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| Ian Paisley in 1969 |
Growing up in the North, the very name became a byword for intolerance and intransigence. Such was the power of his personal brand, it was only when I was in my late teens that I began to accept that not everyone called "Ian" was a raving bigot.
Down South, and in England, even people who would have hated Republicans would still roll their eyes and sigh despairingly when the name of "Paisley" was mentioned. His name went before him, and "brand Paisley" was a name that conjured up the worst excesses of Biblical and pro-British bigotry in one thunderous, larger-than-life package.
And yet:
In a statement released today, Martin McGuinness, former IRA leader in Derry, said:
"I learned with deep regret and sadness of the death of former First Minister the Rev. Dr. Ian Paisley.
Over a number of decades we were political opponents and held very different views on many, many issues but the one thing we were absolutely united on was the principle that our people were better able to govern themselves than any British government.
I want to pay tribute to and comment on the work he did in the latter days of his political life in building agreement and leading unionism into a new accommodation with republicans and nationalists.
In the brief period that we worked together in the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister I developed a close working relationship with him which developed into a friendship, which despite our many differences lasted beyond his term in office. I want to send my sincere sympathy to his wife, Eileen, his children and extended family."
It's ironic - McGuinness, a man who was unelectable and vilified in the South of Ireland when he tried to run for President, was a regular and welcome guest at the Paisley home.
And, in relation to power sharing:
"Was there anyone else who could have carried it? I very much doubt that,'' said Bertie Ahern.
I'd agree with that. Within Unionism, Paisley was the only man with the authority to carry Unionism into power-sharing.
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| Paisley leads Loyalist paramiltaries in 1974 |
Famously, Paisley, a born leader, mentioned to McGuinness that "we don't need Englishmen coming over here telling us what to do". And Paisley was incapable of snobbery. At heart a working class countryman, it just wasn't in him. By contrast, Official Unionism's historic difficulties with Nationalists was part-political, part social distaste for what they termed the "lower orders". Never mind politics, they famously "didn't want a Catholic about the place" for reasons that had as much to do with empty-headed class snobbery.
It was Paisley's instinctive ability to get on with Taigs at a social level that, as with most of the facts and nuances North of the border, was rarely perceived or accepted by know-all pundits (such as bitter middle-class fools like Conor-Cruise O'Brien, who, ultimately, were revealed as not being nearly so prescient about the North as they thought they were); and it helps explain the readiness of his acceptance by Nationalists in recent times.
On the one hand, Paisley was the bigoted Bible-basher and "ignorant gulderer" who flirted openly with Loyalist paramilitaries when it suited his power plays (remember his "Third Force") and who was a one-man wrecking ball to progress (if the progress could in any way be argued to represent or even presage the dreaded "sell out").
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| Paisley leads "Ulster Says No" rally, late 1985 |
"WE SAY ... TO ... THE IRA ... TO MARGARET THATCHER ... TO MR. FITZGERALD ... NEVER! ... NEVER!! ... NEVER!!!"
At the third roared "never", the crowd went bananas, and I prayed I'd get home safe - Paisley was a peerless street-orator in the style of "Roaring Hanna" (1824-1892) and could manipulate a crowd like no-one I've ever seen. (I still remember the blokes collecting for the UVF with a hollow woman's leg out of a shop window with a fishnet stocking on it; and the undeniable excitement as the RUC baton-charged the crowd down a side street when things threatened to get out of hand - as the crowd surged, you found yourself being propelled along at a fair old clip, wedged in the crowd, with your feet not even touching the ground. Instinctively, you'd look around for something to throw ...)
The power he had over ordinary Unionists could hardly be over-stated. Had he gave the word, he could practically have unleashed full-scale genocidal mayhem at any moment.
On the other hand, if you studied him carefully, it was obvious enough that there was more to Paisley than his lurid public image would suggest. Above all, the famously-teetotal Paisley was a man with a huge thirst for power. I always had the sense that his public image was very calculated.
