Mr Morrison also says he believes that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael don’t want a united Ireland, despite expressions to the contrary. “I don’t think they want it at heart,” he said. 

“You need to prepare for it and they are not doing that.” 

In a wide ranging interview the man who coined the phrase “the ballot box in one hand and an armalite in the other” also accepted that the provisional IRA never had a mandate from the nationalist people in the north but were entitled to fight for the British to leave the island.

“The moral authority (for the IRA’s campaign) came from the same moral authority that exists in any country when people are oppressed and have no other means to oppose it. Inevitably oppression leads to resistance. 

"Yes, the IRA was involved in an armed struggle and yes, unconscionable things happed as it does in war but support from that came from poor nationalist working class and rural areas.” 

He also maintained that there are series of parallels between the Provisional IRA’s campaign in the 70s and 80s and the War of Independence in the 1920s, pointing out that the latter did not have the popular mandate that is often cited. 

Historically, the general election of 1918 is often cited as the mandate for the Volunteers to take up arms against the British, leading to the War of Independence but Danny Morrison disputes that this is accurate. 

“The Irish Republican Brotherhood was preparing for armed struggle regardless of the outcome of the 1918 election,” he says. 

“That was the icing on the cake. The mandate came from people being oppressed and it was the same in the North.”

Danny Morrison is Mick's guest on this week's podcast.