.

Oh okay, right, and did you have any siblings or anything?

I’ve got a younger sister, yeah.

Younger sister, yeah, so you, you went to school in Lurgan, then?

Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, so Lurgan’s a wee bit unique in terms of its kind of educational set-up throughout the rest of Northern Ireland, so, so I went to primary school, King’s Park primary school, Lurgan, from primary one to primary seven and then you can sit what’s called your eleven-plus at [indecipherable], they sit a thing called the eleven-plus, or what most people did was they went to the junior high school for three years and then at the end of your third year you sat an exam to determine whether you went to a grammar school in Lurgan or you went to the technical college, it’s called a thing, it was a thing called the Dickson Plan which was pretty unique to sort of Lurgan, that, that didn’t happen, now that first to third year bit didn’t happen throughout the country, most places had the sort of primary seven exam, the eleven-plus and then you went to, to grammar school at that juncture and that was you to your upper sixth year.

Oh right, okay, and so your school was nearby, was that, like, where your main circle of friends would have been from as well, sort of from school and people from the neighbourhood and stuff, yeah.

Yeah, very much so, yeah.

Yeah, so what did you do outside of school, was it, was there any particular interests you had, or, like–?

Yeah, so played a bit of football, rugby, was involved in my church, so yeah, they were my sort of main interests.

And you went to church, you were saying that was on kind of the other side of town?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and, and what was the church called?

It’s called Shankill parish church, it was a Church of Ireland church.

Right, okay, and that was presumably where your parents, like, started taking you when you were young?

Yeah, yeah, so kind of started going to Sunday school and then, yeah.

And did you enjoy that, then?

Yeah, yeah, uh huh, it was, it was more my mum, my dad didn’t go, so I kind of went with my mum.

Yeah, okay, so, yeah, no, I was just asking cos, like, a lot of people who I’ve talked to have said they kind of almost resented being sort of dragged there. I was kind of wondering if that was your experience, or if you were more of a keen pupil, if you like.

No, a kee-, I was a keen student.

Keen student, yeah, and so was there a social life sort of around the church and stuff as well?

Yeah, I suppose, there was as I got older, not, obviously not so much in primary school years, I went to the Boys’ Brigade as a younger kid and then I went to the sort of, as I got older I went to the youth fellowship in the church and, sort of youth group that they had, but yeah, just kind of kicked about with my friends and just did the sort of usual stuff that kids do.

And were there, I mean, I suppose, yeah, like, were there many Catholic churches and stuff in the town as well?

Yeah, there’s probably, probably two or three, so, what Lurgan’s got is, is abundance of churches I think, there’s maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven different churches, so as a town of twenty-six, well, it was when I was there, about twenty-six thousand people, I’d say there’s probably twenty-six, twenty-seven churches of all different faiths and traditions in the town.

Yeah, that’s a very Northern Irish thing isn’t it, like, just chur-, churches everywhere, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And you mentioned Boys’ Brigade, so that, that was something you did as well, yeah?

Yeah, yeah, I was involved in that.

Yeah, and I wonder, I mean, you mentioned you were sort of brought up in the, the Protestant tradition. Was, was any of your family involved in sort of, like, the fraternal organisations like the Orange Order or anything, anything like that, was–?

No.

It wasn’t a part of your upbringing.

No, no.

And did you kind of pay any attention to, like, the Twelfth and things like that, was that something you remember?

Yeah, it was, yeah, yeah, definitely. I remember going along to, it was a big colourful day out when you were a kid, you know, so yeah, you would go along, if it was nearby you would go along, quite often we would be on holiday when the Twelfth of July was on, so we’d miss it, but if we were around and it was nearby you would maybe go along, but as a kid it’s just a big colourful day out, it’s not, you maybe don’t see it necessarily for what it is.

Yeah, you don’t get a sense of, like, the politics and some of the controversy behind it, maybe.

No, no, it, when I was young it was less controversial, to be honest, and then with all the kind of stand-offs around Drumcree, so that was, I was probably a teenager when that was kicking off, maybe in my late teens, yeah probably my late teens it got a bit more, a bit more tribal for want of a better way of putting it, you know, it all became about the right to march down the street, whereas I don’t, I don’t remember it being like that when I was younger, you know, it was, like, marches took places, took place in particular areas where there were a, there was no offence caused, well, that’s how I remember it, I do remember the sort of atmosphere changed with the sort of Drumcree stand-off.

Oh really, yeah, and were your, were your family interested in politics at all, did they take an interest in what was going on?

Yeah, my mum was quite, is quite interested in politics, she would have been sort of, at the time what was sort of officially unionist, so if you think of the DUP being the more extreme, the Official Unionist Party was a sort of more moderate, so that was kind of David Trimble’s party who, who brokered the Good Friday Agreement along with John Hume of the SDLP, so yeah, our politics would have been sort of very centre in terms of Northern Irish politics. We certainly would have never supported the DUP, and of course there’s a real sort of nonsense about Northern Irish politics in that if you’re a Protestant you vote for the DUP or the unionists and if you’re Catholic you vote for SDLP or Sinn Féin, irrespective of policies or, you know, social conscience, it just tends to be you vote along with your religion.

Yeah, and was your mum, was she, like, a member of the party or that was just who she would have supported and voted for and stuff?

No, she, that’s who she supported, yeah, she took a keen interest in it, but, but no, she wasn’t a member or anything like that, so no, no, not at all.

And what about you, did you, would you have the same kind of political views growing up, if you had any at all as a kid?

Yeah, I think so, I certainly would probably just have followed my parents, you know, and I probably, my first few years when I voted, when I reached the age to vote, I probably would have voted similar lines I think. [00:10:00]

I suppose as you say it’s that kind of thing where just everyone from one background votes for the same people and, and you kind of, there’s no scope to almost think outside that box.

