Peacebuilder & Founder, Former IRA member
Jo Berry is a peacebuilder, founder of a Charity, Building Bridges for Peace, dedicated to understanding the roots of violence and terrorism and developing conflict prevention and transformation. When Sir Anthony Berry MP was killed by the IRA during the 1984 Tory Party Conference, his daughter Jo was thrown into a conflict she knew very little about. She made a commitment to go on a journey of understanding and in November 2000 met Pat Magee, the man responsible for her father's death. They have since spoken together in prisons, schools, Universities, at peace conferences and recently for The Forgiveness project in the House of Commons Patrick Magee PhD was born in Belfast in 1951. At twenty he joined the IRA and was interned between 1973/5. In 1986 he was sentenced to Life imprisonment for the Brighton Bomb but was released in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. He gained a doctorate upon release. Although no longer a member of the Irish republican movement, he supports Sinn Fein and is a firm advocate of reconciliation, and for the last ten years has worked with Jo Berry, whose father, Sir Anthony, he killed at Brighton.
We can learn a lot by listening to each other, particularly in extreme circumstances. Reconciliation and forgiveness can be achieved as long as we realise that 'real' people are involved as opposed to anonymous systems or causes
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