Ian Paisley: a Critical Comment

Neil Southern

Issue 394, vol.99, Summer 2010

However, the last leader of South Africa’s racial oligarchy was pointing at an important aspect of deeply divided societies generally: stated simply, there is no single truth in relation to which one community can be judged to be completely right and the other absolutely wrong – matters are far more complicated and complex (of course, at a sub-community level it is likely that there will be groups whose particular advocacy and use of violence will make the apportioning of moral condemnation a less complicated affair). If we are prepared to accept that there are various ‘truths’ grounded in communal perceptions, then this should have an important effect: it ought to encourage an openness in us to consider more seriously – but not uncritically – the perspective of the Other and perhaps ponder more fairly upon the historical circumstances within which attitudes and opinions are formed. There is an appropriate translation of De Klerk’s point to the lives of prominent and high profile individuals in divided societies and it is specifically in this context that our critical assessment of the career of Ian Paisley will be conducted.

At the outset, the article acknowledges the divisiveness of Paisleyism and this is a premise from which the analyses of a number of commentators operate (Marrinan, 1973; Moloney and Pollak, 1986; Cooke, 1996). Others, most notably, Steve Bruce (1986; 2007) view Paisley less harshly. Indeed, in Bruce’s most recent work, he spends a considerable amount of time dissociating Paisley from those individuals and groups that were prepared to engage in acts of physical violence. While Bruce is not incorrect, it nevertheless could be said that he goes a little easy on Paisley and fails to provide a rigorous assessment of the powerful influence of Paisley on a Protestant community that had an inbuilt sense of constitutional anxiety. Insecurity is a feature of the Protestant community that Paisley has been able to tap into, ideologically. 

Early Protests

Paisley’s propensity to behave in a manner that promoted division was institutionally detectable when he formed the Free Presbyterian Church (FPC) in 1951 and regularly proclaimed his anti-Catholicism and anti-ecumenism in the pages of the Church’s periodical - The Revivalist. In 1966 he blended this religious anti-Catholicism with a vitriolic condemnation of Terence O’Neill’s liberal unionism and used The Protestant Telegraph for purposes of spreading a message that contained severe warnings about what the future was likely to hold for Ulster Protestants if matters were not turned around. Of course, it is one thing to write about your concerns, but something quite different to use them for mobilising people at the level of street protest. Yet, this is specifically what Paisley did. For example, he opposed the lowering of the Union flag over Belfast city hall in 1963 following the death of Pope John XXIII. His protestations and threat that, should the police fail to do so, he and his supporters would remove an Irish Tricolour which had been placed in the Sinn Fein electoral office in Belfast’s Divis Street in 1964, led to violent confrontations between nationalists in the area and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). In 1965 he was present in the grounds of Stormont to throw snowballs at the car carrying Taoiseach Sean Lemass, who had been invited by O’Neill in an attempt to improve relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Although the act was not devoid of a degree of humour, it nonetheless had a symbolic dimension that was less pleasant. Against a background of increasing protest and communal strife in 1966, Paisley was imprisoned in Crumlin Road jail on a public order charge. However, Paisley’s involvement in street demonstrations became more provocative when he decided to hold counter-demonstrations at locations where the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) had arranged for their marches to take place. Paisley ended up in jail once again when, in 1969, he led an illegal march in the city of Armagh to counter an NICRA march taking place at the same time. Further, in terms of the attack by loyalists on the People’s Democracy march at Burntollet in January 1969, the Cameron Commission had this to say about Paisley’s comments and actions:

The presence of Dr. Paisley and Major Bunting in Londonderry on the preceding evening was no accidental coincidence but deliberate, and in the mind of any intelligent person - and of Dr. Paisley’s intelligence, experience and capacity there is no doubt - such a meeting as he called on such an occasion would in all probability provoke sectarian reaction with consequent risk of riot. This, as could have been expected, is precisely what happened, and the political temperature for the following day was thereby considerably heightened. [1]

