marking the moment, fifty years ago, that the civil rights leader martin luther king, was shot dead by a white supremacist. addressing the crowd by video link, barack obama said progress didn't come easily and that people should expect setbacks. mark zuckerberg has insisted he is still the best person to lead facebook, despite the revelation that the personal data of as many as 87 million people may have been misused by british—based political consultants. that's many more than previously disclosed. he admitted making a huge mistake. chadha has responded to the announcement of tariffs on some of its exports by announcing duties of its exports by announcing duties of its own on some american product. —— china. donald trump expressed hope that china would change what he called it is unfair trade practices. it's just gone half past four. now on bbc news it's time for hardtalk.

welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. 20 years ago, a historic agreement was signed in northern ireland, which put an end to three decades of bloody sectarian conflict. politicians from northern ireland, the uk, the republic of ireland, and the us, who were involved in those marathon negotiations will mark the anniversary. my guest will be one of them. monica mcwilliams represented the northern ireland women's coalition and continues to play a significant role in post—conflict in northern ireland now. is there much to celebrate, given the uncertainty that hangs over northern ireland today? monica mcwilliams,

welcome to hardtalk. thank you. so here we sit on the eve of this historic 20th anniversary of the signing of the so—called good friday agreement. does it feel to you living in northern ireland today that it is a very different place from the northern ireland of 20 years ago? it isa it is a completely different place. i used to run from bombs and standard generals. —— and stand at funerals. my own friend was murdered in 1974 as a university student. those were hard days. now my children have a completely different life than the life i led. i lived 30 years through the troubles from about 14.

i signed the agreement when i was 1m. so i say to this generation this is your peace: "we tried to make it, you need to build it." interesting that you say your children live in this different environment. i know northern ireland, and was there now long ago. and it still strikes me as a deeply come a deeply segregated society. it is indeed. we have a lot of work to do. it is unfinished business. and we may be peace agreement, we said that we would have to work on those issues, and the hardest of all would—be sectarianism. that remains the case. they say that for all the years that you are in conflict it takes you the same number of years to come out of it. and the mindsets are the last thing that you can change. you can build the structures, you can build in the kind of systemic changes you want to see,

but to actually change the mindset is — actually it wasjohn hume, the nobel peace prize winner, who said "you can take the guns away, decommission, but to decommission the mindset is a different thing." we will get to that. i want to talk in this interview about contemporary northern ireland. but it is the important dig deep into what happened to you and your place over the 20 years, and go back through the troubles, too. you talk mindset — what was it like being a catholic girl in a close—knit family in a small community close to the city of londonderry, or derry, as catholics call it, in northern ireland — what was it like growing up there in the 1960s? well, it is the 50th anniversary today of the murder of martin luther king. and so my memory was sitting watching that and thinking, "i wonder if we will ever get civil rights, and, in fact, civil rights

took off, and i marched for those rights." i did not have much consciousness about being a young woman, because i carried a banner saying "one man, one vote." but those were the things that we thought about. we were not as conscious until we were older of the discrimination in housing, jobs, or voting. you mean discrimination that you catholics felt in a state that you felt was run by and for the protestant majority? looking back, that needs to be understood. that was one of the causes. and it could have been resolved much earlier. and it did not need to turn into a violent conflict, the people who are responsible, who had power, and it is very hard to take the candy from the baby without it screaming, and they were not about to get that part up. so we have learned that in other conflicts. but it could have been resolved much earlier if those

causes of what was creating enormous descent had been tackled. there was two of everything in my town: two chemists, two butchers, two grocery shops. of course to schools, that was taken granted. —— two. and that is the way was until i was 18 and 20 university. you told me that you have lost loved ones. you witnessed violence and bombs going off in your street close to your house. —— i was 18 and i went off to university. did you feel hate? no, i don't think that would have been productive. it might not be productive, but you were growing up in a society full of suspicion and hate. why did you not hate? i was angry, as every young person tends to be through their teenage years. i felt that they need to turn that into something, and my own parents were strong on education, and i was very fortunate that i realised this was not going

