The Reverend Ian Paisley, the Great Defender of Irish Protestants, Had Died

The Reverend Ian Paisley has died. He was 88. Ian Paisley was THE voice of a Protestant Northern Ireland (Ulster) battling to save itself - from the 1960s until he became the major instrument for bringing peace to the terrorist-ridden UK province in 2005-07. Paisley was the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party for 40 years, a member of the Ulster parliament, a member of the British Parliament (winning with greater vote percentages than anyone ever), a member of the European Parliament, and the Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland for 50 years. Former British Prime Minister John Major, who was himself instrumental in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, said of Paisley : "From a position where he was suspicious of every movement towards peace, he came to embrace it, and served as the first First Minister of Northern Ireland. It was a remarkable journey by a remarkable man for whom I had great admiration and respect." ~~~~~ I met Ian Paisley and heard him speak several times when I was a student in Belfast in the mid-60s. He was a towering man physically, with a voice that surely rattled the gates of Heaven when he spoke. As another commentator said today, Ian Paisley never needed a microphone to make himself heard. He was both loved and reviled. But it is certain that without his ability to unite Protestant UK-affiliated Northern Ireland during the ascendancy of the terrorist IRA, and the correlative British attempt to solve the Ulster "Troubles" by devolving power to interfere in Ulster governmental decisions to the Southern Irish (Eire) government, in the last half of the 20th century, the Protestant Ulster majority would have been driven out of Northern Ireland and the IRA would have made it their fief to be used for the launching of a sustained guerrilla attack on Eire - southern Catholic Ireland, which had outlawed the IRA and driven them underground into Counties Clare and Mayo, from where they launched their bloody campaign against the Protestants of Ulster. ~~~~~ Dear readers, sometimes, critically needed leaders are controversial because the just cause they represent seems exaggerated, although fundamentally necessary. Ian Paisley was such a leader. He was determined that the Protestant majoriry of Northern Ireland would not be kowed into fleeing their homeland of 300 years by the terrorist IRA that was equally determined that firebombs and broken kneecaps and neighborhood vigilante-ism of the most violent kind would beat the Protestants into submission. Paisley's clear response at every rally was : "Never. Never. Never." I can still hear his booming voice shout those all-encompassing words over the cheers of the crowds. But, when Britain and more moderate Northern Ireland politicians showed that peace was possible, Paisley joined the movement and surprised them all by winning enough seats in the new parliament to form a coalition that elected him First Minister. When asked how he could work with Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA led by Gerry Adams and Michael McGinness, Ian Paisley said, with never a further word of explanation : "That was then. This is now. And tomorrow will be different." Along with Eamon de Valera - whose leadership both freed Ireland from Great Britain and agreed to the partition of Ireland into Eire and Ulster that forced the Protestant Irish into an Ulster enclave - the remarkable man who was Ian Paisley wrote his name and leadership and moral values large in Ireland's history. May he rest in peace. He richly deserves it.