Evidently, the Commission refused to accept that Paisley was unaware of the possible negative consequences of his behaviour, especially in a city that had witnessed such unrest only a few months previous. The Scarman Tribunal, which investigated the causes of the civil disorder that marked much of 1969, also made reference to Paisley and stated:

Dr Paisley's spoken words were always powerful and must have frequently appeared to some as provocative: his newspaper was such that its style and substance were likely to rouse the enthusiasm of his supporters and the fury of his opponents. We are satisfied that Dr Paisley's role in the events under review was fundamentally similar to that of the political leaders on the other side of the sectarian divide. While his speeches and writings must have been one of the many factors increasing tension in 1969, he neither plotted nor organised the disorders under review and there is no evidence that he was a party to any of the acts of violence investigated by us. [2]

This Report makes clear that there was no evidence to connect Paisley to the many acts of physical violence which occurred, but it does make a link of sorts between the climate of sectarian tension during this period and his writings and speeches. Significantly, it claims that Paisley made an ideological contribution to the cauldron of competing ideas that were circulating in different quarters of the Protestant community. What this brief account of Paisley’s 1960s endeavours tells us is that he was very publically active before the Troubles erupted in 1969.

Anti-Catholicism and Protestant Fears

The public character of Paisley’s anti-Catholicism continued, notwithstanding the fact that the Troubles had inflicted severe wounds on Protestant and Roman Catholic alike and highlighted the deep-seated nature of the province’s ethnic divisions. Most notably, in 1988 Paisley loudly denounced Pope John Paul II and brandished posters on which were written ‘Pope John Paul II – Antichrist’ in no less significant a venue than the European Parliament. On this occasion, context was everything. It was one thing for Paisley to denounce Roman Catholicism in The Revivalist or from the pulpit of Martyrs’ Memorial Free Presbyterian Church in staunchly Protestant East Belfast, but something significantly different to stand in the parliament as the politician who had received the most votes from the Protestants of Northern Ireland. Yet, this point allows for an important claim to be made with regard to the political support that the Protestant community has given Ian Paisley. It would be wrong to think that Protestants supported Paisley because of his anti-Catholicism. On a political measure, this can be observed in the fact that the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) always beat Paisley’s DUP in Westminster elections until 2005. But there is another way of viewing the matter: if Protestants had have been motivated by the same kind of intemperate anti-Catholicism, then many more should have flocked to his FPC than the relatively small number that did. This point actually informs us about the lack of appeal that Paisley’s anti-Roman Catholic rhetoric had for the vast majority of religiously-minded Protestants (and there are many of them in Northern Ireland). Indeed, even for those of the evangelical variety, who would certainly share Paisley’s ‘born again’ understanding of the Christian life and biblical serious-mindedness, there was no attempt to take up membership of the FPC – Paisley could neither herd them in nor persuade them to join his fold. His movement did, of course, grow, but to no greater a number than between 12,000 – 15,000.

In the main, Protestants voted for Paisley because they harboured grave concerns. These concerns gravitated around the core issue viz. the constitutional future of Northern Ireland. For Protestants there existed four serious threats: firstly, the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland in Articles 2 and 3 claimed that it had rightful jurisdiction over Northern Ireland; secondly, a large Roman Catholic minority existed within the state, whose emotional allegiance lay across the Border; thirdly, the IRA posed a dangerous internal threat to the province’s security, as confirmed in the organisation’s 1956-1962 campaign; finally, Protestants always questioned the depth of British government commitment to Northern Ireland’s membership of the United Kingdom. Paisley knew that the combination of these factors was politically exploitable and the conditions, from Paisley’s perspective, which prevailed with O’Neill’s easy-going unionism, the ecumenical position of the mainstream Protestant dominations and the rise of the Civil Rights movement, provided him with the opportunity to spearhead a political assault. With his success in the North Antrim constituency in 1970, which catapulted him into British parliamentary politics and the formation of the DUP in 1971, he had created a foundation that would eventually bear fruit in 2005 with his decisive defeat of the UUP.

