The rise and rise of Ian Paisley

Submitted by Anon on 7 April, 2007 - 11:40

By Paddy Dollard

A news item about a small event of great symbolic importance appeared in the Irish Times the other day.

The long-time enemy of everything Papist, Republican, or Catholic Nationalist Irish, Ian Paisley, has ordered five cotton clerical shirts (£30 each) from a shirt-maker in the Republic of Ireland, in Donegal. A sign of the times?

The agreement made on 26 March to form a joint Six Counties government by Paisleyites and Provisional Sinn Fein, the communal polar opposites of Northern Ireland politics for the better part of four decades, was expected. It was also surprising enough that the first initiative in common, a joint letter on the trivial matter of reclaiming some offices from Northern Ireland minister Peter Hain, was itself a major news item.

A new Six Counties government will take over in Belfast on 8 May, with Ian Paisley as First Minister and Martin McGuinness, one-time Chief of Staff of the IRA, as his “deputy” (in fact co-equal).

Will the new government be able to function effectively, or, with the Paisleyites, will it be a matter of “you can take the horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”? Politics under the present Six Counties system will on both sides be a continuation by other means of the long communal war. Each will seek advantage for “its own” and their areas.

The system of bureaucratised and intricately structured sectarianism in Northern Ireland can not but perpetuate the communalism which already dominates there.

The theory is that it will work because for the Paisleyites the alternative, joint direct rule from London and Dublin, is far worse. The odds are that, even so, it won’t work; that communalist rivalries will wreck it.

Yet it may work. The new government will take office in part of an Ireland in which the last decade has brought startling changes.

For the 50 years of Protestant-sectarian rule in Northern Ireland (up to March 1972, when the old Belfast Home Rule parliament was scrapped by Britain), and for years after that, the South, the 26 Counties Republic, was an agrarian backwater.

Now the 26 Counties and its “Celtic Tiger” economy is one of the richest in Europe. Rich enough, after 150 years of the mass export of its people, to import and exploit low-waged foreign workers. It is in a position to offer financial help to the new Northern Ireland government.

One of the arguments against the unification of Ireland now being bandied about is that the Republic could not afford the subsidies Northern Ireland would need after a British withdrawal if its living standards were not to plummet drastically. In the 20 years before Northern Ireland broke down in a Catholic revolt against Protestant-sectarian rule, in 1968-9, it had been widely believed that the disparity between the benefits of the British welfare state in the North, and poverty in Southern Ireland, had reconciled Northern Ireland's Catholics to partition. Now the disparity assumed to work against a united Ireland is the other way round,

The idea that Catholics would soon be a majority in Northern Ireland as a result of natural increase helped persuade the Provisionals to call off their war in 1994. That was never certain; and anyway, it will take more than a mere Catholic majority of the population to create a majority in Northern Ireland for reunification. A recent poll showed that 20% of Catholics do not want unity with the Republic.

The distance the Provisionals have travelled to arrive where they are now has been much commented on. But Ian Paisley’s journey has been no less spectacular.

He began as a Savonarola of the Northern Ireland Protestants, scourging the Protestant-Unionist Establishment for its feeble conciliationist gestures towards the Catholics. He pitted himself against that Establishment, and roused the Unionist working class against them.

He helped destroy the careers of a successive of Unionist leaders, the latest being his predecessor as First Minister, David Trimble.

The old Unionist Establishment is shattered beyond repair. And Paisley, at the age of 81, is indeed, as he claims, “leader of the Ulster [Protestant] people”... and First Minister for all the people of Northern Ireland, in coalition with Sinn Fein!

The all-Ireland “frame” in which the Northern Ireland drama unfolds has been radically altered, and therefore the outcome is less predictable. The communalist forces that will work to rupture the DUP/ Sinn Fein coalition, however, remain very strong.

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.