Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine likes the idea that he's 'the Republic's favourite unionist'. But his journey from vigilante to conciliator was long and complicated, according to a new biography. He talks to Dan Keenan, Northern News EditorDavid Ervine (above) on his parents:'Mum was to the right of Genghis Khan, Dad to the left of JoeStalin'On unionism:'Unionism just ran away from the debate. Timeswere changing and they

Big Davey's story begins 49 years ago in a "two-up, two-down" red-brick Belfast street. This son of a Paisleyite mother was reared in the shadow of the shipyard and became a street vigilante and later a UVF volunteer. Familiar the tale may seem, but for David Ervine the cliché ends there. This is not a conveyor-belt life story of so many hot-headed young loyalists, predetermined by the Troubles and ending in prison or a cemetery. Rather it is one of personal redemption: of how he discovered the failings of paramilitarism, the value of politics and leadership, and the strength that comes from the love of a good woman.

This story is now the subject of a biography, Uncharted Waters, by Henry Sinnerton, a language teacher at Ervine's old school in east Belfast. Ervine appears flattered by the new attention focused on him.

"I had a very basic upbringing - but with warmth," he reflects. He is the youngest of five in a family of non-attending Presbyterians. There was discipline on those working-class terraced streets, thanks to the policing of "a couple of moral grannies" who told your Ma if you had been cursing. But to this day, he and his vivacious mother Dolly disagree about Paisley.

Catholics lived in his street, Chamberlain Street, - quite contentedly, he reckons. His wistful word conjures up images of stability, innocence, comfort and homeliness.

"I remember clearly it being shattered by the Troubles too - a couple of the Catholic families moving out," he says. But his first political lessons were learned not on the street, but at home, courtesy of his socialist father.

Walter Ervine, an iron-turner with a proud war record, would have travelled to Headingly for cricket Test matches - but would also have crossed the city for a hurling match at Casement Park in Andersonstown or to attend discussions at Clonard Monastery on the Falls Road. He wasn't someone who felt constrained by the strictures of his day or his background, allying himself instead to the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the trade union cause. Walter, who died in 1974, spurned the Orange Order.

It made for a politically aware - and diverse - household: "Mum to the right of Genghis Khan, Dad to the left of Joe Stalin."

It's wrong to see all Protestants as bowler-hatted, sash-wearing sectarian bigots who are not interested in reform, he insists. "I don't buy that. It isn't true. I think there is a siege mentality and the best way to see what those people are is to lift the siege."

The young Ervine, tall and well-built for his school age, soon saw himself as something of a defender of the smaller boys. And "Big Davey" had the reputation of a temper to match his physique. "I fought the whole way through school," he admits. And he fought the system too, clashing with some teachers at Orangefield School, as well as other boys. The response was not to punish him with discipline, but to enrol him as an enforcer of it. Ervine became a class monitor and his behaviour problem dissolved. He flourished on the sports field.

"It was a great school, absolutely, but I'm not so sure I was able to take advantage of it," he says. "It's one of my huge regrets. I matured early in physical terms, but it took a long long time for my brain to catch up."

He left school aged nearly 15 with a false sense of new-found freedom, and joined his peers earning a little money. He was more politically aware than most of them, with a left-wing attitude and a disrespect for what he terms "Big House unionism" and the "shameful politics of fear" - as his father called it - of Paisley.

It was the late 1960s and the Troubles erupted out of the street protests. "I was consumed by it," he says. He became a street vigilante, a teenage volunteer who manned (if that's the word) the entrance to his street in an ill-thought-out attempt at community protection. He often pondered the pointlessness of vigilantism, but says with a shrug that the tribe went with it - so he did too.

He was going out with Jeanette Cunningham - his wife-to-be - and recalls wondering why he felt he had to leave her in order to do his stint on the street. "I remember thinking at the time: 'I'm walking away from her to stand like a prick at the street corner here.' And let's assume they came with their guns, what would I have done?"

He resisted UVF membership at this time and continued to do so until July 1972, when one event changed everything: the killing of nine people and injuring of 130 on Bloody Friday, when the IRA exploded more than 20 bombs throughout Belfast. He decided that evening to join up and to protect his own.

"I'm ready now," he told a UVF figure in a pub who had approached him in the past, and he was sworn in. His wife didn't know, nor did anyone in Chamberlain Street. He was active for the next two years, but got caught transporting a bomb in a stolen car along the Holywood Road in November 1974. He was charged with possession of explosives with intent to endanger life, but he claims he was "a pawn" acting under duress.

