The Real Ian Paisley

 In today’s world people cannot say in public comments that are likely to incite racial hatred, prejudice or other inducements for hate and violence, and for reasons that are understandable. Yet for over sixty years one man did these things, Ian Paisley, and that for most of his 88 years on this Island he preached hatred with impunity, unaccountability, and wide support within the confines of a gerrymandering majority in a country where they were the minority, and that was the Ulster Unionists. Here It was not black man against white man, nor Muslim against Christian, but Christian against Christian and Irishman against Irishman; and when Paisley finally did the only decent thing in his life, which was to leave this mortal coil, everyone lauded him as a man of peace and not the political grim reaper who finally gave way against the tide of a new world that all but threatened to drown Ulster Unionism within the borders of the EU, and the borderless countries within it.

That clergyman of hate encouraged murder that became murder, encouraged prejudice that became prejudice, for he was the vile speaking leader and cleric that Unionists looked up to like mindless sheep walking in unison to the sound of the goose steps of Nazi’s driven by cloned brains where their own individual thoughts drowned within the chorus of the mob without dissent or reflection. That reflection would come in Ireland only when they knew the game was up just before and after Ian Paisley did and not one minute later than needed.

He once said about the ‘other’ Irishmen that shared the same island as him that they breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin. That was in 1969 and he was not a young man then trying to find himself but one aged 43 years old. He would get worse with age. By the 1970’s and 80’s we were classed as sodomites and line dancing was sinful and an incitement to lust (He actually sounded like an old Catholic there) This was his lighter moments. He also believed that terrorists only came from the south of the country yet classed himself and unionists as cool, determined loyalists to the crown who would never surrender. He shielded and defended at will the alphabet soup of all loyalist terror groups in Northern Ireland under that umbrella of ‘no surrender’ to make sure that their determination would endure, and it did for another hobbling, blood splattered time, that was in the end running out of road without direction. Many Loyalist paramilitaries said that they would never have become involved in violence had they not been inspired by the hate-filled rants of Ian Paisley, and by that they meant they murdered in his name.

It was Paisley’s ego that delayed the inevitable for his ego was bigger than a united Ireland long before it could ever hope to be one. Much like George Wallace, the 1960’s rabid racist  Governor of Alabama, and a man for both their times, changed only when forced to but were one and the same person in every other extreme.

Paisley once said “Never, never, never” to a United Ireland and to any kind of political compromise, as Wallace said “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”  When only the world itself had passed them by and it became political expedient for both, Paisley said that he would never deny that he was an Irishman, while Wallace said that though he looked like a white man he was as black as anyone in the room, a room full of black people.

What was missing from both these racial and religious bigots was the moral backbone and strength to stand up against the mob when it was needed most. What united them both too was that they themselves became part of the mob that fueled it all.

When the political hand wring and crocodiles tears stop flowing for Ian Paisley, his life time legacy of hate will far outweigh his feigned dotage in his last years as little more than his attempt to have history give him a lasting epitaph as a man of peace than the murdering, war mongering bigot that he really was.

Barry Clifford