Paisley never has had time for loyalist paramilitary violence, which he has denounced repeatedly. But he demonstrated a preparedness to mobilise members of the Protestant community in a way that was potentially more menacing than the street demonstrations he was involved in before the outbreak of the Troubles. This, for example, was the case in 1981, when Paisley announced the creation of the Third Force and a number of journalists witnessed its members brandishing legally held firearm certificates, and again, in 1986, when both he and Peter Robinson became involved in Ulster Resistance (a short-lived affair which ended in 1988, when security forces discovered Ulster Resistance berets along with a cache of illegal weapons - Paisley and Robinson quickly cut ties with the organisation).

Paisley did not consider this sort of behaviour to be theologically out-of-step with his religious beliefs. In terms of justifying his actions Paisley points to the militancy of the Old Testament as well as the example of historical Protestantism (Southern, 2005). Historically speaking, although the earlier works of Martin Luther and John Calvin advocate Christian passivity and submission to the political authority of the day, when there was an attempt to restore religious conformity by force Protestant clerics – especially those who shared the disposition of John Knox - were quite prepared to conduct a theological re-think and advocate the right of resistance by force of arms (see Skinner, 1978). This theological and historical lens was used by Paisley to look at Northern Ireland during the conflict and led him to believe that, should the British government’s security policy collapse (and Paisley always believed it to be ineffective in tackling republican terrorism), then Protestants had the right physically to defend themselves. Whether there was more to Paisley on the use of physical force than the blustering rhetoric we will never know. The IRA did increase their level of violence to its height in 1972, with the intention of forcing a British withdrawal (O’Brien, 1999). However, there was no breakdown in law and order and the security services were able to prevent the kind of escalation in violence necessary to spark off a civil war.

The above paragraphs outline how Paisley has been a divisive force in Northern Ireland. But, at the beginning of this article, it was pointed out that it is helpful to adopt a spirit of critical openness, especially when dealing with divided societies. This is the kind of openness that is willing to recognise that Paisley is a product of the centuries-old divisions between Protestant and Roman Catholic and a product of a unionist tradition that has always been resolutely unwilling to divest itself of its Britishness, thus thwarting the realisation of Irish nationalism’s political vision. So, while it is correct that Paisley should take responsibility for the ways in which he allowed these divisions to be played out in his life (and its influential capacity on other Protestants), Paisley remains a product of a problematic environment within which operate multiple ‘truths’. This is likely to be challenging for many readers whose image of Paisley, quite understandably in the light of his comments and behaviour over the years, is one of uncompromising ultra-unionism and militant Protestantism.

It should be borne in mind that, although there is a religious and political aggressiveness to Paisleyism, it is also a reaction to real threats, as well as those which are regarded as posing a serious threat to the well-being of Protestant unionists. For instance, the IRA bombing campaigns in Northern Ireland and England in 1939 and 1940 or its militant assault on the Northern Irish state between the years 1956 and 1962 (during which six RUC officers were murdered) would have happened with or without Paisley on the scene. The same is true of IRA violence between 1969 and 1994 (now continued by republican dissident groups) because, ultimately, such violence is sourced in republican ideology and not Paisley’s rants or boisterous behaviour.

