Ian Paisley has been a formidable feature on the political landscape here for well over 40 years, and it is difficult to imagine the scene without him. I first encountered Paisley on the streets of Belfast in 1964: it was just after midnight and there had been a count at the City Hall after a by-election for a seat on the Belfast Corporation. An excited and jubilant crowd came running up May Street, carrying the largest Union Jack I have ever seen, before or since, and shouting and cheering in a loud and triumphant manner. In their midst, was a large figure in a belted white trench-coat, of the type favoured by IRA men in old Hollywood movies. Someone told me that the big man was the Rev. Ian Paisley, who had garnered some measure of notoriety a year or so earlier, when he led a march on the same City Hall in protest against the lowering of the flag on the municipal offices on the death of Pope John XXIII. Shortly afterwards, he was instrumental in occasioning riotous scenes on the Falls Road when he demanded that the RUC remove a Tricolour from a Sinn Féin office during the 1964 General Election.
The onset of the Civil Rights agitation in 1968 brought Paisley to the fore when he organised counter-demonstrations throughout the North in an attempt to halt Civil Rights marches and rallies. Many of these activities led to violent scenes, as Paisley's impassioned rhetoric branded the Civil Rights movements as a mixture of Republicanism, Romanism and subversion. Politics, national identity and religion are a heady mix, and no one knew better how to stir the pot moe effectively than Dr Paisley. He was a consummate orator of a type that is heard no more, with the exception of the Southern States of the USA where Dr Paisley achieved his doctorate at a college in South Carolina. Elected to Westminister, he astounded fellow members with his old-style rhetoric and eloquence. It took him some time to discover the difference between the back of a lorry and a television studio. His earlier television interviews were strident, but he soon learned how to master the medium and to adjust the level of his volume accordingly.
Paisley fought his crusade on two broad fronts: on the one hand he was resolute in his opposition to the traditional "enemies of Ulster" and, on the other, against the leaders of established Unionism, at one time an apparently impregnable monolith which had the monopoly of power in Northern Ireland for the first 50 years of its existence. One after another, the leaders of the Unionist Party were toppled: Terence O'Neill, James Chichester-Clark, Brian Faulkner, Harry West, James Molyneux, David Trimble.
Paisley founded his Democratic Unionist Party in 1971. The old Stormont system collapsed in 1972. The power-sharing Executive, negotiated at Sunningdale in December 1973, lasted a mere five months, brought down by a loyalist coalition in which Paisley played a prominent role. That consigned the North to a quarter of a century of direct rule.
Paisley topped the poll in the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979, as he continued to do up until his last candidature for the post in 1999. One of his posts in Europe was the chairmanship of a committee to further the welfare of Europe's small islands. It is one of those little ironies of history that on the day Paisley announced his intention to stand down as First Minister, there died a Jesuit priest, Fr Diarmuid O'Peicin, who championed the cause of Tory Island, which the Irish government of the day was seeking to entirely depopulate. Fr O'Peicin found no more staunch ally than Paisley. This was just another incidence of the enigma that is Ian Paisley. A man of no little charm, warmth and humour (albeit coarse and oafish at times), who was also capable of the most venomous of invective to further his aims.
He is said to be contemplating writing his memoirs. The book may, or may not, shed some light on his decision to retire from leadership after a year in the office of First Minister. And of why after a lifetime of negativity he decided to reach an accommodation with Irish nationalism. Some people say that the pressure exerted by Tony Blair, threatening greater involvement by the Irish Republic in Northern Ireland affairs, caused him to capitulate. The Paisley of former years would soon have told Blair where to stick his threats. Perhaps, the Doc, after so many years of saying No, wanted to secure a place in history as a statesman who finally achieved conciliation and stability in the North, where so many of his predecessors had failed. The fact that he was the principal cause of their failure seems to be beside the point. We may never know.
The architects of the St Andrew's Agreement, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, took the view that with Paisley on board, no fundamentalist forces could possibly outflank him. The result of the Dromore by-election suggests that there are more entrenched forces in Unionism today than Paisley, some of them within the party which he founded. It is still too early to say if the tectonic plates underlying Northern politics have begun to shift.
Paisley must be given credit for the belated steps he has taken. The great tragedy is that they were not taken years ago, so that many lives could have been spared during the political activity in the years since Sunningdale.
In evidence, the court heard that the proceedings had arisen out of a demonstration that had been held at the local railway station where a protest had been staged by commuters who were objecting to proposed increases in the cost of train fares to their place of work. One of the protesters had caused delay to the rail schedules by lying down in front of a train which was serving morning travellers, causing the vehicles to pull up abruptly. This was a dangerous and foolhardy thing to do, alleged the prosecution, no matter how strong feelings were. "This man," said the RM, "was laying his life on the line."
Pending renovations to the Seanad chamber, the senators in the Oireachtas are to be housed temporarily in the National History Museum in Dublin. They will be housed with the fossils, dinosaurs and stuffed animals.
A new American fruit juice, made from cranberries, is being advertised as "straight from the bog". As Bernard Shaw once observed, "Two nations divided by a common language."
Back in the last century, Irish Distillers was disappointed at the poor sales of Irish Mist liqueur in Germany. Then someone pointed out that, in German, 'Mist' means cow dung.
The mayor of a town in south-west France warned, "All persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish, owing to over-crowding of the cemetery. Offenders will be severely punished."
The Strule Arts Centre has recently hosted a recital by the Japanese pianist Young Chuan Park. Many people in Omagh think that Yun Chuan Park is a new housing estate for Chinese folk.
From 'The Tyrone Herald': "As (the defendant) is still within the probationary period for a newly qualified driver six penalty pints would automatically result in a disqualification."