to be resolved by hating anybody, but by understanding what their interests were. eventually, 20 years later, that is what happened, and understanding my own interest. that is why i formed this coalition made up of women from both sides of the community. that is interesting, because if we fast forward to the 90s, you set up something which northern ireland never had, which was a women's political party. you made it explicitly nonsectarian by teaming up with a protestant woman. yes, it was notjust one woman, but many. we had for the 25 years before the peace talks were declared, we had sowed the seeds across the community. it was women fighting against poverty. and coming from both sides. as they used to say, "you cannot fry a flag in a frying pan." women really realised whilst men were at this, we need to get on with

the bread—and—butter issues. as this is a daft and crude question, but did feminism trump sectarianism, the you, anyway? he would not have trumped it, but many of us realise to realised what sexual violence meant. we wanted the sexual violence act extended to northern ireland. women, like myself, were fed up with having — if we were to sign for a house, we needed a man to do it, if we were going to get some loans, we had to get a man to speak up for us. but also in terms ofjobs. we had to give upjobs if we were going to get married. that was ridiculous amount of discrimination that only we were suffering. so we said discrimination crosses the board here, irrespective of your religion. and of your class. and that is when we sowed the seeds as far back as that. even in a traditional society,

as northern ireland was in the 1990s, this message struck a chord, and you stood for election in the negotiating forum which became the forum that yielded the good friday agreement. you did not win that many votes, but won enough to win two seats around the table. but reading the record and what happened, there was an awful lot of sexism, misogyny, and abuse aimed at you around the negotiating table. there was indeed. anyone who has experience that tends to block it out afterwards. and tends to... how bad was it? go home and have babies, you will should not be at this table. the only table you should be at is the table you are to polish. and stand by your man. so we found a way of using our humour. we found a way of staying strong as saying this

is about them, not about us. but it was incredibly humiliating. i was actually a university lecturer, so i shouldn't have been so emotional about it. but when somebody is daily telling you that you don't count, it does lower your confidence, but every night the women came together in my house or in the house of some of the other women who had children, and we needed to talk, and that was a solidarity, and that was how we kept our streets together. you think that because there were women in the room, which northern ireland was not used to, it actually brought some indifferent, fresh, to the table? you said some interesting things in retrospect. you have said you had to allow yourself to believe that individuals, even those who carried out violence, can change will stop you think many didn't believe in the humanity that you could see all believed in and hoped for? that was the case for some of the men at the table, but not all of them.

i will say something that is probably controversial, now. the two small loyalist parties that were associated with paramilitaries, will they were the gentlemen at the table, who stood up for us when we receive the abuse. and it is good that they will go to challenge it as well as us. and some of this was about people not wanting to sit with their enemies. and we had already decided that as nasr mandela had once told us in south africa, you had to make peace with those enemies. it's not with your friends that you are going to sit and negotiate. that was the hardest part. understanding the legitimacy of everyone at the table. notjust us and the women's coalition, but the men. but your question is so pertinent. yes is the answer. in does difference when women are at the table. if they have come with progressive about conflict resolution... because not all women are essentially these

beggars, but we have decided that were going to be involved in an inclusive process that involves those that had been armed combatants as well as constitutional parties. and it was that mix that we were constantly pushing and seeing if we can say together, we will get through this together, and we did. but you had big ambitions. you made it plain that this was notjust about institution building in ablative says, but more than that. you said it had to deal with the rights of victims, young people, education, and mixed housing. and they built the institution and there was a power—sharing executive, and will talk about what happened to it in minute, but on those deeper, deeper roots of a change in northern ireland, frankly, 20 years on, i am wondering whether you just feel severe disappointment. that me say first that we put those issues on the table. we realise that this was more than demobilisation and disarmament, and for sustainable peace, you need integrated education, and to speak about what you will do for the young people coming behind you. most importantly, you need to say what you will do for the victims of the conflict.