It is important to appreciate that from Paisley’s perspective, his anti-Catholicism – although having a basis in his interpretation of scripture – also arose within a social context. On this point the work of John Fulton (1991) is relevant. He argues that, if we are to understand properly the problematics of inter-religious relations in Northern Ireland and Protestant perspectives on Roman Catholicism, it is necessary to accept that religious developments on the other side of the Border (even before partition) have had an impact on Protestants. For Fulton, Irish Catholicism was theologically, socially and politically monopolistic. For example, the Vatican decree Ne Temere (1907), which confirmed that in the case of a mixed marriage the Protestant partner had to sign a form confirming that all children would be raised Roman Catholic, fuelled the fear that the Roman Catholic Church was authoritarian and intolerant of Protestantism. It also implied that Protestantism had theological flaws and that it was the Church’s view that these flaws should be prevented from being transmitted to the children of a mixed marriage. Paisley was nearing his teenage years when De Valera’s 1937 Constitution paid homage to Roman Catholic moral teaching with regards to the topics of divorce, contraception and abortion and also stated that the Roman Catholic Church had a special place in the state. This seemed to confirm and justify the concerns that Paisley’s father and grandfather would have had and which were encapsulated in the phrase: ‘Home Rule is Rome Rule’. It is interesting that, in the post-settlement era, a senior member of the Ulster Volunteer Force in his explanation of the loyalist tradition in Northern Ireland thought it crucial to write:

The policies of … the Irish Republic under Eamon de Valera proved that the fears of Ulster Unionists were well founded. Until recently the cry “Home Rule is Rome Rule” was a fair reflection of the confessional nature of both the Irish Constitution and Irish Politics. (Mitchell, 2002)

These factors cannot be severed from a critical, but fair, inquiry into the causal factors in the rise of Paisley and Paisleyism.

The Pragmatic Politician

Thus far this discussion would surely seem to be at odds with the more recent developments within Paisleyism, which culminated in Paisley’s decision to sit down in government – not with the constitutional SDLP, which had always denounced violence and had been the governmental partner of David Trimble and the UUP – but with a party that was the political front of an organisation that advocated the destruction of the Northern Ireland state by force. Additionally, Paisley would take up the position of First Minister as Martin McGuinness (whose biography differed significantly from that of Seamus Mallon) took on the role of Deputy First Minister notwithstanding the fact that he was a self-confessed commander of the IRA. Undoubtedly, this was challenging for Paisley. Let us now consider the reasons which best explain what many people would have thought to be impossible steps for Paisley to take. In so doing, and regardless of the degree of reluctance or distaste that may have accompanied Paisley’s every step on the way to sitting in government with Sinn Fein, it is possible to place him within the context of the Northern Ireland peace process – and in this respect he deserves at least some level of recognition.

To begin, Paisley is an intelligent politician. His goal was always to become what Clifford Smyth (1987) refers to as the ‘voice of Protestant Ulster’. Setting to one side the role of Paisley’s personality in attracting votes during European elections, at a party level, it took his DUP a long time to become the dominant force within unionism: the success did not come in the 1970s, ‘80s or ‘90s. It was only by virtue of a combination of the IRA’s tardiness in addressing the issue of decommissioning and making clear that its war was over, Paisley’s perpetual confidence-destroying verbal assaults on the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), and widespread Protestant alienation and disenchantment in the post-settlement period (McKay, 2000; Southern, 2007) that the DUP ended up in the driving seat of unionist politics. Paisley had announced his anti-agreement approach early. This culminated in his decision to leave (along with the United Kingdom Unionist Party of Robert McCartney) the multi-party talks chaired by Senator George Mitchell (see Mitchell, 1999) which sought a political agreement between the forces of unionism and nationalism. It was a gamble that did not pay a direct dividend, because the Belfast Agreement was negotiated in Paisley’s absence. Although it is thought that the unionist ‘Yes’ vote for the Agreement was carried by a small majority, it was enough to give the political side of the peace process (which accompanied the paramilitary side in terms of the ceasefires) the support it needed.

Further, in the parliamentary elections and district council elections in 2001, the UUP came out on top, indicating that a sufficient number of unionist voters were willing to continue to give Trimble and his party their support. But the signs were there that electoral backing for the UUP was slipping and in 2003 the DUP defeated the UUP in the Assembly elections. In the 2005 Westminster elections the DUP thrashed the UUP, whose parliamentary membership dropped from ten in 1997 to an ignominious one (Lady Sylvia Herman in North Down).

