She spared neither herself nor her adversaries, and her words cut to the core of the cause and terrible human cost of 30 years of Troubles in the North.
Now 54 years old, Josephine Bernadette Devlin, otherwise Mrs McAliskey, yesterday showed a hushed inquiry flashes of the fire and righteous anger that were forged in the political and street battles of the late 1960s.
Forthright as ever, she politely but firmly told the Saville tribunal why she did not believe it could arrive at a just and honourable "verdict".
But while she squarely charged the British government with "declaring war" on those who had sought justice at the time of Bloody Sunday, her most searing judgment was reserved for herself - for her own loss of compassion after the army killings.
She recalled striking the then Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, in the House of Commons because she had believed he was telling lies. She also said both wings of the IRA then had promised to avenge each of the 13 deaths on Bloody Sunday.
However, she said she had a clear recollection, after leaving the House of Commons, "of saying something I never believed I would hear myself say". She had commented, in relation to the IRA vengeance threats: "That makes 26 soldiers and I will not shed a tear over one of them."
With deep emotion, Mrs McAliskey told a hushed chamber of lawyers, press and public: "It was an unbelievably cruel thing to say, and I meant every single word of it . . ." She pointed out that just 24 hours before that her viewpoint and outlook had been very different: "Me and my rhetoric were arguing against secret and armed organisations." But after Bloody Sunday and making that statement, she said, "I never, for 30 years, raised my voice against the arming and the taking of the war to the British government."
She added: "I did not participate in the war; I was never a soldier, but as a consequence of Bloody Sunday . . . my policy was: death is part of this equation and the government made it a part of this equation."
An abiding memory, she said, was "not that I hit that waster in the House of Commons, but that I stood outside it and said that I would not have a tear to shed if 26 other coffins were to follow".
Three thousand and more coffins had indeed followed, and years of imprisonment, torture, pain and sorrow, and it was highly arguable, she said, that, without Bloody Sunday, "that which we have today would most likely have been agreed to [then] by all the parties . . . I cannot forgive the British government for that". And "this public inquiry cannot sort that out".