Totally, yeah, totally, you’d have no idea. I guarantee you, even now I suspect, if you went and drilled down to peop-, to folk and said look, tell us, you voted for this party, what, what policies do you particularly like, you’d get a vacant expression.

Yeah, it’s very tribal in terms of, like, as you say, like, it’s one issue that the people focus on, and so you mentioned, like, not really knowing any, any Catholics growing up. I mean, what were your kind of perceptions of Catholics, was there any kind of suspicion amongst, not necessarily from yourself but just among people from your community towards people from Catholic or nationalist backgrounds?

Yeah, oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. I’ve got friends and I don’t mean, you know, guys that are educated with good jobs, professions, who still won’t shop in a shop if it’s owned by a Catholic, I mean, that’s, it’s almost embarrassing, in fact, it is embarrassing to say it, but that is, that is the reality of it, you know, people wouldn’t shop in certain shops because they were owned by Catholics, they wouldn’t go to certain things for, for political reasons because there was a Catholic involved, it’s, you know, it was, and my friends, all my close friends weren’t like that, but one or two were and then, going to school, you get the full range of idiots, you know, so one or two at the fringes probably got caught up in some of the sort of terrorism, terrorist groups, you know, I know one guy in particular who, you know, he was a good kid when he was a younger, but he was a sheep, and he just got led, he married into the wrong family and then got involved in, I think he actually went to jail for a period of time, you know, so there was a cross-section of people I knew, not necessarily my friends, cos I think a lot of my close friends would have had the similar sort of view to me that, you know, you take people as you find them, but I certainly wouldn’t have to look too far outwith my close circle of friends to find people who were a bit more bigoted, for want of a better way of putting it, so it’s probably the only word I can use.

Yeah, so there was definite tension in the town, then, you think?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I suppose it’s an interesting case study, the fact that it was, it, mixed isn’t the right word, but there were people from both backgrounds in the same town, but as you say they didn’t really meet or come together. Was there any, were there, were there clashes and things like that, like, violence and stuff?

Not often, no, no, so when I was seventeen the IRA planted, one of their targets came, came to be that they started to target town centres, so they planted a two-thousand-pound car bomb in the centre of Lurgan one night and they just ripped the heart out of the town, destroyed all the shops and it was just chaos, and that, that, I remember that caused a lot of tension and then with some of the, some of the parades as well, kind of post-Drumcree it became very, well, we have the right to march down here and, and there was a few clashes then, but, you know, if I saw, over my life, if I saw one, maybe two it’d be the absolute maximum I’d ever saw, in terms of Protestants and Catholics clashing in Lurgan.

It’s interesting you mentioned about that bombing cos I was going to ask as well if, like, the extent to which the Troubles impacted Lurgan as a town.

Yeah, it did, there’s, there’s no question. There was one particular period of time I remember a, I think it was from about September to Christmas time there was a whole spate of shootings where I think nine or ten or maybe even twelve people were killed through being shot by the IRA over a period of time, mostly police officers coming home from work, or there was one where four police officers went while they were out wildfowling one Saturday morning and they got, they were targeted and shot and, so I remember that and a few friends who lost their, lost their parents through the Troubles, and actually right now, post kind of Good Friday Agreement, Lurgan actually has a wee sort of bed of trouble with the Real IRA or the Continuity, whatever they call themselves, there’s a sort of well-known republican who’s around the Lurgan area who’s been in and out of prison for terrorism offences, etcetera, and he’s, he’s believed to be behind it, orchestrating it.

That’s interesting, and how did you feel about, like, the Troubles going on, cos obviously you were, you were born after, after things sort of started in a way and then you would have sort of grown up all the way through it? I’m just, I suppose, yeah, the extent to which it affected your upbringing, as personally.

Yeah, so it probably affected your upbringing much more than you realised because you became very used to army checkpoints, a fortified police barracks, you know, police vehicles all having armour plating, that, that was just growing up and having the army, we moved from central Lurgan to a little village called Waringstown when I was about sixteen, seventeen, we had a big field at the back of the house and regularly the army would come and land their helicopters in the field and they would get out and lie in the field for an hour and then they would come back and the helicopter’d come back and pick them up and take them away on a training drill, so all that was just, was just normal. I remember coming to Scotland when I was eighteen to go to university and I was taken aback by the fact the police stations weren’t covered in armour and, you know, there, there was a lot of stuff now, so probably that stuff you grew up with and didn’t really think much about it, all the army, all the police all had guns, all carried weapons. Again, when I brought friends over from Scotland to Northern Ireland and, you know, we’d, we’d come over for the weekend or what have you, they would, they would all comment on the, the police all carrying guns because just they weren’t used to it, so growing up that was the kind of norm, but I think I said at the very start, I felt growing up very, very safe, you know, crime was very, very low, ordinary crime. I think probably most of the idiots who would have got caught up in crime got caught up in terrorism, a lot of these people that got involved were, were sheep and were easily led, so, but, you know, for example, you, I can’t, I remember growing up, we would regularly leave our car parked outside our house with the keys in the car and the windows down and you would never have been at, really at any risk of anyone stealing your car or breaking into your house, or, so I, I never felt unsafe going about. I suppose the only time I really felt, in my whole life, unsafe in terms of the Troubles was, it was around the time of the sort of Michael Stone, where he attacked, he attacked the mourners at Milltown cemetery and then a couple of days later there was, two soldiers got attacked at an, at a republican funeral and they were dragged from their car and it was quite a high profile thing, and I remember we were due to go down to something in Belfast that Saturday night and not being allowed to go because everyone was worried about the state, the trouble, and I remember that state, was talking about where the IRA were planting car bombs and in fact lorries in the middle of towns and blowing the town up, I remember at that stage town centres getting closed off at night, so they basically, just these big gates came across and you couldn’t get into your town centre at night and that was to protect them from, from, from bombs being set off, so a lot of that stuff, but you just worked round it, you know.

Yeah, got used to it, sort of thing.

