I saw an 18-month-old baby, I knew him, but I didn’t know it was him at the time, and whenever the ambulance people were picking up the body parts it was a clear plastic bag .

And after 30 seconds I set the remote down and I said, isn’t this what we wanted, the two extremes in government?Billy is self consciously a socialist in his political opinions, although this seems to signify as much a badge of identity as it does a precise political programme.

Hutchinson, then a tall teenager, older looking than his years, took a leading role in managing these confrontations. As to how the Agreement has worked out, with the benefit of hindsight and far removed from a time-frame in the proximity of a brutal conflict, I believe we made our decision for the right reasons. Hutchinson lost his seat in the 2003 election after the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin took an extra seat each. From when I was a young man, I watched this preacher preaching hate and wanting people to kill people, but whenever people had to do it, or were doing it, he didn’t want to know.Hutchinson and his friends felt, in the early 1970s, that the RUC and the British Army were not protecting the Loyalist community from IRA intimidation. New posters have been erected across different parts of Northern Ireland highlighting loyalist demands regarding the deal. The institutions established by the Good Friday Agreement are not working and need to be reviewed, a loyalist leader has said. In the prison Hutchinson, along with the likes of David Ervine, Eddie Kinner, Billy Mitchell and William "Plum" Smith, was convinced by Spence that loyalism needed to develop a more political side to its agenda and Spence encouraged these younger members to become involved in this development.

Less than a week before, 15 people – including two children – had been killed when the UVF bombed McGurk’s bar in north Belfast. A protest followed outside the police station in which he was being held although ultimately Hutchinson was released without charge. Members of the UVF then entered Torrens, having retrieved weapons (including an AK-47) from an arms dump, and a clash between the two groups looked imminent. He proved very useful because of his knowledge of republican areas Although there was much indiscriminate violence, there was also some political thinking taking place among Loyalists as early as the 1970’s. Gusty Spence was the commander of the UVF prisoners and military discipline was maintained among them.Ms Graham said: “The DUP has been given additional votes, including my own, under the condition that the party remains outside of government until the protocol is addressed. It is now clear that in 1998 the political text and spin around what the Agreement would do, was belied by what- as a matter of law- it actually ended up doing. Hutchinson had already known Spence as the two had spoken on a few occasions during 1972 when Spence, aided by his nephew Frankie Curry, had escaped from prison for a few months. This fortnightly procession of Linfield supporters, before and after home games, became an occasion for mutual provocations between the two communities. How could concessions to republicans be considered, while the IRA was still in existence, and people were being killed?

Hutchinson has often stressed the importance of the working class nature of loyalism and has argued in favour of socialism. That is why I believe a key lesson from 1998 is that rather than taking any political text, or assertions of politicians, at face value, there should be an open and frank consultation process and public debate on every aspect of the deal and, most crucially, there should be independent credible legal opinion commissioned and published which scrutinises the various claims and provides a firm legal answer. The problem with people who are [were] against the ceasefire is they haven’t had their door kicked up their hall, and maybe if more of them had they’d want a ceasefire, and I’m not talking paramilitaries here, I’m talking influential people. He was a leading member of the Progressive Unionist Party and involved in talks culminating in the Belfast Agreement.Mr Hutchinson said one of the legacies of the agreement was that it had succeeded in bringing about an end to most violence. I have read multiple detailed papers, articles and public contributions by those who say the deal cannot possibly achieve what it will purport to have achieved, but- as yet- I see nothing which commits any opposing view to writing, and opens it to scrutiny. In 1975, at the age of just 19, he was sentenced to life in prison, and it was in the cages of Long Kesh that he first came under the influence of loyalist icon Gusty Spence.