Paisley was Unionism's cartoon villain, but I've always felt that there were Unionists (e.g., Nigel Dodds, Jim Allister et al) who were bitter and twisted in ways that Paisley could never be. The main difference was that they were more "polished" and more inclined to mask their attitudes with the usual middle-class platitudes. One of the original civil rights marches in the late 1960s stemmed from an incident in Co. Tyrone when a public authority house was allocated to a single Unionist woman in preference to a Nationalist family with small children. In private, Paisley fumed at the discriminatory pettiness of the decision, but in public he roared that he'd "rather be British than fair". At the period, there weren't many votes in moderation or fairness.
Throughout his public life, while he loudly espoused the status-quo of the link to Britain and the British monarchy, it's important to remember that Paisley was a working-class outsider within Unionism. Unionism was ran by bigoted toffs. They had their own party and their own church, and the role of someone like Paisley would have been to turn up once a year at an Orange march and generally know his place in the rigid class-structures of Ulster Unionism.
Paisley was not a man to be told what to do by anyone though. Sensing that a rude country fellow like him would never progress very far within the Official Unionist Party, and instinctively un-suited to the stuffiness and euphemistic ecumenicism of established churches, Paisley bypassed the lot of them and founded both his own crazy, colourful church and his own energetic political party.
Initially, mainstream middle-class Unionists looked on him with contempt. He was seen as a yahoo and street gulderer who posed no threat to anyone. In reality, Paisley used his formidable street-preaching skills and undoubted charisma to devastating effect in the political arena. In a Unionist world where traditional Unionists sat in big houses and expected obeisance and deference from their followers, Paisley went out and grafted at street level to build up his own following. In a Unionist world where politics happened behind closed doors between well-educated blokes with funny accents, Paisley's crude, full-volume and frequently apocalyptic pronouncements about a London "sell-out" of the Union wrong-footed traditional Unionism completely. By positioning himself within Unionism as the only man to be trusted when dealing with perfidious Albion, and by working his socks off to build up his own street-level power base, Paisley the street-brawler and so-called buffoon ran rings around his so-called social superiors within Unionism.
Years later, Sir Reg Empey of the Official Unionists - traditionally the posh, or so-called "big house" Unionist party, remains bitter:
"I think that when we come to look back on all of this, the Paisley era over the last 40 years has been a catastrophe for unionism quite honestly ... He has divided every single unionist institution and every single Protestant institution. In everything he had to have his own outfit. At the end of the day I think his best plan should have been to concentrate on his considerable skills and abilities in the proclamation of the gospel rather than contaminating the message with politics."
This is all true in one sense; but Reg conveniently overlooks the fact that upper class Unionism, with its funny bowlers and Kipling-era BBC voices, presided over a rotten-borough political quagmire for 50 years until even the British lost patience with their egregious social mismanagement in 1972.
In a blog from a few years ago, I noted that:
"One of the encouraging developments of recent years has been the fall and fall of Big House Unionism in the North. The ingrained mindset of the party of Colonel Edward James Saunderson, Walter Long, Sir Edward Carson, Sir James Craig, John Miller Andrews, Sir Basil Brooke, Captain Terence O'Neill, Major James Chichester-Clark, Brian Faulkner, Harry West, James Molyneaux, David Trimble and Sir Reginald Empey is one of ingrained privilege, and of cynically fomenting and exploiting the dyamics of class-division within Unionism as a way of ensuring they carved up the loot and the power while the plebs were at each other's throats. Useless nabob followed useless nabob, every one with his head stuffed up his political arse (it accounts for the strangled, faux-Surrey accents), every one either more inept or more incapable of cross-community leadership than the one preceding them. "Born to rule", as they saw it, they simultaneously walked on Nationalists for most of a century (until even England pulled the plug on their rotten-borough incompetence, once it had become an international embarrassment for the British) while cynically keeping ordinary Unionists prodded into action (using a very long, and very Orange, barge pole) against the Nationalists.
Let us never forget that, while everyone else was relieved that the guns were starting to fall silent at last, it was none other than Molyneaux who wailed that the 1994 IRA ceasefire was the:
"most destabilising thing to happen to unionism since partition".