Yeah, yeah, but did I ever feel unsafe, probably, probably that only, that’s probably the only time I think where I wouldn’t have gone to Belfast, that I probably, I felt unsafe.

Did you go into Belfast regularly, then?

As I got older, yeah, yeah, not so much when I was younger, but as I got older I was able to drive and got a bit more independence, yeah, we’d, we’d go there a lot.

Was that just sort of to go out and socialise and stuff like that, yeah?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, or just shopping or what have you, yeah.

Yeah, sure, and then, so, you went to unit when you were eighteen, so, you, you left for, that was when you left for Glasgow, was it?

Yeah, yeah.

And what made you choose to go to uni over there, were there other options you were considering?

Yeah, part, part of it, it was probably a bit of ignorance on my part too because I wanted, I did want to go away from Northern Ireland, not, not because of Northern Ireland, but just to kind of grow up a bit and I felt, in Northern Ireland there’s a real culture, people go to university, but they go five days a week and they come home every weekend, you know, and they never really move away, whereas I kind of wanted to go away and grow up a wee bit and get a bit of independence, but I studied law not knowing that Scots law was different from law back in Northern Ireland, and so, therefore, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have been qualified to practise over in Northern Ireland, [00:20:00] which was fine because in, in hindsight now I would never have gone to practise, but yeah, so partly that was just, I wanted to do law, I, I’d always wanted to be a lawyer, I wanted to study law, so, I probably, had I been better informed at eighteen I might have thought, well, I’ll maybe just stay in Northern Ireland, but as I said, it’s worked out well.

That’s interesting, you were saying that you chose to leave kind of more for personal reasons to just get a bit of independence and stuff, like, rather than leaving directly because of what the security situation was or anything like that.

Yeah, but I suppose one of the things, like, I love Northern Ireland and I miss it and I’ve got my friends and my family and I miss them and, like, I love Ulster rugby and I go home to the rugby a lot and I go over to see Ireland play in Dublin, but actually I don’t miss the parochialness of it and I don’t miss the, the small-mindedness of it and, so, like, I’ve now, over here, you know, it’s one of those things, you don’t know what you’re missing out on until you actually come away from it, so, you know, it’s just, I’ve got, like, loads of my friends here are Catholics, it doesn’t matter and, you know, the west of Scotland is, it’s got this reputation for being polarised in religious things, it’s nothing at all like, like Northern Ireland, you know, I’m going out to meet friends next week, next weekend for lunch, two brothers, twin brothers, both Catholic, I see them, it doesn’t matter, you know, it’s no big deal at all, so, I remember I, I was, I got the train up to Aberdeen once about two or three years ago and Lorraine Kelly the TV host was on the train and I got chatting with her, she was a really nice lady, great chat, but she married a, sorry, no, her, her parents, her mum was a Protestant and her dad was a Catholic, or vice versa, and back then that was a big deal and she will, she will say now, she’ll tell her friends in London that she came from a mixed marriage and they’ll be like, no, you didn’t, that’s just, that’s not a mixed marriage, you know, so, I just, I just think you get, when you come away from it you realise actually it’s quite a toxic, it’s not a healthy way to be, to be so divided, you know.

That’s really interesting. How did your parents feel about you leaving Northern Ireland?

Probably, well, a wee bit disappoint-, hopefully a bit disappointed, that they weren’t going to get to see me as much, but, you know, I think they were quite proud of me for going off to do law and, you know, I was the first person in my family ever to go to university.

Really, yeah.

Yeah, so, yeah, yeah, I think I had one cousin who, who, so my mum, my mum’s brother he, he joined the army and then he lived in Germany and moved to England and his son who was a couple of years older than me went to university from, from England, but of my kind of family in Northern Ireland I was the first person really to, to go to university.

And you said you’d wanted to be a lawyer for, like, a long time prior to that, yeah?

Yeah, yeah, from as long as I can remember really.

Really, wow, that’s interesting.

Yeah.

And you went, so you went to Glasgow, was it, for uni?

Strathclyde, yeah, in Glasgow.

Oh Strathclyde, yeah, yeah, and what, had you visited Glasgow before or you just sort of–?

No.

Did you go to any of the open days, or you just went, went in and took a, took a chance on it?

I came over, excuse me, with my best friend who, who was at Qu-, who was going to Queen’s, for the weekend, just to see, I had to do a few bits of registration and stuff and I came over with him, but I arrived in Scotland, thinking back actually it’s quite scary now, I arrived in Scotland into halls of residence, didn’t know a soul, like, didn’t know anybody else, I didn’t even have a contact in Scotland, so yeah, I suppose in, in, looking back it’s probably, would have been quite daunting, but when you’re eighteen you think, och it’ll be fine, nothing’s a big deal, you know, you take these things along in your stride.

And so you were staying around the university area, then, or around Stra-, was it, yeah?

Yeah, yeah, so I stayed in halls of residence my first year which were on campus.

And what were your first impressions of Glasgow as a city?

I thought it was a really rough, scary city I have to say.

Really, yeah?

Yeah, yeah.

Was that the ar-, the area you were staying in or just, just the people, or any-, anything in particular?

I think it’s, yeah, I think it’s possibly the area just where the university was, so, I think, I think you hear all these horror stories that Glasgow is a really tough city and it is, has a kind of sort of gangland past, you know, places like the Gorbals had a terrible reputation, but just where, just where we were at the university, you kind of came down to a little place called High Street and that was just on the edge of sort of starting into the East End of Glasgow which is quite a poor area, so I remember one day going down, not, not long after I’d been there actually, going down to the shops to pick something up and going down the High Street and this guy coming back up and he’d been stabbed in his eye and he was walking up with a cloth on his face with blood pouring out of his eye, I’m thinking jeez, but when you’re on campus you felt very safe and then I quickly got a group of friends and, so you went to kind of safe places, but yeah, you, Glasgow’s one of these cities actually you can be in a nice area and very quickly find yourself in a not so nice area, so again, as my sort of knowledge of the city got improved and stuff, but, you know, that obviously, you know, you know the areas to avoid, like anywhere I suppose, but yeah, my first impression was of a very rough, tough city.

