now on bbc news, political thinking with nick robinson. hello and welcome to political thinking, a conversation with, rather than a news interrogation of, someone who shaped our political thinking about what has shaped theirs. my guest this week is a daughter of what we still euphemistically call the "troubles" — the 30 years or more of violence which scarred northern ireland and the british mainland divided communities and claimed the lives of more than 3000 people. emma little—pengelly is the new deputy first minister of northern ireland. she grew up on the border with the south, the place with the highest death toll outside belfast. her father was arrested and imprisoned in france for involvement in arms trafficking for hardline loyalists back in the 1980s, something he still denies to this day, though, he did once say publicly he would oppose compromise to the bitter end, to the death. compromise that is with people like the first minister of northern ireland, michelle 0'neill of sinn fein, whose father was an ira prisoner. the two leaders, the first minister and the deputy first minister, are now seen by many as a symbol of compromise. emma little—pengelly, deputy first minister of northern ireland, welcome to political thinking. hello. it's great to be here. i'm struck by the image i've just seen before you came to do this interview. there you were standing alongside the first minister of northern ireland being photographed for international women's day. the two of you, two women, of course, two women in theirforties. two women, do you think of a new generation of leadership in northern ireland? well, i think both michelle and i have, i guess, very similar circumstances to some extent, but also very, very different ones of growing up in the eighties and nineties in northern ireland. but i think in that sense we almost straddle a number of generations. we are old enough to remember the difficult days of the past and the trauma and the violence and of course all of those negotiations to bring about peace. but we're also very conscious when we talk to younger people who don't have a memory of those days. so we are very much in that sort of central generation of politics here in northern ireland. you said on the day you became deputy first minister of northern ireland, let us, you and the first minister, be a source of hope to those young people watching, not one of despair. why was that what you chose to say? well, i think for many, many decades in northern ireland, it was a very dark time. there were so many lives that were blighted by violence, by conflict, but also because of that fear. and there's no doubt what happened here held people back. i think it damaged what they could do in their lives, what they could achieve in their lives. and really, you know, we're 25 years on from the belfast good friday agreement, more than 25 years on from some of those cease fires. there are still challenges, but the world that i see around me in northern ireland is dramatically different than the world that i grew up with in the eighties and the nineties, and that is a really positive thing. there is so much more to be done. but you know, despite of that positive change over the last 25 years, i do think some of the narrative of division, the instability, the challenges that we have faced can and has been a source of despair for many people. and really, ithink right from the beginning of this journey that i'm on as deputy first minister, along with michelle as first minister, i wanted to set a really positive tone. i want to send that message that actually, despite of our differences here in northern ireland, that actually that difference can be a strength. it allows us to see things from different perspectives. that allows us to tackle challenges with all of the broader range of experiences that we have. are you conscious of the imagery? i was struck by the selfie you had taken with michelle 0'neill at the northern ireland women's team match at windsor park. that image of the daughter of a sinn fein man, the daughter of a loyalist, smiling together at a sporting occasion. it would have been unthinkable, what, 15, 20 years ago? yeah, absolutely. and i think it is a testimony to how far we have come over the course of not just the last 25 years, but the last 100 years. you know, 100 years ago, northern ireland had just been created. and yet here we have an image of people from very different perspectives, two women of very different aspirations. i want a stronger united kingdom. the first minister, michelle 0'neill, has an aspiration of a 32 county independent ireland, completely different aspirations. but the fact that both of us are there supporting the northern ireland women's team with young people, really, really proud of their northern team. and that's really something that i have noticed over the last number of years, that regardless of community background, what we're really seeing are people who are just really proud, young people who are really proud to be part of northern ireland, to be from northern ireland, and support the likes of our northern ireland team. let's talk about your background then. you grow up in what people used to call border country. county armagh. more deaths in the troubles there, sadly, than there were in any place other than belfast. do you remember when you first realized that you were living in the troubles with a capital t, in a place in which violence was a part of everyday life? i don't remember anything different from the context in which i grew up. the very politicised situation in markethill. the challenges