ANALYSIS: Paisley put a lifetime of political sabotage behind him to share power with Sinn Féin, writes Gerry Moriarty
FROM DEMAGOGUE to democrat, from the Pope as antichrist to meeting the current archbishop of Armagh, from smash Sinn Féin to sharing power with Martin McGuinness, Ian Paisley has travelled a huge political, personal and religious journey.
He was always a huge figure. For much of his 45-year political career he was a destructive figure, a wrecker of opportunities for peace. But love him or loathe him, he was a unique force in British-Irish politics, his saving grace his humour. When yesterday evening he announced he was standing down after May there was a sense that politics will never again be as exciting or as interesting in Northern Ireland.
There was a symmetry indeed to Paisley and McGuinness sharing power because here were two people who many would argue were in many ways responsible for begetting and prolonging the Troubles.
For Dr Paisley there were many twists and turns arriving at this retirement point. He will be 82 on April 6th and will bow out a month later after the major economic conference in Belfast. He first came to prominence in 1951 when he started the Free Presbyterian Church, from which he had to resign as moderator late last year - a portent of what was to come politically.
But it was in 1963 that he made his first mark on the political stage, although here too there were religious connotations, when he led a protest against the lowering of the Union Jack over Belfast City Hall to mark the death of Pope John XXIII.
There were many such stunts throughout his career, regular references to the "antichrist" in Rome, to "old red socks" and sometimes worse. Fundamentalist followers lapped it up. The more bigoted the bile, the better they loved his bellowing rants.
Many republicans claimed he served as a recruiting sergeant for the IRA by his diatribes against Catholicism and nationalism. In 1964 he demanded that the Irish Tricolour be removed from republican offices in west Belfast, triggering a confrontation between nationalists and the RUC that led to serious rioting.
When then Fianna Fáil taoiseach Seán Lemass visited Stormont prime minister Terence O'Neill in 1965 he railed against O'Neill's treachery and threw snowballs at Lemass.
Many loyalists said they wished they had never heard Paisley's words, suggesting his oratory, while not overtly advocating violence, had triggered the lust in them to join paramilitary groups.
O'Neill wanted to bring in anodyne reforms in the 1960s to conciliate Catholics but Paisley said "no", as he continued to say up to March last year. Such reform, had it been implemented, might have satisfied the civil rights lobby, and averted the gathering storm. But Paisley said "O'Neill Must Go" and O'Neill went.
As the civil rights movement was overtaken by the Troubles and the Provisional IRA, Paisley and his "no surrender" politics flourished. He was elected to North Antrim in 1970, a seat he continues to hold, while the following year he formed the Democratic Unionist Party to challenge "Big House Unionism".
The powersharing Sunningdale Agreement of 1973 and the Sunningdale Executive of early 1974 offered a second great opportunity for peace. But with Paisley leading the political opposition, and the UDA and UVF loyalist paramilitary opposition, and the IRA also ratcheting up the violence, it too was wrecked.
Paisley's career followed the now firmly established path of stunts and protests and bombast that included protests against the visits of Pope John Paul to Ireland in 1979 and subsequently to Britain. In 1988 he was ejected from the European Parliament after barracking the Pope.
There was a sinister side too when in 1981 he paraded 500 men up a hill brandishing gun licences, and when the same year he promoted a Third Force to protect loyalists. There was also Ulster Resistance in 1986 and its opposition to the Anglo Irish Agreement of 1985 but Paisley and the DUP quickly distanced themselves from the organisation when it was linked to major loyalist arms smuggling in 1988.
Into the 1990s and the IRA and loyalist ceasefires of 1994 his talk regularly was of "sell-out" and "treachery" and warnings of "civil war". He featured too in the early Drumcree days, stirring up the Orange and loyalist protesters but denying incitement.
He attacked David Trimble as ferociously as he assailed previous Ulster Unionist Party leaders such as James Molyneaux whom he had dubbed a "Judas Iscariot". He saw the peace process as a charade and briefly appeared humbled when the 1998 Belfast Agreement was endorsed by over 70 per cent of the electorate.
But, and this was the first real sign that down the line Paisley might do a deal, when the first Northern Executive was formed under Trimble and Séamus Mallon he appointed as ministers Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds, although they would not sit with Sinn Féin on the executive.
As Trimble stumbled from one crisis to the next, Paisley continued to cause trouble for him while yet remaining within the political system. In 2003 the DUP finally eclipsed the UUP as the dominant unionist party, reinforcing that success in the Westminster poll two years later.
Finally top of the unionist heap the two governments scented that Paisley might do a deal that involved Sinn Féin, but only with IRA decommissioning and Sinn Féin support for policing. Paisley managed to force republicans to make these moves, creating the conditions for Paisley to take his place as First Minister in May beside Martin McGuinness.
For Paisley to conclude his career in a peaceful Northern Ireland, albeit with many challenges ahead, has to be seen as a success. To bring the DUP from political pariah to unionist kingpins is another achievement, which could not have happened without him. Peter Robinson, his likely successor, has the pragmatism but Paisley had the colossal force of personality to finally bend unionism and Northern politics to his will.