otherwise it is a terrorist charter. my point is you talked about that and wanted to deliver that. my point is that you haven't. if you go to northern ireland today, the schools are segregated. there is a great big so—called peaceful that divides protestant and catholic neighbourhoods in belfast at this very day. you still have the parades, men in paramilitary uniforms doing their thing in towns and villages across northern ireland. so in that cultural committee presents, you haven't done it. it is a beginning not the endo. the first thing we did was to preset insecurity for people. those issues will be longer term. and i think what we did was look at short—term gains, and still didn't concentrate on the long tern pain of letting people go to school together, letting the children be brought up together.

did your children go to catholic school? there were no it integrated education schools close to my home covered does not mean that they are, it would not fight for them today. there is more choice. but you're right, unless there is little will to drive it forward, we will remain segregated. if people come to northern ireland they will see separate schools and communities and even the peace walls. there is now a deadline for the walls to come down, 2023. i am the early woman on a four member coalition for the disbandment of paramilitaries. but we will also set a deadline. i believe in this more than my colleagues. but they will have to dig themselves out of the picture. let me ask your question. you say you have to believe, that you need to be realistic. the police service of northern ireland has

released figures this year which show last year there were more violent incidents involving paramilitaries on both sides than in the previous year, a really significant rise. that is worrying. and you are responsible for trying to work out how to do it to the paramilitary. but it is not going in the right direction. if you look generally today at all these issues we are just raise, you could argue that northern ireland, to an outsider, looks a society which could very easily slid back into violent conflict. i don't agree with that analysis. there are armed group attacks. we actually are trying to stop using the word paramilitary. some people call it public child abuse, but there were 50 people killed in london this year, with knife attacks. it's not going to be a perfect peace, but we will tackle those issues and the community is going to be the first to say no more of this coercive control, no more of cards pretending to be commanders of paramilitary groups. they are rising up and there's wonderful things going on that people don't see, or it doesn't get reported, and that's why i would say that till the day i'm carried into my coffin, i'll be working at this...

but... but it's worth working at. yeah, but the — right now, the power—sharing executive isn't functioning. the two main parties, that is the unionist party, the dup, and sinn fein, can't work with each other. yeah. do you feel let down by the politicians today? yeah, i feel frustrated. i used to feel a sense of failure and an enormous sense of friction. the frustration continues, but that's not useful emotions, you just have to keep working at it. they should by now have learned how to do a deal. there's nothing wrong with the agreement, either the belfast good friday agreement or st andrews. it's about relationship building, it's about committing to something, it's about promising to carry it out, and it's about performing those promises. well, i come back to that word realism — the historian ruth dudley, who spends a lot of time thinking about northern ireland politics, she says that given the fact it's more than a year since you've had workable power—sharing, she says the truth is the good friday agreement has

"outlived its usefulness." well, i think that's total nonsense. i don't know when ruth dudley edwards was back in belfast to see the life i am now leading. it's notjust the governance arrangements, the policing changes are now a role model for other countries. there have been many changes institutionally, there's a human rights commission. she's not saying do away with all of that, she's just saying this inbuilt, mandatory coalition between the main unionist party and the main republican, nationalist party... yeah. she said is no longer fit for purpose. yeah. that's not the way politics in a more mature society should work. well, perhaps we aren't that mature yet and therefore, we need those institutions. they were brought in for a reason and i believe that if those relationships were improved, it would be much better. i saw it working and it was a lovely thing to see, when reverend ian paisley, former enemy of martin mcguinness came together, those institutions worked. so sometimes it's about personality,