of that brought with us and with it. and markethill was a very politicised place. it was right on the edge of south armagh. many families who had been in the security forces, for example, many of the protestant families around south armagh, had moved up to markethill due to the threat of violence against theirfamily. so we were this small town, you know, an overwhelmingly protestant town on the very edge of south armagh, and a very republican area. so that, of course, brought challenges. there were an awful lot of threats. there were bomb attacks, mortar attacks, bomb scares, as we would have called them, which was when an alert would have come through, including when i was at the primary school, and we would have been bomb scared out. we would have had to physically had to leave. and, of course, many people shot and injured from the town over the eighties and into the nineties as well. so, yes, it was a very difficult place to grow up in. there was a bomb when you were 11 in your town of markethill. what do you remember of that? again, a very, very significant incident of my childhood. of course, as a child growing up, it was very clear cut to us. the enemy was republicanism. republicanism wanted to kill the people of my town. they wanted to bomb the town. that was through the eyes of a child, very, very simply. and of course, as i got older, you understand the complexity of these things much better. but through the eyes of a child growing up in markethill, it was a very frightening place. and that bomb that day is something that absolutely stands out in my memory. a huge amount of devastation arising from that. there was barely a house or a business in markethill that wasn't impacted by that, wasn't significantly damaged by that. and it was a warm winter, warm summer afternoon, evening. ijust remember walking through the town and there was just glass everywhere. the town really pulled together. there were teams of people out putting up and boarding up windows where the glass had been bombed out. but it was a real sense of a collective attack on our community, on our town. what did you know of the people who wre carrying out these attacks? did you know who they were? did you know what they wanted? did you have a sense of who you were up against? absolutely. of course, in the eighties,and i explain this to young people today and they can scarcely believe it, but of course, we only had a small number of tv channels and everybody watched the news. as a child, you would have watched the news with your parents. i think everybody in northern ireland watched the news at that time. so i would have been very conscious of the political debates. my first political memory was really margaret thatcher signing the anglo—irish agreement. at that time, within my community, it was seen as a huge betrayal. i remember the tangible sense of betrayal around that time. i remember watching her on television, signing that document. the anglo—irish agreement of 1985, for those who don't know it or don't remember, meant that the irish republic was at least consulted on some of the decisions taken about northern ireland. betrayal is an interesting word, an important word. why did it feel like betrayal? for the people of markethill, we were very strongly unionist. the majority of people in northern ireland wanted to stay within the united kingdom and there was this sense around the anglo—irish agreement and other negotiations that perhaps the uk government wanted to put northern ireland into some form of a halfway house with the republic of ireland by signing away aspects in relation to sovereignty. but of course at a more fundamental level it was because we were at that time fighting a war against the ira, it was a very clear narrative of the town and i think it was felt that actually the uk government should stand up and defend people like the neighbours and the family members and others in that town that were doing their best really, and in very, very difficult circumstances where we were under relentless violent attack. now some people served in the udr, the ulster defence regiment, the army, in other words, some people served in the royal ulster constabulary, the ruc, the police. others thought they had to go further. and your father was known to be a supporter of a group that wanted, well, it said it in the name, didn't it? ulster resistance. he said at that time that he would oppose compromise to the bitter death. to the bitter end. to the death. what was in the mind of people like your father at that stage? they really thought their whole way of life was under assault, did they? i think that's right. of course, i was a very young child at that time. i was only six years of age when the anglo—irish agreement had been signed. but there was, there's no doubt from speaking to people who were active in politics at that time, that there was this very strong view that by compromise, by this idea of weakening the union through either some sort ofjoint sovereignty with the irish republic, by giving away some of the sovereignty, if you were conceding or compromising on those issues, you were weakening the union. now, looking back, we can obviously place it within the context of wider events, but of course, people acted at that time as they felt at that time. and there's no doubt it was a very, very difficult and challenging environment. you were a little girl at the time, and it must have been extraordinarily difficult for you. you've talked about the sudden and unexpected arrest of your father. he was arrested in paris for arms trafficking for the ulster resistance