Despite Ian Paisley belatedly converting to compromise, his career was built on belligerent intransigence
THE OLD master of verbal abuse chose a good moment for yet another farewell, with London still chit-chatting about the thunderous tirades of Gordon Brown. Punished car-seats, and an aide traumatised by an arm swung dismissively, pale against the legend of Ian Paisley, who has made people shiver for half a century without ever raising a hand in anger. His son may well hold on to the North Antrim Westminster seat, benefiting one last time from bearing the legend’s name.
The senior Paisley made it impossible for anyone else to lead unionism by sheer invective, coupled, until the last five years or so, with lifelong dedication to inflaming passions against any compromise with nationalists. The voice did it, plus his physical size. And the dread, or if you were an admirer, the delight, of knowing that he might say absolutely anything that came into his head to mock or belittle.
Hence the gibe at Brian Cowen’s “thick” lips: the result, Paisley announced with that ferocious grin, of having had them nailed to the floor by his exasperated mother. “If you were a fly, Mr Thompson, I’d swat you against the wall” – that was delivered where Paisley tended always to be most excitable, from an election count, his eyes at their biggest, leaning into the camera towards the BBC interviewer who irreverently noted that his vote was now only fourth-highest in the North.
Diatribes from the pulpit had the flavour of curses, the prerogative of a man of God with a church of his own. So when Margaret Thatcher signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement in November 1985, he preached: “We hand her over to the devil that she might learn not to blaspheme. O God, we pray this night that Thou wouldst deal with the prime minister of our country. O God in wrath take vengeance upon this wicked, treacherous, lying woman.”
The last unionist prime minister Brian Faulkner died after a fall from a horse. Paisley told his congregation that Eileen Paisley had rebuked him for praying that God would punish Faulkner for “losing” the Stormont parliament. “She said that was an awful prayer. But Brian Faulkner is no more. And it was outside a Free Presbyterian’s home that he died, the man that said I was a doctor of demons. The mills of God grind slow, but they grind exceedingly small.”
The European Parliament was “the Roman Catholic whorehouse”, though God then told him to go to Strasbourg and “sit among a lot of frog-eaters and snail-mongers”.
But the mildest disrespect towards himself has always outraged him. When he lost weight and for a time the fabled memory and articulacy failed, he was infuriated by comment that at last his age was showing.
“David Trimble said that Anno Domini had caught up with Ian Paisley. I would not say that about my worst enemy. I did not like it for my grandchildren. It hurt me. They started asking: ‘Is Papa dying?’ But it is not true.” He had hounded Trimble from office – but Trimble was cruel to say he was old.
Unionists always excused insults towards republicans, who were after all hurling bombs and bullets. Many relished Paisley’s graphic denunciation of IRA murders and godfathers, while blinking when he – and the leaders of supposedly moderate unionism – sat with loyalist paramilitaries at the height of their murder campaigns to run the Workers’ Strike.
Then, seemingly overnight, Paisley became the father of the nation, beaming goodwill at Martin McGuinness, once the IRA’s chief of staff. Paisley’s people are still struggling to catch up with the transformation: his party gave him a scant year as first minister.
After a period of silence, he has allowed himself several swipes at his successor, urging Peter Robinson to devolve policing, scoffing at Robinson’s boast of a “clever device” to ensure Sinn Féin compliance. Some saw the belated announcement this week that he will not stand in the next election as more hostility, timed to secure the nomination for Ian jnr, whom Robinson does not love.
Not that the father has always treated his son with respect. Standing side by side at the count after an Assembly election seven years ago, he mocked the campaign suggestion that Junior might pull in more first preferences. Only a Paisley could defeat a Paisley, he grinned at his son: “but you hadn’t an earthly”.
Farewells famously warp the record. Gordon Brown has paid tribute to Ian Paisley snr’s “long and courageous career in Westminster”. The late conversion is a marvel, but the benign old man is a new phenomenon. It might be his son’s strongest suit that he is a lesser figure who will do less harm. The father’s many talents, for much of his long life, were used to unworthy ends.