ACCOUNTS differ as to what happened on the Holywood Road that day. He denies claims that he made the bomb safe at the insistence of his captors. But his biographer says Ervine's actions that day were irrefutable evidence of bomb-making knowledge. He spent seven months in the dank Victorian Crumlin Road prison, and was later found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in Long Kesh.

Jeanette was distraught. Horrified to discover that her husband was involved in violence she had opposed, she feared for their young son. David's imprisonment and her survival on the outside was to be a pivotal period for both of them.

"The Kesh" was a different experience. Penned into compounds made up of Nissen huts, paramilitary prisoners ran their own lives. Prison officers were charged with "guaranteeing the same number of prisoners were there in the morning as there were at night". It was, he says, "massively different". What was so influentially different was the regime fostered by the loyalist paramilitary father figure of Gusty Spence.

"Spence delivered an ethos, a way of life," Ervine says. "There were no fights, no physical violence at all - from the authorities, from the leadership, or any other way. It was a very humane confinement, during which I had the capacity to explore."

He rages against the decision of Harold Wilson's government to scrap that prison system and impose the regime in the now notorious H-blocks at the Maze. Turmoil followed. "That set the cause of peace back many, many years. There were many deaths," he says. "When you have the oxygen to think and debate, and then that's replaced by survival, something falls by the wayside."

That, he believes, is what happened in the Maze. In Compound 18, Ervine's debates continued. He sat O-levels and went on to study arts, humanities and social sciences. He, along with many others, explored ways out of conflict.

"Being in that jail was like being at the hub of a wheel and watching the world go by," he says. "The capacity to analyse and understand was acute compared to the rat race outside."

While prison offered him positive opportunities, he had to live with the guilt that came from the anxiety he had caused his wife. The marriage break-up rate in Long Kesh was 52 per cent. The Ervines, supported strongly by the wider family, helped make up part of the other 48 per cent.

In 1980 he was releasedearly and was offered a grant of £48 per week to study at university as a mature student. But he felt he couldn't. Jeanette and his son, Mark, had served their term too and it was payback time. Ervine began working as a milkman, eventually getting his own round. Things improved, the family had more money and moved house. Ervine started a shop on My Lady's Road in east Belfast, but kept away from the paramilitaries and ex- prisoner networks. His enthusiasm for politics remained fervent, just as Gusty Spence had figured it would.

He was approached by two men from the fledgeling and seemingly insignificant Progressive Unionist Party. He saw them as kindred spirits, joined and - defying a threat from the Provisionals - stood for council in 1985. "Poor Jeanette" recognised this was no passing fancy and, not for the first time in her burdened life, backed him.

"It's the one thing I did well in my life. I married the right woman," Ervine says. Politics had cost the family dearly. They had to move home constantly, Ervine was back on the dole again, and his wider family had to step in with support. But a political career was "something I had to do".

Politically, he is results-driven. But he's modest about his role in the the lead-up to the signing of the Belfast Agreement on Good Friday in 1998. "I'm only interested in one thing in life, and that's outcomes. It makes politics pretty frustrating. Yet there are things I've done, not all of them public, that personally I can be proud of."

He watched, and was encouraged by, what he sees as the "huge ideological leaps" made by republicans. He was pleased by the growth of pan-nationalism, the decision to allow Sinn Féin candidates to stand for the Dáil, and the slow edging away of republicans from the open-ended and seemingly unwinnable war.

He is dismissive of mainstream unionism's efforts following the Anglo-Irish Agreement in November 1985, and is part- icularly scathing about what he saw as their use of the loyalist paramilitary threat to sabre-rattle. He saw them as cowards "lusting for relevance".

"Unionism just ran away from the debate," he says. "Times were changing, the ground was shifting and they never told the people. I learned a lot from that nonsense."

Archbishop Robin Eames is singled out for praise. Thanks to his contacts with British (and Irish) establishment figures, Eames helped Ervine decode the latest political thinking. It was the sort of help that confirmed Ervine and others on the political path. Not even the Shankill bombing of 1993 could dislodge them. Eventually, the logic of the unwinnable war took root in the loyalist paramilitaries and the aim of escalating the struggle to end the struggle evaporated.

Today, he is far from troubled by the notion that he is "the Republic's favourite unionist", recollecting with warmth times spent in Dublin. He rattles off a short list of favourite pubs, ranging from McDaid's off Grafton Street to Mulligan's in Poolbeg Street.

Is he a foreigner in Dublin? Taking the unlit pipe from his mouth, he dismisses the notion with the flattest of Belfast vowel sounds: "Nat at all, nat at all".

Unchartered Waters by Henry Sinnerton is published by Brandon, priced €23.99/ £14.99 sterling