And did you get a sense at all that, of, about any of the sectarianism that was there in Glasgow?

No, for me it was just, like, it was liberation, you know, it just stopped becoming a big deal, there was a bit of banter over football, over kind of Rangers-Celtic, but again, at university in the main you’re with kind of sensible, educa-, educated people, so, again you just, you just got on with it and most people are not, they’re not too tribal about it, it’s a bit, it’s fun, it’s a bit of sport and they have a bit of banter about it and, you know, I will regularly go out to watch football with my friends and we’ll have a good bit of banter about the game, but it’s nothing too toxic, but yeah, it definitely exists, as I got older I’ve become, I’ve become more aware of it, but in those early year at university, probably not.

It’s interesting you say that cos, like, I think one of the reasons we chose Glasgow as one of the focus cities for this project was because of that background and we wondering the extent to which, you know, people would think that Glasgow was similar to Northern Ireland, but actually kind of, like you said, a lot of people have said that it wasn’t really as toxic or as, as prevalent as it would have been in Northern Ireland, which is interesting.

Yeah, I mean, I, so if Northern Ireland is a ten out of ten on the, so a hundred per cent, I would say Glasgow in comparison’s maybe five per cent, in terms of, yeah, I don’t, I don’t genuinely feel it, I know it exists, but I, to me I feel it exists more because of football, not because of religion, if that makes sense, I think the football kind of perpetuates the religion, but actually it’s not a, it could equally be, you know, if the two big football teams were Glasgow and Edinburgh, so if you, if you had Rangers in Glasgow and Celtic were an Edinburgh-based team I suspect it would become a city rivalry thing rather than a religious thing, I just think it happens to be historically a, a religious thing, but I, I know loads of guys over here who support both sides, either side of the Old Firm, I know guys who are Protestants who support Celtic and I know guys who are Catholics who support Rangers, not many, but I know a few, but none of them are the least bit, you know, season ticket holders, they’re not the least bit sectarian, in fact they hate it, the whole sectarian side of it.

And you said you go to the football yourself.

I do, but not to either Celtic or Rangers. I am, I’m actually a director of a football club in Scotland in my spare time, so I’m on the board of St Mirren, who are a Premier League club, so I’m one of the directors and the company secretary, so that, that’s another long story, but probably, probably growing up in Northern Ireland, again, it’s about, like, your religion, if you’re a Protestant you’re pigeoned into the Rangers box and if you’re a Catholic in Northern Ireland you’re pigeoned into the Celtic box, if that makes sense, so.

Yeah, and I’ve always found it interesting the way, the way that the Old Firm kind of crosses the Irish Sea in that way, like, you see–

It does.

You see people in Northern Ireland wearing Celtic and Rangers tops, tops, and then you hear, like, songs at the games, like, that reference Irish history and stuff, so it’s, there’s definitely crossover.

Yeah, yeah, and hun-, listen, hundreds of people commute every week from Northern Ireland to go to Celtic and Rangers games, you know, if I’m, like, I often go back for the rugby and loads of times I’m getting a plane back and it’s just, it’s just full of Celtic supporters [00:30:00] or Rangers supporters going to, going to a game. Neil, interesting, Neil Lennon who’s the Celtic manager is from Lurgan, and he’s a similar age to me, but our paths growing up, we’d never have crossed, never, just, there’s no, there’s no way we’d have crossed, I remember chatting to him once about it and I don’t know him particularly well, but I was introduced to him through a friend at a dinner we were at and just chatting and I said, I just said it was really interesting how we were similar ages and stages, but how our paths wouldn’t have crossed in Northern Ireland.

So you would never have really met or had anything, like, meaningful interaction with someone from a Catholic background when you were in Northern Ireland, then?

Never, never, no, no, no opportunity, it just wouldn’t have crossed my, that, the opportunity would never have arisen, maybe as I got older and, you know, you went to university, if I’d gone to university in Northern Ireland and I suspect then you would have had, but that sort of formative years between, you know, starting school and finishing school, no chance.

That’s really interesting, yeah, so you went to uni and yeah, you were saying, you know, you enjoyed the city, found it overall a good experience, group of friends and social life and stuff and presumably you got on okay on your course and stuff as well, yeah?

Yeah, yeah, all good.

Did you, did you ever go back to Northern Ireland regularly at that time, or was it sort of once a year?

Prob-, yeah, probably, probably in school holidays, would have been, oh sorry, university holidays, summer holidays, but a few summers I stayed here, one I went to America to work, one I stayed here and worked, I think maybe two I stayed here, so, I met my now wife quite early on at university, I met her in my second or third week at university, so I quite often, we would both, she was from Edinburgh, so we both often have stayed in Glasgow for the summer so not to be too far apart, you know, when you’re young and in love.

Yeah, for sure, and did, were you involved, you mentioned the church was quite a big part of your life back in Northern Ireland, did you get involved in that in Glasgow when you moved as well?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, still am, hence how I know Don, Don’s the, Don’s the pastor of my church.

Yeah, and have you been at that same church since you moved, or have you, have you moved around a bit?

Not quite, but not far off it, so probably started going maybe when I was sort of nineteen, twenty and been there ever since.

And so, yeah, it’s interesting, so I’m trying to get a sense of, so you finished uni in, what year would that have been that you graduated?

Jesus, now you’re ask-, maybe ’98, ’99, something like that.

Right, yeah, so sort of late nineties time and then did, I’m not hugely familiar with the sort of career trajectory of becoming a lawyer, but where, what did you go into next?

So yeah, did my traineeship for two years, so you do a four-year degree and then I did, that was for honours and then you do a year which is your kind of postgraduate diploma which gives you your entitlement to go and have a traineeship, so I did the five, my five years and then two-year traineeship and qualified as a solicitor, probably I think in 2000, maybe, I qualified, so I’ve been practising ever since.

