Paisley's legacy

Ian Paisley stands down as Northern Ireland's First Minister and leader of the DUP. There have been more destructive UK parliamentarians in my lifetime (Enoch Powell would be my principal nomination); but not many. It's baffling to read such tributes as the Prime Minister's: "Ian Paisley has made a huge contribution to political life in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom. The whole country values and admires the manner in which he has led as First Minister."

Not quite the whole country: you can count me out. Paisley's political genius was to take reasonable constitutional objections - there genuinely was something democratically exceptionable in the imposed power-sharing provided for under the Sunningdale Agreement - and turn them into something threatening. After the Second Vatican Council and with the rise of the ecumenical movement, much of Western Christendom came to temper its exclusive claims to truth. The egregious "Cloney boycott", among other cases, demonstrated that Irish Catholicism was an exception; Paisley's extreme evangelical Protestantism fed on that sectarianism.

It is fatuous for the Northern Ireland Secretary to declare that Paisley "played an absolutely historic role in ending the deadlock and establishing permanent devolved government and deserves enormous credit for the courage and vision he showed". Paisley was merely the unwitting and undeserving beneficiary of political reform wrought by the better and the brighter. It was David Trimble who secured the long-term health and stability of the Union by dispensing with dogma while holding firm on weapons decommissioning.

There is a family anecdote about Paisley, which I was pleased to see recounted in a comment posted (back in 2004) on Mick Fealty's peerless Slugger O'Toole blog:

'This is a true story about Ian Paisley and the media: I was there. In Armagh in late November 1968, Paisley and a counter-demonstration stopped a civil rights march getting in to the centre of Armagh from the Moy Road where it formed up. The march broke up quietly at the police lines below the Shambles, and then Paisley held a Prayer Rally in Market Square. There were a couple of thousand supporters and Martin Bell was there with a camera crew. Paisley said: "There is a man in this square today who is no friend of the Protestant and Loyalist people of Ulster. That man is Martin Bell of the BBC, or the PBC as I call it - the Papish Broadcasting Corporation. [Applause] Now I am not suggesting that any man here should offer violence to Martin Bell of the PBC, but [he paused and then slowly pointed] he's standing over there in a sheepskin jacket."

'After Bell had got a few digs, he said: "Now, brethren, let us bow our heads in a silent prayer for deliverance from our foes."'

Elmer Gantry could not have been less solicitious and sincere.

Comments

[George]

The Cloney boycott was, indeed, a very clear refutation of the commonly-held belief among Irish Catholics that 'sectarianism' is a Protestant vice. However, for the sake of accuracy, it should be noted that it happened prior to the Second Vatican Council.

[SteveF]

Amongst his many other idiotic opinions, he is also (gasp) a young earth creationist. Clearly not a man of great sense.

[Gavin]

The whole narrative of post-Good Friday Agreement history in Northern Ireland has been to congratulate the architects of sectarian conflict for finally coming around to some semblance of rationality after years (or decades in Paisley's case) of sabotaging those of their own 'side' who attempted to reach a compromise settlement. This applies just as much to republicans as unionists - can you imagine the reaction of Adams or McGuinness in 1972 if you'd told them their ultimate interpretation of Provisional IRA objectives would see them sitting at Stormont as ministers of the Crown after embracing 'the unionist veto' on Irish unification?

[Normal mouth]

A more condemnatory appraisal of Ian Paisley’s legacy than most politicians are prepared to advance on the occasion of his announced departure from high office is to be welcomed. Alas, this assessment conforms rigidly to the pre-deal British centre-left stereotype of the DUP leader as obstacle to the inevitability of a united Ireland. Worse, it mystifyingly blends tangential Christian theological debate into the ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland.

Paisley’s legacy for the whole of Northern Ireland is complex. It is straightforwardly ignorant to suggest that he merely inherited a deal assembled by David Trimble. I recall a cab ride in Belfast a few years ago in which the ardently unionist driver spent much of the journey animatedly excoriating Trimble and the UUP’s betrayal and acquiescence to republicans. When I asked what he felt at the prospect of Paisley doing a deal in Trimble’s stead I was told unequivocally that if “the Doc” felt it was the right thing to do then it must be so. Moving a community in a direction that makes them uneasy can only be done by someone capable of drawing on a vast well of popular goodwill. Only Paisley could bring unionism into government with Sinn Féin and make it stick.

His legacy for unionism, together with that of the UUP’s leadership, is less ambivalent. Collectively, if not together, they have led their community into the wilderness.

[David Duff]

Well, in appraising Paisley's political profit and loss account, it is worth reminding ourselves that on the debit side he appears once to have turned a blind eye to a BBC reporter receiving "a few digs" (to which, had I been there, I *might* have been tempted to shout "Give him one for me!"), however, unlike his fellow leaders of the new, er, 'peace' regime he was never responsible for blowing the arms and legs off innocent people including children. That makes a rather an enormous entry onto the credit side, I feel.

On that particular subject, Oliver, I can never quite understand your enthusiasm for the recent dishing out of death and destruction aimed at removing Milosovic, permanently, but your apparent equanimity when faced with a bunch of nationalistic murdering thugs running a province of our own country.