Paisley had been successful, but his success was set within the parameters of the Belfast Agreement – after all, the DUP had been working within the new political structures that the Agreement had established. Unionist supremacy would, however, enable Paisley to put pressure on Sinn Fein and the IRA about decommissioning. Paisley and the DUP were naturally less accommodating and flexible than Trimble and the UUP towards Sinn Fein. If nothing else, the debacle over weapons, which had played a crucial part in rupturing unionist confidence in Trimble’s leadership, was something of which Paisley intended not to fall foul. It was not surprising, then, that, a few months after the DUP’s euphoric victory in the Westminster elections in 2005, the IRA declared an end to its war and this was followed up with decommissioning. But, all said, Paisley had resigned himself to the fact that he would have to work within the framework of the Agreement and this eventually occurred in 2007.

A significant factor in Paisley’s eventual acceptance of working with Sinn Fein in government was his claim to be a democrat. He simply could not ignore the mandate afforded to Sinn Fein by nationalist voters. At best, participation with Sinn Fein in government could be delayed, but not prevented. It would have been much easier to have sat down with the SDLP in government, but, painfully for Paisley, this was not to be. This highlighted a tension between the religious and political sides of Paisley – worse for the fundamentalist who prefers the black-and-white moral world that politics simply does not offer. Paisley’s gut religious instinct would have been to have nothing to do with Sinn Fein. It is worth pointing out that, in the religious sphere, the Belfast Agreement did not cause a rethink within Free Presbyterianism in relation to its attitude toward the ecumenical movement and the Roman Catholic Church (although the DUP did meet with a delegation from the Catholic Church in 2006, which helped send out the message that it was not the case that the party was uninterested in reaching out to the Roman Catholic/nationalist community). However, democracy had tied Paisley’s hands. If Catholics decided to vote for Sinn Fein in sufficient numbers to furnish the party with the right to sit in government, then Paisley would have to accept the inevitable.

Political developments were such that Paisley could claim that his decision to participate in the government of Northern Ireland had been made easier by virtue of crucial moves on the part of Sinn Fein. Chiefly, Sinn Fein had to accept democratic principles, support law and order, and sign up to policing – and this the party voted to do in January 2007. Hence, while Paisley had to countenance power-sharing, Sinn Fein had to take crucial steps if there was to be any chance of a coalition government being formed involving them and the DUP. Essentially, Paisley could say that the steps taken by republicans created the opportunity for the government of Northern Ireland to be resuscitated after the collapse of the institutions in October 2002. Interestingly, in an interview with David Frost in March 2008, Paisley was prepared to recognise the progressive moves made by the republican movement. All said, this constituted a political give-and-take that few would have thought Paisley capable of (it is also true that few would have anticipated such developments taking place within the ranks of Sinn Fein and the IRA).

Die-Hard Fundamentalists

However, if Paisley deserves to be acknowledged for his contribution to post-Agreement conflict transformation then perhaps it is worth paying attention to the die-hard fundamentalists in the FPC, who were unhappy with the direction that the DUP ended up taking vis-à-vis Sinn Fein. The following comment by Rev Ivan Foster makes clear the depth of infuriation that existed within certain quarters of Free Presbyterianism and which Paisley had to confront:

What a great evil has been done by the DUP in aiding the advance of that devilish organisation through its coalition with Sinn Fein/IRA. For the basest of reasons the DUP has convinced itself and its supporters that righteous-ness was being served by its forming a coalition with Sinn Fein/IRA and thus elevating this murder-machine into government. The temporary gains of the DUP through its sordid arrangement with Sinn Fein/IRA are undoubtedly of the same ilk as the thirty pieces of silver obtained by Judas for the selling of the Saviour. Peerages and large salaries and "high faluting" titles shrink into nothingness when the evil consequences of the iniquitous deal entered into by the DUP are fully calculated (Foster, 2007)