And you were quite keen on staying in Glasgow by that stage.

Yeah, yeah, well, as I say I met, I met my wife, etcetera, and although she was from Edinburgh I think we, all our friends and everything, you know, our life was very much at that point in Glasgow, I was, I got quite involved in athletics, did quite a lot of running as well, so again, training group was here, so yeah, life was just Glasgow-centric at that point.

Yeah, and I suppose as you were saying as well, the, the course that you did was Scottish law as well, so that would have added that dimension to it as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, my, my, the firm I work for where I did my traineeship, they had, they had a big Edinburgh office and a big Glasgow office and they took on in my year twenty, twenty-five trainees, but only four of them, only four of us they took on lived in Glasgow, the other twenty-one all lived in Edinburgh, so most of the Edinburgh ones had to do a six-month stint in Glasgow, whereas I never had to do the six-month stint in Edinburgh because there was no need, demand for, Edinburgh was really high for the people that lived there, so I, I never applied for anything of the Edinburgh-based jobs, I could always just stay in Glasgow, and again I was doing a lot of running, I was training pretty hard, you know, and I was on the track most nights during the week, so it suited me not to be having to get a train through to Edinburgh.

Yeah, sure, so that was, that was one of the things you were into outside of work, then, running and things like that?

Yeah.

Was that, like, long-distance or–?

Yeah, track and long-distance stuff, yeah.

Yeah, cool, and when did you get married to your wife?

2000, yeah, we got married, you put me on the spot there, but yeah, 2000.

Yeah, sure, don’t worry, she’s not listening, and did you take her back, I’m curious, like, if you took her back to Northern Ireland, like, or presumably you did at some point?

Yeah, yeah, we used to go over to Northern Ireland all the time, loads, weekends, but again, when we were, so first couple of years when I would go home for the summer I would come back to Scotland at the weekend and stay and then Helen would come over to Northern Ireland for a weekend, so she was over quite a lot, we, we used to bring friends over for the weekend and, you know, just I, I would take them up to the north coast and what have you, you know, it was just a kind of weekend away, we’d, we’d have friends come over to Northern Ireland for New Year, so yeah, so at that point it was probably, that was kind of post-Good Friday Agreement, so yeah, but I remember my wife’s mother, who is a worrier at the best of times, I mean, she was terrified about Helen coming to Northern Ireland, worried she was going to get blown up and all sorts, you know.

Yeah, I was kind of wondering about that, what their preconceptions were cos I mean, my parents were sort of the same. I went, I went to Queen’s for my undergrad and they were, even though this was, like, only, like, eight or nine years ago they were sort of a bit wary about that even then, and I’m wondering what your wife and your friends, the extent to which they knew about Northern Ireland or, or what it was all about.

They knew, they knew that there was obviously, there was a conflict and they knew about bombs going off, etcetera, they probably, if you’d quizzed them on it they probably wouldn’t have understood it particularly well, but I think they were, they felt it was a dangerous place to come to, but having said that when my friends came over they never, you know, they never worried about it. I suspect it was more their parents.

Yeah, sure, mm hmm.

Cos they, they kind of knew me and I would sort of, and they, you know, and then a lot of them, they came over more than once, you know, we’d, we’d go over quite a lot actually, you know, and, you know, I mean, when you’re off for three months in the summer, you, you get your friends over and you go and do stuff, so, no, I, I would suspect it was more their parents who would have been anxious about it rather than them as, as individuals.

And so you got married in 2000, was that in Scotland?

Yeah, we got married in Edinburgh, yeah, and my wife’s, so we got married too there.

And did, your family presumably came over for that as well?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and where were you, where were you living by this stage, was it, it was still in–?

Glasgow.

Still in, still in Glasgow, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I’m kind of wondering, I mean, obviously when you were a student you maybe sort of socialised more within sort of student community and stuff, I’m wondering as you sort of met more people from Glasgow, from the city and stuff, how people reacted to you as, like, a Northern Irish person, if there was any ever or, sorry, ever any, I don’t know if discrimination’s the right word, but any suspicion or hostility or anything like that?

No, no, I have to say, never, I never, I’ve never experienced it thankfully. I don’t think a lot of people understood my accent for a long time, but it has kind of mellowed now given the amount of time I’ve been here, so I remember repeating myself a lot. I remember going back to Northern Ireland and being told I had a Scottish accent, which was quite funny, so no, no, honestly not, I can say, in fact, quite often people liked a Northern Irish twang and all that sort of stuff, so, in many ways it was a positive.

Yeah, that’s interesting, and I’m wondering as well what you think about, I’ve, I’ve asked a few people this, the extent to which people in Glasgow know what the Troubles is all about, cos obviously you’ve got the, some aspects of the shared history and there’s some, some perception that the same issues that exist in Northern Ireland exist in Glasgow. I’m wondering if you think that’s the case or if, if people are aware of the shared history between the two places?

Yeah, no, truthfully no, I think, I think some people do, some people think they have an idea, but don’t understand it at all and when you talk to them you realise, actually, you don’t really know what you’re talking about, [00:40:00] so no, no, I don’t, I think, I think the reason for that is, in the main, Glasgow is a much more liberal city than, than Northern Ireland is as a country, you know, Northern Ireland’s still very conservative with a small ‘c’, and, you know, church and all that sort of stuff plays a, a much bigger role, you know, in fact, shops only recently are open in Northern Ireland on a Sunday, you know, all that sort of stuff, whereas I think Glasgow’s much more liberal and actually doesn’t care that much about religion, whereas in Northern Ireland religion is still a big deal, that, that’s my take on it, and I think, I think now, once upon a time, when, if you, if you mentioned the word terrorism, terrorist, to someone in Scotland I think you would probably think of, like, a Jihadi-type terrorist, not someone from Northern Ireland if that makes sense, whereas I think if you still mentioned it in Northern Ireland their primary thought would be someone, a terrorist attack in Northern Ireland, in the main people would still think back to the Troubles, if that makes sense, so, so no, I don’t, I don’t think so, I think people maybe have a, have a notion of maybe what happened, but actually I don’t think they’re that bothered by it.