In other words, from an Establishment perspective, not only was there an "acceptable level of violence", there seemed to have been a necessary level of violence. If you ever doubted the vested interest of the posh elite of Big House Unionism in keeping the British-Ulster and Irish-Ulster plebs at each other's throats, there you have it. A frank admission from their top man.
The big House Ulster Unionists did not welcome progress; they feared and detested it. In their zero-sum mindset, every step towards power-sharing with the Taigs was a further eroding of their position as the people who owned and did what they damn well pleased with the North. Once they were pushed into a political stage that demanded "action"; all we had to do was sit back and watch as, under Trimble, they imploded under the weight of their own self-interest and bigotry.
In the past, Paisley was irresponsible. His reckless utterances, designed to boost his own power base by playing cynically on the fears of the ordinary Unionist (and therefore present himself as the only man fit to "save Ulster"), did little to normalise community relations in tense, murderous times.
That said, Paisley was never anywhere near as bigoted as he lets on (though try telling that to outsiders); and, instinctively, Paisley is on the side of the little person. Stories of his helping out Nationalist and Catholic constituents in disputes with local government bureaucrats are legion.
Paisley was a shrewd pragmatist who hung tough for a long time, but his formidable record as an out-and-out hardliner meant that he was able to carry doubters in his own community with him when there were hard choices to be made for unionism.
The contrast with the bumbling Trimble couldn't have been more stark. Trimble spoke the language of progress, yet stalled the political engine, time without number. He knew what he had to do, but his whole culture and upbringing rebelled against it."
Paradoxically, whilst loudly trumpeting his Britishness, Paisley's very distinctive brand of "Ulster Britishness" only served to alienate him from the average English person. A few years ago, when the DUP eclipsed the OUP in a general election, Paisley was being interviewed by the BBC. The line of questioning was not to his liking. Instead of retreating, Paisley grabbed the mike, launched into a tirade about "saving Ulster" and then proceeded to sing an Old Testament psalm of thanks. Result: journalist gobsmacked, not knowing what to say next; and an entire swathe of nicely secular middle England TV viewers bemused at the "Irish nutter" on their screens, possible reflecting that this certainly wouldn't happen in Sutton Coldfield!
In a previous incident from the 1970s, Paisley was being interviewed by some well-spoken wimp from RTÉ (the Irish state broadcaster). The guy probably asked Paisley a difficult question. Anyway, Paisley didn’t like the question, and chose to use his considerable size, volume and presence to bulldoze the question out of the way. He advanced on the cowed journalist, and, swaying over him, thrust his face into the journalist's face while bellowing: "Let me smell your breath". Of course, Paisley was just implying that clearly the guy must be drunk to be asking such a stupid question. However, this earthy approach to repartée was outside Mr D4-head's experience, and he retreated. Comical, crude, but very effective.
If you want to understand Paisley, the early 1980s biography by Ed Moloney, simply entitled "Paisley", is excellent. Neither fawning nor sensationalist, it is a fascinating study of an utterly extraordinary character (how many people start their own church and their own political party); and, I've always maintained, a fundamentally decent character.
Away from the cameras and away from the peanut gallery, there was always an earthy personal warmth about Paisley. Whereas there are numerous polite and socially-acceptable Unionist politicians who have the charisma of cardboard, Paisley just was good crack. I remember, at the height of the Troubles, Paisley went down to Dublin to appear on RTÉ's well-known chat show, the Late Late Show. (Paisley had no problems describing himself as "an Irishman".) The comedian Brendan Grace was also on the show and did a somewhat crude song involving various double-entendre references to bodily functions. At the time, it's doubtful whether many of Paisley's Unionist contemporaries would have "lowered" themselves even to appear on mere Irish TV, and they certainly would have maintained a terribly-British prim-ness in the face of such public bawdiness. In stark contrast, Paisley just threw back the big head and laughed like a drain. Although he hated alcohol (the "devil's buttermilk"), Paisley I suspect would have been a bloke you could have had a pint (of orange juice) with. By contrast, I'd rather have toothache than face the prospect of being stuck beside the likes of Dodds, Poots, Allister, Trimble, Robinson et al on a long bus journey.
Whether you agreed with him or not, you have to admit that, with his passing, local politics will be considerably quieter - and duller.
