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Ian Paisley

1926–2014

 

Since the middle of the 1960s, the bulky figure of Ian Kyle Paisley has dominated the politics of Northern Ireland, causing concern in both Britain and America, as his fiery rhetoric has contributed to the dangerous situation there.  But Paisley's opinions are not his alone.  He represents the culmination of a long tradition of Presbyterian independence, and his religious views are widely shared all over the world.

      He was born in Armagh on 6th April 1926, the son of the Rev. J. Kyle Paisley, a Baptist minister who had been a member of Carson's Ulster Volunteers in 1912.  But as his name suggests his cultural connections are with Scotland and the United Kingdom.  It is these connections he has worked much of his life to maintain.

      When he was two his family moved to Ballymena, where he was reared on the vivid prose and sensational illustrations of Foxe's Book of Martyrs.  He was educated at Ballymena Model School, Ballymena Technical High School, and the South Wales Bible College in the Rhondda Valley.  His further studies were at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological College in Belfast, though his honorary doctorate in divinity came from the Bob Jones University in America, in 1966.

      He was ordained a minister of the Free Presbyterian Church in 1946, and was elected its moderator in 1951.  Since 1946, his own ministry has been at the Martyrs Memorial Free Presbyterian Church at Ravenhill in Belfast, which he erected.  He is also a director of the Protestant Telegraph (founded in 1966), a newspaper which expounds his views, and president of a local Bible college.  He is married to Eileen Emily Cassells, and has twin sons and three daughters (one of whom, Rhonda, has written a warmly affectionate account of him as a family man).

      As befits his public life, Paisley is interested in history (who in Ireland is not?) and in collecting antiquarian books, especially of religious interest.  'One of the worst contributions that the other media have made is to take people away from the art, the pleasure, and the gain of literature,' he told his daughter.  He is also, surprisingly, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society - as a boy he had ambitions to be a sea captain.  He is a humorous and jovial man - though not all his fellow citizens would appreciate him calling his pet collie 'Bishop'.

      His political career only started in the mid-1950s in answer to, he claimed, 'the call of the people'.  He founded the Ulster Protestant Volunteers - harking back in title to the heady days of Ulster revolt before the First World War in the summer of 1914.  He was imprisoned twice for his street politics, once in 1966 and again in 1969.  This activity was all before the present renewed IRA campaign.  His street-corner speeches were one of the factors that contributed to the real sense of fear felt by besieged Catholic communities in Belfast and Derry, and to which the Provisional IRA was an initial response.

      In due course Paisley was elected to Stormont, as the Northern Ireland Assembly was called, and campaigned for the assembly to be restored after it was suspended by the British government following the imposition of direct rule on the troubled province by Westminister, in 1972.  He was elected to the United Kingdom Parliament in 1970 as the MP for North Antrim, a largely rural and agricultural area with strong conservative traditions.

      His original political vehicle had been the Protestant Unionist party, but in 1974 he and other leaders came together to create the Ulster Democratic Unionist party, which he still leads today.  He was re-elected as a member of the European Parliament in 1979, a post he still retains.  He is the highest polling politician in Northern Ireland, but in the fractured politics of Ulster he still represents a minority view.  Among his own constituency, he wins over 50 per cent of the votes.

      He made a symbolic resignation from his North Antrim seat in 1985 as a protest over the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which has been the basis for what political progress has been made.  He saw the agreement as a step towards a united Ireland, which allowed the government of Ireland a say in the affairs of a portion of the United Kingdom.  In reality, the government and people of Ireland no longer have ambitions for a united Ireland; what they want is peace, and are fearful that the turmoil of Northern Ireland could be imported into the south.  However, the government of Ireland is bound to give support to the nationalists in the north.  Paisley was re-elected to the seat in 1986.  Talks on the future of Northern Ireland proved inconclusive in 1991, but since then, largely through the work of many others, affairs have moved on to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.  But Ian Paisley remains firmly committed to the maintenance of the union, so the road ahead will still be a rocky one.  Paisley and his party remain determined to undermine the Northern Ireland Assembly.

      As a local MP, Ian Paisley has a good reputation, and in Westminster he works hard to obtain all that he can for his own constituents, and for Ulster in the councils of Europe.  In this area he does not regard people's religion.  Nevertheless, belonging as he does to the extreme wing of Presbyterianism, he still believes that Roman Catholics are damned to perdition, that the pope in Rome is the Antichrist spoken of by St John the Divine, and that only through the retention of the union can the Protestant faith of Ulster be retained.  For him, personal and religious freedom are intertwined.

      For Ian Paisley, salvation is a gift, and only Christ can mediate between God and man.  This places him in opposition not only to the majority of Irish people, but to the majority in Britain.  Nevertheless, his views are those espoused by many millions across the United States.  Just as Irish nationalism has found rooted support in the cities of the north, so Ian Paisley finds support in parts of Canada and all across the southern states.

      Though presented as an ogre by the media, to many who meet him or hear him preach he expresses the fundamental truth.  He has carried into his politics the sense of personal witness he feels in his religion.  That courage has made him one of the most powerfully influential men in Irish history.