And how closely were you sort of following the news from Northern Ireland when you moved away, did you sort of keep track of it or was it just glad to be away?

Yeah, no, I kept track of it, still do, went home, went home to, I was a student at the time, went home so I could vote for the Good Friday Agreement and all that sort of stuff, no, I fo-, I followed it, still do, cos my family are still there, so I follow it with interest, I probably don’t follow it as much as closely as I used to, but I still do keep an eye on it. I always now go to, if I’m on BBC, I go to BBC Scotland first and then I’ll go to BBC Northern Ireland and just read what’s happening.

So you were presumably following, yeah, the stuff, stuff around the peace process particularly closely?

Yes.

And how did, how did you feel about it at the time? I mean, you said you voted for–

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just, yeah, I think everyone was just praying that it was going to be, it was going to deliver peace, you know, it was going to stop all the, the killing and all the, the, you know, pointless loss of life that had gone on for, for years.

Yeah, and no, it’s, it’s interesting cos it was a really significant time and I suppose, yeah, it must have been weird for you, like, cos you’d been away for sort of a relatively short period of time, to know all this change was going on back home and stuff.

Yeah, there had been, there had been a ceasefire before I think, there was, there was talks around and then I think that was when the Conservatives were still in power, that went on for a number of years and then that ended when the IRA let off a bomb in Canary Wharf, that was the end of that one, and then I think when Labour got into power and Mo Mowlam came over, etcetera, etcetera, that’s when they had a second bite at it as it were, so I think I had kind of experienced a wee bit of the sort of peace that had broken out, but yeah, not my, you know, my abiding memory of growing up was the Troubles and that, you know, I left when the Troubles were still, still going on.

And were your parents and family and stuff in favour of the Good Friday Agreement and things like that as well, yeah?

Yeah.

I suppose, as you were saying earlier, it was, it was the official unionist stance that kind of supported that as opposed to the, the more radical elements that didn’t.

Yeah, and in many ways that’s what I find curious about what’s happened in politics in Northern Ireland, in that politics has seemed to move to the, to extremes, so when I was growing up the two main parties were the Official Unionist Party and the SDLP, and they were the sort of mainstream ones, and then you had the DUP who were more kind of right-wing, and then you had Sinn Féin and all that, I’m not even sure what you’d have put Sinn Féin in terms of their political stance, but, you know, a republican party, and what seems to have happened is that there’s been a move from that sort of centre, moderate to the more, more the fringes, more to the edges of politics.

Yeah, no, you definitely get that sense, I mean, if you look at the, the election results, there’s been more of a shift towards Sinn Féin and the DUP being the two major parties.

Yeah, de-, oh definitely, they’re now the two, two big players in, in Northern Irish politics and interestingly Sinn Féin have also now done very well in the South, I think, they, I don’t know if they’re the biggest party, but they had massive gains in the last election, whereas before I think they were just a fringe party, you know, you had your two main, your two main parties, so, yeah, I think, that to me is one of the kind curious things that’s come out of it, and I think it underlines the whole distrust that exists between the two communities because what tends to happen in these situations in my experience and looking at history is when people are feeling uncomfortable or challenged they tend to move to the extremes because they’ve, they’ve found a sort of solace that their way of life will be protected because you have these, very much these dogmatic views that people are maybe attracted towards, so, yeah, it’s quite sad in a way, and, and it’s quite sad in that, for all there’s peace and which is great, but communities are still as divided as ever. Lurgan is still as polarised as, as it’s ever been, you know, you’ll, you’ll have seen that at Queen’s yourself, you know, a good example over here is all the, all the signposts for, in all the train stations, for example, are all in Gaelic because that’s Scottish and it’s traditional, etcetera, but in Northern Ireland, jeez, you know, that was one of the reasons it brought down the government was this, or stopped it getting formed, was this whole Irish Language Act, it’s all about sense, sense of identity.

Yeah, absolutely, and I think there’s this whole debate that’s, and it’s come out again recently, but it, it sort arises every, it seems to arise every few years about whether Queen’s is discriminatory towards people from a certain background or whatever, and yeah, you just, it’s interesting you say that actually, that the kind of, the violence isn’t there anymore, but the division is still there, and I think you do see that to a large extent.

I think until schools are integrated it will, it will stay the same because kids are brought up in, they never get a chance to meet one another at that younger, like, young age and they don’t go to the same clubs and the same, you know, so a good example, I was saying two of my good friends who are Catholics, you know, we’re friends cos we went to the same running group, we trained together, you know, became pals through that, but I wouldn’t have had that opportunity in Northern Ireland because I would have gone to a Protestant group or a Cath-, you know, Catholics’d have gone to a Catholic group, so I think, this, I think integration is still a long, long way off, sadly.

That’s interesting, and it’s interesting as well how you say that there’s a lot more of it, like, integration in, in Scotland.

Yeah, definitely.

And the schools, the schools are more integrated over there as well.

Very much so, you know, so my, yeah, so my wife teaches in a, in a private school over here and, you know, but they have got, it would be Protestant, Catholic, they’ve a big number of Jewish folk who attend, they’ve got, there’s a quite a sizeable Muslim folk who attend, you know, so yeah, and in Edinburgh I’d say even, it’s even less relevant on the whole, it’s more of a Glasgow-based thing, but yeah, no, integration here’s a, a completely different kettle of fish.

Yeah, do you have any kids yourself?

Four.

