NORTHERN IRELAND ELECTION: ANTRIM NORTH PROFILE:In this constituency the poll is also a vote on powersharing with Sinn Féin – and on the DUP
MAUD NICHOLL (aged 100) stands bright, fresh and ramrod straight outside her house in the little hamlet of Woodgreen, a couple of miles south of Ballymena in North Antrim, demanding that one of the canvassers bring the candidate Ian Paisley jnr to her door. She waits patiently.
She’ll be 101 in July, God willing, and she wants to assure Junior that having voted for his father Ian Paisley for 40 of those years, the ballot will be passing on to the next generation. “Oh, yes, I’ll be voting for you,” she says. She looks about 75.
“My father wants to live to 100,” says Ian jnr. “I don’t know if people could stick him that long.”
Earlier, in the little village of Ahoghill, about five miles from Ballymena, the chief rival, Jim Allister – leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice – is offering his opinion of the Paisleys, father and son. “I think people would like to see an end to the Paisley dynasty, and not to have it pass on to another flawed generation.”
Such a contrast in personality and style: Paisley, cock-of-the-walk, an impish swagger about him, a genial manner; Jim Allister, the QC, grim, straight-shooter, single-minded opposition to Sinn Féin, determined to do damage.
Jim is accompanied by former Paisleyites Sammy Gaston and Roy Gillespie – two former DUP local councillors who have switched to the TUV, and Roy’s wife, Ruby. No flies on Ruby, she has a good memory.
“You were the big fellow who was outside the Galgorm hotel, aren’t you?” she says, eyes raised a little suspiciously. That was a reference to her previous appearance in The Irish Times two years ago, when she and Roy were the lone protesters against former taoiseach Bertie Ahern opening the Galgorm Resort in Ballymena with then first minister Dr Paisley.
Just as then, she was still “heart-broken” that the man she followed “for 40 years” had done a deal with Sinn Féin. Now she is an Allister devotee.
On this canvass in Ahoghill, two middle-aged brothers are taking a break from working on a front garden in The Croft housing estate.
They’re chatting over a low wall with a female neighbour, also middle-aged. “You’re welcome in this village,” she shouts as she spots Jim Allister entering the estate.
"I am not a hardcore loyalist, so I'm not," the woman says to the brothers for the benefit of The Irish Timesafter the candidate moves on into the estate. They nod in agreement. "But it killed me, it killed me, that Ian Paisley went into government with Sinn Féin, after saying for 40 years that he would never do such a thing."
The brother who has come to help his sibling with the garden is of like mind; he’ll be voting Allister but his brother is more inclined to stick with the Paisleys. The visiting brother warns that there’ll be “no more help” in the garden for him if he keeps talking like that.
Allister, of course a former DUP man himself, says this sense of betrayal is where he is getting purchase. “It hurts a lot of people very deeply, because Ian Paisley was someone that folk really believed in, almost to the point of worshipping him, which was wrong in itself. But then when someone who they have pedestalled so much lets them down, they fall a very long way, and people are feeling a lot of hurt out of that.”
The Ulster Unionists-Tories, an independent unionist, an SDLP man, a Sinn Féiner and an Alliance woman are running in the North Antrim constituency as well, but the focus is totally on Paisley versus Allister.
Allister has threatened Paisley jnr with a libel action over the content of the DUP man’s election literature, with Junior responding that he’ll take the judgment of the people of North Antrim, and if it ends up in court he’ll take his chances with a jury of “12 good men and women and true”.
Allister agrees the poll in North Antrim is also a vote on powersharing with Sinn Féin, on the DUP, on the Belfast Agreement, the St Andrews Agreement, and everything else that has Martin McGuinness sitting at the top table at Stormont, first with Ian Paisley (the Da), and now with Peter Robinson.
People are happy with those new arrangements, says Junior.
“There is too much hatred in what Jim Allister has to offer. He offers no sane, credible political alternative, apart from unionism condemned to perpetual opposition.”
“You’ll get no vote here,” says the woman in Woodgreen to Paisley. Then she gives him a big hug, belying her words. There’s a lovely beige-coloured goat in the field beside the house.
“What happened the white goat?” asks Paisley. “Turned it into a Lambeg drum, didn’t you? That’s what they do with goats in North Antrim. You see them one week, then they’re gone.” They hoot with laughter. “Does your sister still love me?” he jokes. “Oh, you’ll get her vote too,” she tells him.
A few doors down, a man in his 60s worries that “England may drop” Northern Ireland altogether and that there’s too much talk of Dublin. “What we have to do is limit and restrict Dublin’s role,” says Paisley.
“That QC is not very cunning,” offers the man. “He wants to bring us back to the days of yore, but it’s not going to happen.” A younger man in the hamlet makes a similar unbidden comment on Allister. “He’s going back in time rather than going forward.”
Regardless, Allister will take something out of this election – a probable Assembly seat next year and maybe a stronger foundation for his party, because there are some unionist people here who still hark to the days of yore.
But he’ll hardly take a seat at Westminster. Junior is cheeky enough to ask directly for votes next Thursday, rather than be oblique about it. “No problem,” is the almost invariable answer.
Maybe they are all consummate liars in North Antrim, but that’s the way it seems for Ian jnr – no problem.