group. he'll speak for himself. i won't ask you to speak for him, but how did it affect you? how did it affect the family? from the perspective of a child, i didn't understand any of the ins and outs of what really was happening in those particular circumstances. and i think to be absolutely clear, the vast, vast majority of people who went into the ruc, went into the udr, in terms of trying to defend the community, were completely legitimate. and certainly from my point of view, i've always stood very strongly against paramilitarism. i've always stood very strongly that there was always an alternative to that. but, you know, placing myself into that context as a child, of course, it turned my life upside down. undoubtedly it turned my life upside down. my father was away from the family home for a sustained period of time. there was a huge amount of publicity about the case and the impact really that had on my family life. i'm always very conscious that for so many families in the eighties and the nineties, the loss that they suffered, the bereavement that their family members have been killed. of course, that hurt, that story is the most important one to be told. but as a child of slightly different circumstances of the troubles, of course it had a massive impact on me. you know, i think in any of these things, when something traumatic happens you as a child, all of those, the differences, the issues, it all stands out. and it's such a distinct part of my life. and it gave me this real drive around, you know, i suppose trying to take a little bit more control of my life. i recognised at a very early age that education was a great way of taking that control, of shapeing my life for the future. because i think like most children in those circumstances, you don't, you don't, you lose every sense of control. it's an uncontrollable situation, something that's happening to you. now, you've been clear that you don't support paramilitarism, but you are still obviously close to your father. he was at the northern ireland assembly for your first speech as deputy first minister. i don't want to ask you to comment on what he did, because i think he won't. butjust tell me about him before we move on and talk some more about you. are you proud of him? is he proud of you? well, i have a very close relationship with my father. i said this when i first came into public life back in 2015. you know, i made clear, look, you know, people make different decisions in their lives. my father, of course, denies many of the allegations that are thrown in his direction. but ultimately, the choices that he has made in his life are his decisions. they are different decisions than i would make, i've made very, very clear where i stand on those issues. but like, you know, my father is my father. my daddy is my daddy. he's the only one that i will ever have. and i love him, as i said at the time, unconditionally, i have a very close relationship with my father. and you said just a moment ago that you came to see the way out of the situation you were in. you thought of education being a route out. well, look, i think that my family were in challenging financial circumstances. of course they were, because of the change that had happened. my father was the person in the family that had worked. there were four of us, four children in the family. my mother had given up work to look after us. my mother always really fought incredibly hard for us as children. my mother didn't go to university, but it was something she believed really passionately in and every single day of my childhood, she would have emphasized that, she always urged us to really work at school. she provided those books. she really supported us throughout our lives. now, you did get to queen's university in belfast. you studied law. you became active in politics as a supporter of the democratic unionist party, ian paisley�*s party. so there is emma little—pengelly, the future deputy first minister of northern ireland in a catholic dominated university. i imagine conversation was quite lively. debate was quite lively? well, i was very feisty, as you can imagine, i was a very politically opinionated and a very feisty young person. i always think when i talk to people now and they think i'm quite a spirited, opinionated person, that if only they had known me back when i was 18 years of age. i came to queen's university in 1980 and it was just after the signing of the belfast agreement. 0bviously that was a hugely, that was a massive issue in northern ireland. it dominated in terms of all of the discussions. but of course, you know, tony blair, new labour were coming in, tuition fees were being talked about. so it wasn't just the constitutional issues at university here. i'm struck by the fact you say you were much more feisty then. i mean, one of the things it strikes me that motivates you is that you believe in your community. you want to argue passionately for your community. do you think it's important to make the case, as it were, for people who are sometimes, particularly perhaps you might think on the british mainland, treated as these slightly curious guys who march in the orange order and play the pipes and play the drums? well, ithink, look, i think this has been a huge part of my life, the sense of the frustration of being misunderstood, the frustration of my community being misunderstood, of my cultural expressions, my identity. explain that misunderstanding for us, could you, emma little—pengelly, because you know what people sometimes say about ulster unionists or loyalists or people in the orange 