Four, wow, yeah, yeah, I’m just wondering if you, if you, I mean, presumably you take them back to Northern Ireland sometimes, or–

Yeah, we go back every year, go back every Christmas, we go back every, well, the boys, we take the kids to rugby, so yeah, my kids have been back over to see Ulster play a few times, I’ve taken my, my eldest son to, over to Lansdowne Road for Ireland games, so yeah, we’ve, we go back at least once a year, more often than not twice a year.

And they like Northern Ireland, do they?

Love it, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Ethan, my son, he definitely when it comes to ru-, ah this, this was, this is my daughter, they definitely consider themselves Irish rugby fans and, but I think that’s just cos I’m so nuts about it.

Yeah, sure, no, cos I was going to ask, like, the extent to which they’re interested in their sort of Irish or Northern Irish heritage.

Yeah, they’re definitely, yeah, I would say they definitely know they’re Scottish, but, but they’re very aware of it and, you know, they’re very aware that their grandparents are from Northern Ireland, they’re [00:50:00] very aware that we, we go over to Northern Ireland, so my best friend from home, is, his kids are, his eld-, his eldest kid’s in my eldest, our, my eldest two are kind of good friends, so again, when they go over they go over to see their grandparents and they go over to see their friends and they’re not aware of history or anything like that at all, you know, and I’ve tried to explain to my eldest daughter about it, but she kind of looks at you blankly as if to say you’re talking a different language, and when they see the murals on the wall and sometimes they’ll ask me about, ask me about it and stuff, but, you know, trying to explain that to, my daughter’s fourteen, my eldest daughter’s fourteen, so she understands a bit more, but trying to explain it to the others, it’s, like, just makes no sense.

Yeah, no, that’s interesting, cos I was going to ask if, if they ask you about it at all, but it sounds as if it’s, yeah, it’s kind of more of a thing of you trying to, trying to explain it.

Yeah, if they see something, if they see a, if they see a mural on the wall or something like that, when they’re over there they’ll ask me about it, but the rest of the times, you know, they’ll, they’ll want to talk about rugby and, you know, when they, they, they envisage going to Northern Ireland with kind of going on holiday cos we quite often go at Christmas and, you know, they’ll often say oh I wish we lived in Northern Ireland, but that’s because whenever we’re there it’s just, it’s good times, you know, we’re, we’re out all the time, they’re up late, they’re seeing friends, or, it’s just a riot when we’re there, so they don’t, they say they want, they want to move to Northern Ireland, but it’s only because when they’re there it’s party time.

Sure, I suppose it’s hard to convey as well if you haven’t lived through that kind of experience, like, what it was like then.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, even me, I’ve lived in Northern Ireland for a long time and I obviously see, like, the flags and the murals and the division and stuff, but it’s still difficult for me to comprehend what it would have been like living through, you know, the seventies in Belfast or wherever, yeah, it’s a, it’s a different era. So when you go back do you, do you usually stay in Lurgan or do you, you’d stay–?

Yeah.

Yeah, you stay–

Well, Waringstown now, just up–

Oh Waringstown, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but aye, yeah, when I’m going home I always say I’m going to Lurgan cos Lurgan to me is, is home, but yeah, yeah.

And I, yeah, cos I remember you said a few minutes ago that you think Lurgan’s kind of as divided as ever, and I wondered if you maybe had a perspective on the extent to which Northern Ireland has changed as a place or as a society since you left?

Yeah, no, I mean, I still think it’s, it’s still deeply, deeply divided, you know, I think it’s a much, it’s a much safer place in terms of, you don’t have the, the terrorism, etcetera as overtly, the groups are much smaller, but I have a few friends who are police officers over in Northern Ireland and they will say to me that the, you know, as far as their safety’s concerned they’re every bit as on edge as they would have been during the Troubles because there’re still pockets of paramilitary groups kicking about out there, so, so I think, listening now, it’s good that the, the, the Troubles have stopped, but I think it will take a long, long time before that moves on to the next level and you see the level, even the level of integration that you get in Scotland, I don’t think I’ll see it in my lifetime, I doubt my kids’ll see it in their lifetime if I’m being honest.

Really, yeah, do you, do you ever go back to your old church when you go back?

No, we tend not to, partly because my, my mum doesn’t go there anymore cos she, she’s moved, we moved from Lurgan into Waringstown, so partly not, but I would if, you know, I’d love to go back if, just it’s more, to be honest, time doesn’t permit it cos quite often we’re going back on a Sunday, so I don’t get a chance to, but yeah.

Sure.

I follow it on Facebook and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, yeah, no, it’s just cos I was interested cos I’ve had a couple of people, like, talk to me about growing up in Northern Ireland and going to church and then finding a new church in Scotland and sort of commenting on the differences between the two places. Do you, do you think there’s a difference between, like, attitudes towards religion in Scotland compared to Northern Ireland?

Yeah, yeah, I think there is. As I said, Scotland’s a much more, Northern Ireland’s still I think quite a religious country, maybe less so than it was twenty years ago, but Scotland is very much, very liberal and very, you know, when I grew up, growing up in Northern Ireland, everyone went to church on a Sunday, it was what you did, it was the, you went to Sunday school and you went to church, very few people do it here, you know, so, yeah, definitely Scotland is, Northern Ireland’s a much more religious country.

Yeah, I’m wondering, kind of on the flip side to the previous question I asked, like, about how Northern Ireland has changed, like, what, to what extent do you think you’ve changed, or, or leaving Northern Ireland has changed you?

Yeah, it definitely has, definitely has changed me in terms of, I’m much less bothered by the whole Protestant-Catholic thing, I think, yeah, I can now see, I think I always thought a lot of it was nonsense in terms of, let’s not shop in a Catholic shop and all that kind of stuff, but I think now I really just I see it for the full absurdity that it is, so yeah, I think, I think I definitely have changed. I think I was on the, I was a very moderate anyway, but, but definitely I just look at some of the stuff and I just cringe when I see it, so yeah, yeah, I feel I’m not interested in a person’s religion, I wasn’t that interested in it before, but it’s certainly not even something that’s on my radar, you know, a typical example of Northern Ireland, you would often be trying to suss out if some was a Protestant or a Catholic, you’d be trying to work out by their name or what school they went to and, you know, so you, you’d be talking to people like I was, it never enters my head, if I’m sitting interviewing someone for a job I’m not thinking about their name or school they went to or what team they support, whereas I think that will still be a big thing in, in Northern Ireland, so no, I think I’ve changed, I probably, I was probably pretty moderate, but I’ve moved even more so.

