OPINION:Many aspects of Iris Robinson's behaviour are unsavoury but biblical banishment of her is out of order
THERE IS abomination at the house of Robinson, and it is fortunate for Ulster’s first couple that most of us are less inclined to reach for the Old Testament than they are. Iris Robinson called on her harsh God when she vilified homosexuals last year after a gay man had been beaten up by homophobes.
The same Lord’s wrath was undoubtedly kindled when she lay down with young Kirk, and she knows only too well what Deuteronomy and Leviticus would have with her ilk. Left to their mercy, she would, in short, perish, and perish horribly.
Iris the adultress has duly torn her hair and rent her garments; she has put on the sackcloth and ashes; and wept. Her repentance has been lavish, if selective. We have not actually seen the woman whose behaviour has sparked the North’s latest crisis since December. She spoke, then, ashen-faced and wild-eyed, about her depression, the cost, she said, of “the . . . strain of public life”.
That life, the life of the woman who was a councillor, an MP and an MLA, is over. The DUP’s elders have murmured in their tents, and have decreed that she is to be banished. There have been reports that she is to retreat to the luxury ski resort to which Elin Nordregren went recently also after laying into renegade husband Tiger Woods with a golf club. Other reports suggest she is in hospital. Her husband says she is incoherent and too ill to face the questions he agrees she must answer.
In the homes of the sterner type of Ulster Protestant, every father is God the father. Peter Robinson, obliged to make up for the guffaws in office of his old boss, Paisley, by never smiling as First Minister, has always in any case seemed cold as one of the carp he breeds in the pond in his back garden. But he conducted his broken-man interview last week with a “Dad, I will always have you to look up to” plaque behind his head. He said he had contemplated ending his marriage last March after his wife admitted her “inappropriate relationship” but then he reflected on the years when she had loyally stood by him. Yes, Iris was there when he returned from the raid on Clontibret, and when he donned the red beret of Ulster Resistance. How nostalgic he must be now for the days when she could tell an interviewer that she was “just a simple housewife”. He still loved her, he said, and had forgiven her.
It was impossible not to feel pity for the Robinsons during that excruciating interview, and it was shocking to learn that Iris Robinson had attempted suicide. It was perfectly clear, though, that the Robinsons had come out about their anguish because BBC Northern Ireland was about to show its Spotlight documentary.
Iris Robinson the politician had all the DUP’s most unattractive traits, including prefacing all her sneery putdowns with the phrase, “I’m not going to take any lectures . . .” She was no feminist. However, it still came as a shock when Darragh MacIntyre’s excellent Spotlight programme presented the portrait of a powerful woman behaving like the worst sort of man.
Spotlight revealed that Mrs Robinson had known Kirk McCambley since he was a nine- year-old child working in his father’s butchers shop . She had been very close to his father. Before he died, he asked her to look after his boy. She did so with a vengeance. She must have cut a glamourous figure, with her big hair and designer clothes, sweeping into Ballyhackamore in her convertible.
The Robinson’s had long cultivated image as Lord and Lady Castlereagh, though they were less pleased to be dubbed the Swish Family Robinson. Their combined earnings as multi-jobbing politicians with no inhibitions about expenses claims, amounted to about half a million pounds a year.
But Spotlight showed that Iris abused her high office in setting her protege up in business. And, a demeaning detail, she gave him serious cheques, and allegedly demanded a cut in cash for herself.
Thus beholden to her, and 40 years her junior, the young man was hardly on an equal footing with this mature married woman. It has been well noted that sensible 18-year-old girls hesitate to get involved with typical 19-year-old boys because they so often patently lack maturity. On the evidence of his contributions to Spotlight, this boy was a classic case. Iris Robinson had raised three children to adulthood. She described Kirk as being like another son. Her sexual behaviour towards him can only be described as predatory.
If she was lavish when he was her lover, when the sexual relationship ended, Iris Robinson wanted her money back. She texted instructions from one of her homes, in Florida. One donor was dead, and had made his contribution as a gift. The other was to be repaid, as was God, with a large donation proposed to Iris Robinson’s church.
Her husband knew something of the financial mess at this stage, and tried to put it right – without declaring the wrongdoing to the authorities. He has disputed Spotlight’s presentation of him as callous for going to work the morning after his wife tried to kill herself, leaving others to get her to hospital. Afterwards, the Robinsons resumed their role as Ulster’s first couple, smiling their crocodile smiles and doing what the DUP does best, obstructing political progress.
The DUP is trying to contain this, presenting it in hushed tones as a private tragedy. They’ve already seen the Paisley dynasty undermined by questions about money. The fallen woman says that Jesus has forgiven her. Her husband seems less sure now that he will stand by his woman. She has been cast out, but the party of preference for the “holier than thou” is in deep trouble. Meanwhile Kirk, now 21, is still selling cappuccinos on the banks of the Lagan, while gay magazines want to turn him into a pin-up. Coocooachoo, Mrs Robinson.
Susan McKay is director of the National Women’s Council of Ireland