0rder? they see the images, don't they? they see the bonfires of the twelfth, they see the orange marches, and they think it's an assertion of dominance, that it is being used to say to people in other communities, forget it, we're in charge. what is it that we're not seeing, that we're not understanding? well, you know, iwas a member of parliament back at the confidence and supply, and it's a really good example of that misunderstanding of ulster unionist or unionists from ulster, from northern ireland. some of the things that were said about the dup, and i was a member of parliament for the dup, i didn't recognise at all. there was just this terrible caricature. i always say that if you think back to that sketch, i think it was a harry enfield sketch of billy ulsterman, that for some reason that's in so many people's minds where unionism is at, that's the caricature of unionism. but of course unionism is much more than that. that isn't in any way the person that i am. and of course, yes, i do love my culture, my identity. but of course those identities, if you take the 12th ofjuly, this is an occasion of celebration with family. it's a celebration of faith, of our history. but that doesn't mean, it's absolutely not about attacking anybody else. this is about celebrating our own identity. you refer back to that moment the dup had great power, because you supported theresa may when she was in a minority government, you then gave your support to borisjohnson, having backed brexit, and trying to get a better brexit deal than the one you thought you'd got. there's an irony. you may not know this, but we'd originally planned that you would today be sitting in front of the political thinking logo, and we can't get it to you! i've got it here in front of me. great big sort of banner that we would normally put behind your head to show what it is. but apparently because we didn't fill in the right paperwork, a british company sending something to someone else in a british company, it got sent back because we hadn't done the right paperwork. there's still a problem here, isn't there? well, that's exactly why we continue to raise these issues now. the full agreement that we have done with the uk government has not yet fully come in. i am hoping that the problems that you have encountered with that will indeed have been resolved and it's a case of those processes working itself through. but that is a really good example, nick, of exactly the reasons why we have pushed this issue. and in my view, we shouldn't have had to push this issue as hard as we had to. i think that the uk government should have recognised there are big problems here. this barrier in the irish sea between northern ireland and great britain emerged as a result of the original sort of backstop into the protocol arrangements. i always made the point that the integrity of this internal uk market should never have been on the table for the negotiations. as of course the integrity of the eu single market was not on the table. that's why we have pushed this as hard as we have. i believe we've got a good deal on this, but of course a problem has emerged. the uk government needs to step up and address that as well. so hopefully the issue that you have encountered there is something that has been resolved and it's a case of when the legislation and the processes are fully implemented over the course of the next number of weeks, this will not occur. but of course, a big part of this is also the knowledge of operators, the knowledge of businesses around what paperwork is or isn't required. this argument about brexit and the northern ireland border is, in a sense, an illustration of the fact that you find yourselves partly in the uk market, partly in the eu market. it's a reminder of the constitutional debate about the future of northern ireland. you'll know that the first minister, you said it at the beginning of our conversation, michelle 0'neill, she wants to get rid of northern ireland effectively. she wants irish unity via obviously the ballot box rather than the gun these days. and the leader of sinn fein in ireland as a whole has said unification is, and i quote, within touching distance. the days of partition, as mary lou mcdonald calls it, are numbered. many people think that, even people who don't support unity, are they wrong? i thank my party leader sirjeffrey said that, my goodness, mary lou mcdonald must have the longest arms in ireland if it's within touching distance! because, look, we, we are always vigilant. of course we are. as unionists, as somebody who is absolutely passionate about this united kingdom, i believe our united kingdom is stronger with all of its parts together, with northern ireland, scotland and wales as part of that. i believe northern ireland's future is much better within our united kingdom, the sixth largest economy in the world, a place where we have our shared history and heritage, but in my view, a very strong future together. i think there are huge dangers to commencing the breakup of our union and what that means for the united kingdom moving forward. what are the dangers? the dangers in terms of our union? i think it's that lack of vigilance. i think what has been happening, particularly since brexit, is that sinn fein and republicanism have been trying to build this momentum, this sense that we are on this inevitable trajectory towards a united ireland. you've told me you were feisty. you smiled when i reminded you of it a second ago. that does put you in the firing line, doesn't it? and you, on one or two occasions, have found social media is a place