Martina Anderson was born in the Bogside in Derry and grew up there at the height of the Troubles where residents were treated abysmally by the political establishment, unionists, and the RUC. When the British Army, who were brought in partly to protect beleaguered Catholics, arrived they infamously went on to shoot innocent people dead in Ballymurphy in Belfast, and murder 14 more on Bloody Sunday in Derry. 

It was an extraordinarily turbulent and violent time. In 1976, Anderson left school aged just 14. Arrested under charges of conspiracy to cause explosions, she was sent firstly to the all-male Brixton prison with her co-accused, but then sent to Durham Prison where, despite conditions she described as grim, she obtained a first-class honours degree in social science from the Open University.

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