And are you, are you interested in Scottish politics at all?

Not, not overly, certainly I’m very anti-independence, but partly because I, I don’t trust any of them [laughs], so, I’m interested in politics generally, but I’m, I’m not an avid, you know, I don’t watch Question Time every week or all that sort of stuff, but I sort of take a broad interest in it. I suppose like anything else, the older you get, you’re trying to work out if these decisions affect you, you know, obviously Brexit’s been taking up the last number of years and before that we’d Scottish, the Scottish independence referendum, so I suppose I have strong views on these. I would say I’m probably an educated voter, you know, I, I read into the policies and politics of different parties before I vote for them, but I wouldn’t say I’m particularly loyal to one or t’other.

Sure, it’s interesting you mention Brexit there cos I know that’s, obviously, the Irish border’s a massive issue there.

Yeah.

Yeah, the ex-, if you think that, I know there’s a lot of people who are worried that that might reignite some tensions and stuff, guess we’ll have to wait and see, but–

Yeah, I hope not.

Yeah, yeah, it’s certainly, it certainly brought the issue back into, like, the forefront of, well, you could say it has, I suppose a lot of people didn’t really pay any attention to it during the, during the campaign.

Yeah, yeah, certainly I’ve been over, over the border a few times since, since Brexit. In fact, I think I went over, yeah, cos we, yeah, we went to, I was over for one of the rugby games before lockdown and certainly speaking, you know, we’d left the EU at that point, that was the thirty-first of December, wasn’t it, we left, so, there was nothing to suggest that anything had changed.

Yeah, certainly nothing at the moment.

Yeah, but yeah, cos that, it certainly could be used to stoke tensions, couldn’t it.

Yeah, yeah, I think so, just the whole idea of a border being reimposed even if both sides are saying that they’re not going to do it, just–

Yeah.

It kind of felt like that question had been answered, whereas now it’s a question again.

Yeah, what, what I felt was slightly ironic living in Scotland was that, so Scotland was basically pleading or trying to argue their case that they should be given special dispensation and be allowed to stay in the EU, whereas Northern Ireland were adamant they didn’t want to be treated any differently than the rest of the, the, the UK, so on the one hand you’ve got one corner of Great Britain saying treat us differently, on the other hand you’ve got another one saying don’t dare treat us any differently, you know, so it was a slight sort of irony [01:00:00] because, well, just came from a background I was thinking it was quite funny the two, two polarising positions.

I suppose that’s a consequence of who’s in government in both places as well.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

So I’ve just got a couple more sort of, like, rounding up questions that I like to ask everyone.

Sure.

Yeah, if that’s alright, so, I mean, you’ve obviously been in Glasgow a long time now, you’re very settled there, you’ve got a family and stuff. Where would you call home now, would it, would it be Glasgow or would you still refer to Northern Ireland as home?

I still refer to Northern Ireland as, I talk about going home, but Scotland’s my home.

So you don’t think you–

Not for, not for sport–

Yeah, yeah.

But, yeah, yeah, Scotland I would say is now home for me.

Out of interest, who do you support, like, in the football, on the national team, is it Northern Ireland or Scotland or the South?

Yeah.

It would be Northern Ireland, would it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, mm hmm, I don’t think, I’m trying to think if they’ve played Scotland recently, I don’t, they had that Nations Cup thing–

Yeah.

A few years ago, but–

I’m, I’m quite good friends with the manager, former manager, Michael, just through my footballing context and, so I was over for the Dutch game and I took my nephew, he’d want-, he was desperate to go to the game, so Michael got us tickets for that, I think actually it turned out to be his last game, before he went to Stoke, so, yeah, so I’ve always been Northern Ireland, although if the Republic of Ireland were playing against someone I would support them.

Do you have any allegiances to Scotland or not really?

Nah, because again, I now know a few of the players, so John McGinn, for example, came through St Mirren as a boy, so, so I like to see these guys, Kenny McLean was a St Mirren boy as well, he, Norwich centre midfield player, so these guys come through us are now playing for the national team. I probably would watch it to see how they’re doing, if that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

And you, and again, you kind of get caught up in it over here because again all the media attention, when there’s an international game comes on, all the media attention is always about the Scotland team, so you probably do get caught up in it a little bit.

Yeah, and so how would you describe your, so, national identity, if someone asked you, would you say Irish, Northern Irish, British, something different?

British.

Yeah.

British, British, yeah, yeah.

That’s interesting.

Yeah, it’s funny now cos when you go on holiday people say where are you from and I’ll always say Scotland, once upon a time from, I don’t know when I stopped, but I’d always have qualified that, although I’m from Northern Ireland, I live in Scotland, but now I would always just say I’m, if someone asks me, I would say I’m from Scotland, but if I had to fill in a form to say where I was from I’d always say British.

British, yeah, and presumably, as I say, like, you’re settled here and or settled in Scotland and stuff. Do you think you’d ever consider going back to live in Northern Ireland, or that’s just not on the cards?

Never, listen, I just, my life’s moved on.

Yeah, absolutely, and, and you’ve been there, you know, a good, been in Scotland a good long time now.

Yeah.

Well, listen, that was really interesting. I think I’ve got through pretty much all my questions there. I was just wondering if there’s anything else you wanted to add or anything we haven’t covered that you think’s important–?

No, don’t think so.

That you want to talk about.

No.

Alright, well, I’ll stop the recording there.