where itjust gets a little bit too hot. i think that's right. i think it's always difficult being on social media as a woman in public life anyway. i think if you are a socially conservative woman in public life, it's very hard. but of course, i've seen that evolution of social media since i started. i came onto twitter, i think in 2015, not even that long ago, and at that stage it was all about engagement. you may recall those days! and you know, over the course of those years, it became increasingly difficult, i think, for anybody in the media and public life to engage on twitter. i'lljust remind you what you said when you came off social media once. "brutal, sad, hateful." "i remain a good, kind person." do you sometimes have to look at yourself in the mirror and remind yourself of that, after you read what people say about you? it's interesting hearing you read that back because clearly to me that shows i was hurt and i don't know what it was on the back of, but i actually do think, for good orfor bad, that i have become somebody with a much thicker skin. i don't get as impacted by what happens in social media as i did, but looking back, i know at times i did let it get to me. again, it comes back to the point of being and feeling misunderstood. you know, i think that there is so much depth to unionism and the unionist people of northern ireland. and i think sometimes we do see ourselves characterised in a particular way which does not reflect either what we contribute to this united kingdom, nor the thoughts and aspirations and motivations and how many different roles that we've played in so many different things. and i really feel as somebody in public life now, that that's something that i really want to advocate for, to give people a greater understanding of the depth and width and richness of who we are as people. we're much more than simplyjust a unionist, 0range rather than green. and i think that is something that's important to try to get across. emma little—pengelly, deputy first minister of northern ireland, thank you very much indeed forjoining me on political thinking. thank you. emma little—pengelly may be a symbol of the change that's taking place in northern ireland. she may represent the fact that compromise is possible politically. but when it comes to the status of northern ireland, when it comes to the constitution, there is no sign of compromise at all. thanks for watching. hello there. cloudy skies will remain a dominant feature with the weather story as we continue through the weekend. so mothering sunday, a rather grey start for many of us and there will be more in the way of rain around at times. now it really is quite a messy story, but we're still under this influence of low pressure, despite itjust sinking a little bit further south towards northern spain, the isobars northern spain, the isobars open up, lighter winds across central and southern england. but this trailing weather front will introduce cloud and showery bits and pieces of rain, a relatively bright start across wales and south west england. but the rain will tend to drift its way westwards as we go through the afternoon. so sunny spells and a few scattered showers potentially across cornwall, devon and parts of south wales. a line of more persistent rain moving its way slowly eastwards, cloudier skies remaining behind, quite a lot of clouds. the east of the pennines, some showery outbreaks of rain moving into northern ireland and always along that east coast. it will say cloudy, cool, breezy and wet at times. so that could have an impact once again on the feel of the weather. 6 to 8 degrees here. but further west where we may well see the best of the brightness, 11 or 12 celsius. now, as we move out of sunday into monday, that low pressure is going to drift its way over into central europe. the trailing weather front still producing quite a lot of cloud and a few bits and pieces of showery rain across parts of london and towards kent first thing on monday morning. so monday, again, a gray start. we've got this easterly feed continuing to push in cloud and maybe some outbreaks of light drizzle along exposed east coast. so sheltered western areas potentially seeing the best of any brighter weather. and that's where we'll see the best of the warmth. ten or 11 degrees, always cooler on those exposed coasts where the cloud and the drizzle may remain all day. now, as we move through the middle part of the week, there is another weather front. but on the whole, a quieter story until we get to the end of the week where we could see weather fronts starting to push in from the west, but the wind direction will change to a more of a southwesterly and we will tend to see it turning a little milder. so it is going to stay pretty messy throughout the week, a greater chance of seeing more persistent rain by the end of the working week, butjust that little bit milder. live from washington. this is bbc news. final preparations are under way for the first aid shipment by sea from cyprus — carrying vital supplies for gaza civilians, on the brink of famine. rampant gunfire and food shortages are reported in haiti's capital, as port—au—prince is paralysed by gang violence. and the gloves are off in the us presidential race, asjoe biden and donald trump hold dueling rallies in georgia. hello. we begin with the ongoing humanitarian crisis in gaza. a ship carrying much—needed food and medical supplies is preparing to set sail to gaza from cyprus, the closest eu nation to gaza. the spanish vessel, called the open arms, hopes to use a newly opened shipping route to arrive