Bertie would've joined the IRA if he wasn't in a FF household..

Allah Hu Akbar

Ahern saw British embassy torched

Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was in an angry crowd on the night in 1972 when Dublin's British Embassy was torched.

The man who helped bring peace was protesting after soldiers shot 13 people dead on Bloody Sunday.

Between 20,000 and 30,000 people besieged the embassy for almost three days that February.

In a new documentary for RTÉ, Mr Ahern said he felt "incensed" by Bloody Sunday. But he did not join the IRA, although some of his friends did.

Radicalised by the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, and with a father who had been interned for IRA membership in the civil war, Mr Ahern said: "In '72, I was there for those nights with my brothers and with my friends. We were there and we were incensed about that," he said.

Asked if he would ever have joined the IRA, he said: "No, I never did. Friends of mine did and played an active role in it and I knew a lot of them.

"I think, probably, if I hadn't been in a Fianna Fáil household, maybe I would have."

Bertie, made by the production company, Mint, asks who the real Bertie Ahern is?

Bertie Ahern
The documentary by Mint Productions asks who the real Bertie is?

The documentary makers found that the man who was to become a peacemaker in Northern Ireland seemed a mass of contradictions.

He was the son of an IRA man who led his party to drop Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution claiming jurisdiction over Northern Ireland.

He was a self-proclaimed socialist who governed as a laissez-faire capitalist.

He was a deeply religious man whose official partner was not his wife.

The first episode of the documentary traces Bertie Ahern's early life. He was born in 1951 and joined his local Fianna Fáil cumann (organisation) in 1971.

When he first embarked on political life "he was a nobody. He had no pedigree. He came from nowhere," said his friend Daithí O Broin, interviewed for the documentary.

In 1977, he won a Dáil seat on his first attempt.

It was at that time that the seeds of what former taoiseach and Fianna Fail leader Charles Haughey called the "Drumcondra Mafia" were sown.

Shortly after the 1977 election, Ahern's former special advisor, Paddy Duffy, said some of the members of the team met in Malahide.

Their purpose was how to make Ahern taoiseach within 20 years.

Charles Haughey and Bertie Ahern
Charles Haughey dubbed Ahern and his followers the 'Drumcondra mafia'

During the civil wars over Haughey's leadership, Mr Ahern displayed early signs of his political skills, remaining on good terms with both the dissidents while enforcing the Boss's will as the party whip.

He was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1986 - this was, he said, "probably the job I enjoyed most in my career".

But his personal life was unravelling and by the time he was appointed minister of labour in 1987, his marriage had broken down.

The programme includes frank and revealing interviews from family, friends, colleagues and commentators.

The first episode of Bertie will be broadcast on Monday 3 November at 2135 GMT on RTÉ.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/n...nd/7705840.stm

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