sometimes it's about chemistry, but most of all it's about committing to what you've promised and people didn't live up to those commitments. so we have to get back round the table. i've been round that table many, many times before. i believe that those negotiations can come out the other end. i believe those governance arrangements will go back up. i'd love to say to people like ruth dudley edwards and others, what do you think is the alternative? it's not going to be power—sharing, there's no such thing — it is going to be about power—sharing. there's no such thing as majority rule any more, in fact there's no majorities any more. so what do you do? you form coalitions. we're not the only country. the republic of ireland has a coalition, many european countries — angela merkel has a coalition. make it work. maybe one reason, for more than a year, it hasn't worked is because brexit seems to be directly affecting the mood of people in northern ireland, because one of the biggest controversial and unknowns right now about brexit is what it's going to do to the border

between northern ireland and the republic of ireland. how big a factor is that, do you believe? huge, and it's — you've put yourfinger on it, it's unknown. it's the uncertainty, it has driven us back into silos that we did not need to go back into. the good thing about our agreement was also the british and irish government coming together to sing off the same page, now how are they going to do that? we cannot go back to a border between the north and south, those constitutional arrangements were meant to be resolved. i sat at that table, i wrote european, european, european into that agreement over and over again. i'm a proud european, and i no longer want to live in a little, tiny society, that is... well, with all due respect, that's you and your choice, but the fact is the uk public as a whole voted in a referendum to leave, and surely it's incumbent upon the people of northern ireland as a whole to figure out how they can be part of the will of the people? well, let me say it's notjust me.

northern ireland voted to remain. i think they were sensible people who saw that if they did any other, it would create problems further down the road which we didn't need, but yes, it's foreign policy and therefore, the uk voted to go. but did you, did anybody going to the polls thatjune think hmm, i wonder will my vote have an impact on that little place over there called northern ireland, that's part of this united kingdom for over 30 years, they had a violent conflict, then they resolved it and actually, being part of europe helped to resolve that? no, they didn't. they didn't even think about it, and now they're having to focus on it. well, david trimble, lord trimble, who of course was a key player on the unionist side through the era of peace negotiations, he says categorically, "it is rubbish that brexit in itself will undermine the good friday agreement", i.e he sees people like you as making excuses. well, he could be correct in saying that by itself it won't undermine it, but it's certainly a factor that we could have done without. it has created uncertainty, which i'm certain he would also

agree. he was always, always against the european union. he always saw it as a problem and i respect people's views who saw it that way, but in terms of its impact on that agreement, it is having a huge impact and i think it is unnecessary, and we are going to have to come out the other end of it in october and i think all good heads are going to be put together to make sure that ireland doesn't go to a division. do you think it's unhelpful when the irish republic and the key players in that government talk about notjust the wedge that they see brexit placing in the middle of the island of ireland and they worry about that, but they go further and for example, simon coveney, the 45—year—old foreign minister of the republic said not so long ago, he said, you know, "in my lifetime, i believe that there will be a referendum on a united ireland", raising the spectre of something

which is so divisive in the north. is that helpful? well, constitutionally, he's correct, but the question is when? and as someone once said to me in the negotiations, you shouldn't actually always ask a question until you're certain you know what's coming out the other end, and that was over the referendum and it was about decommissioning of guns and a whole lot of questions, and i would say to simon, it would be better that we rest that and let's resolve these issues at the moment. i want to live peacefully with my neighbours in northern ireland, i do not want to be in a place apart, in a space where we don't know each other, as strangers. we've come a long way, and what i want to do is allow people the consensus which was at the core of our agreement to decide what they want to be in the future. but 20 years... that drives them. yeah. that brexit issue will drive them into a place where they don't want to be. but 20 years on, 20 years on, monica, we have the uncertainty of brexit and we have political