It is not without a touch of irony that Foster’s comment reflects the kind of ideological aversion and antagonism so often found in the pages of The Revivalist and The Protestant Telegraph, when Roman Catholicism was in the firing line. Now the condemnatory assault is to be read on The Burning Bush website which is dedicated to the ‘exposition of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the application of its truths to the lives of people in this age of ecumenical apostasy and resurgent Romanism’ (Foster, 2010). Political prestige and personal gain are argued to have clouded the judgment of the DUP (which includes many Free Presbyterians). Without labouring on the point, Foster’s attack on the DUP informs us that, although a split in the church did not occur, Paisley did not have an easy ride within the FPC with respect to entering into government with Sinn Fein. This fact also tells us that ministers and members of the FPC are not simply robotic and blind followers who are overwhelmed by Paisley’s charismatic authority.

Conclusion

This article has attempted to account for the divisive aspects of Paisleyism. Since 1951 and the creation of the Free Presbyterian Church, it is unquestionably the case that Protestants have been influenced by his verbal attacks on the Roman Catholic Church, which, at a perceptual level, makes it difficult to dissociate easily the institution from those who attend it. When spoken in an environment which, at best, experiences sectarianism lurking just beneath the surface, Roman Catholics can quickly be reduced to ‘Taigs’ (in the same way that Protestants can be reduced to ‘Huns’ and ‘Orangies’). Indeed, given Paisley’s tireless offensive against Roman Catholicism for more than half a century, perhaps Protestants should ponder a moment upon how they might have responded to a Roman Catholic cleric who was invigorated by an anti-Protestantism similar to Paisley’s anti-Catholicism. It is also worth considering the kind of impact this may have had on inter-communal relations in Northern Ireland.

This article has tried to put Paisley and Paisleyism in context. Like the Protestant and unionist tradition to which he belongs, Paisley believed that Irish Catholicism was, as John Fulton claims, monopolistic in matters social and political as well as theological. Therefore, if we are to be open and fair minded in our analysis of Paisleyism, it needs to be accepted that many of the guarded characteristics of Northern Irish Protestantism have been fashioned, in part, by developments across the Border. However, despite the rhetoric and the powerful denunciation of the Roman Catholic Church and republicanism, when it came to the crunch and Sinn Fein and the IRA had taken historic steps in the direction of: firstly, acknowledging the existence of Northern Ireland: secondly, accepting the current reality of Northern Ireland’s membership of the Union, and thirdly, the unionist veto (in the form of the ‘consent principle’ to constitutional change in Northern Ireland which for the foreseeable future will be pro-Union) Paisley was not found wanting. By taking the DUP into government with Sinn Fein, Paisley demonstrated his preparedness to rise to the political side of the ongoing – and challenging - conflict transformation process in Northern Ireland. While this certainly does not make him a classic peace-builder, his recent actions nevertheless allow him to qualify as a peace-contributor.

Neil Southern is currently a Facilitator on a Peace III transition and community peace-building programme based in Northern Ireland

References:

Bruce, S. (1986)
God Save Ulster!: the Religion and Politics of Paisleyism, (Oxford: Clarendon)

Bruce, S. (2007)
Paisley: Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland, (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

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Persecuting Zeal: a Portrait of Ian Paisley, (Dingle: Brandon)

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The Last Trek - a New Beginning, (Basingstoke: Macmillan)

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The Burning Bush available online from http://www.ivanfoster.net/ accessed 14^th April 2010

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Making Peace (Berkeley: University of California Press)

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‘Militant Protestantism: an Analysis of the Theology of Political Resistance and its Impact on Northern Ireland’, Religion, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp.65-77

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‘Protestant Alienation: a Political, Cultural and Geographical Examination’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 33, No.1, pp.159-180

Notes:

[1]     Cameron Report (1969) available online from http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/cameron.htm 2 April 2010 assessed 3 April 2010

[2]     Scarman Tribunal (1972) available online from  http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/scarman.htm#3 accessed 3 April 2010