limbo in northern ireland. how long can that be allowed to continue before it becomes profoundly dangerous for the security of northern ireland? i don't think we're anywhere close to becoming profoundly dangerous. really? i don't think we're anywhere close to a reoccurence of the violence. i do think that we are in a very uncertain period, where people once again, when they don't need to be angry with each other, are. i'm certain we will come through this without violence. now, that doesn't mean that people are rushing to sign up to become customs officers or immigration officers, because they are the people who may be threatened. but we've lived with that as a kind of rollercoaster as we've tried to implement this agreement, and we may have to continue living with that. but that does not mean we will go back to anything close to the conflict that i came through. we've tasted the prize of peace, and we will go on doing so. there was a time when you were a young woman and the troubles were at their height,

that you thought about living in the united states. you did live there for some time, but then you decided to come home. do you think your grandchildren will actually want to live in northern ireland, or will they see it as a place which is too divided, too segregated to make a decent life? i came home — i left after the murder of my good student friend, michael malan, in 1974, because i thought it was never going to change and i couldn't bear it, but i couldn't bear to stay there any in the united states, far away, and watch what was going on in my own country. so i got my qualifications and came home and set myself about working. i ask this question with myself, having a son in chicago, and i've lived my life to make the country a peaceful place to come home to. he loves where he's at, he's got a good job where he's at, and my other son has also had to leave because he couldn't find a job in northern ireland.

that's the country i want to have, i want notjust my children to come home, i want every child to come home, notjust to a safe place but a place of prosperity, where they can work. monica mcwilliams, thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you very much. wednesday brought a real mix of weather across the country. thursday is looking completely different. it's going to be quite a chilly start. frosty start for some of us, but the weather is looking great. so a lot of sunshine eventually in the afternoon. that'll be right across the country. this is the cloud that's bringing the unsettled weather still in the north, with some snow in places as well.

but that is finally clearing away and as we head through the course of the morning, the remnants of the cloud across parts of lincolnshire, the midlands, east anglia, and the south—east but the skies already clearing in many parts of the country. by early thursday morning, it will clear in northern england too, and the temperatures will drop away like a stone in the northern half of the uk. some rural spots in scotland could get down to —7 degrees, whereas in the south, around 3—6 degrees celsius. here's the forecast for tomorrow. the last of that cloud clears away from the south—east during the morning on thursday, then sunshine all round. now, a slightly cooler day on the way on thursday. maybe 8—12 degrees celsius. that's because the morning is going to be pretty chilly. that sun will have to work harder to warm things up. you can see there's a weather front approaching. that weather front will be in place across western parts

of the uk on friday. quite a split in the weather towards the end of the week. many western areas will eventually turn fairly cloudy. there will be some outbreaks of rain, particularly in plymouth, the western isles as well. look at that central and eastern areas looking sunny, arrows coming in from the south. the southerly wind will start to making still warmer. temperatures up to 15 in london, some eastern areas getting up to 13, possibly, as well. now, friday into saturday, that warm air is still kind of with us. certainly not for everybody. it will be mostly hugging south—eastern and eastern areas of the country. by the time we get to saturday, the chances are that it may turn a little bit warmer still. however, notice that there is a bit of rain drifting out of the south, moving northwards. some of us will get some rain on saturday, but the possibility of temperatures getting up to around about 17 degrees in east anglia. that is really going to feel like spring. but for most of us on saturday, it will still be cooler, more like 12—14 degrees. on sunday, eventually that blob of rain from the north will move northwards into scotland.

things should dry out. still very decent temperatures, 1a in london, 13 expected in edinburgh and glasgow as well. that's it, have a good day. this is the briefing. i'm maryam moshiri. our top story: bell rings. 50 years on, commemorating the life — and murder — of the civil rights leader dr martin luther king. "a huge mistake," says mark zuckerberg — he's now admitted data from up to 87 million facebook users may have been misused. the first day of competitions at the commonwealth games, and champion hurdler sally pearson pulls out through injury. china strikes back, threatening tariffs on 106 us products ranging from crops like soybeans to cars. is a trade war now inevitable? i'll be speaking to an expert on international economic law in the business briefing.