Good riddance to that ranting, bilious Pied Piper of the North
Independent.ie
Sunday March 09 2008
Eilis O’Hanlon finds it ironic that those who refuse to pay tribute to Ian Paisley are being pilloried as unforgiving
It’s a common misconception that the Romans provided special places where diners could go and make themselves sick in between each course of a meal. In fact, the so-called vomitoria were for another, altogether less revolting purpose, but there are certainly times when such facilities would be much in demand. Such as last week, when the tributes to the Reverend Ian Paisley began pouring in following the 81-year-old’s announcement of his retirement.
For Bertie Ahern, Northern Ireland’s First Minster was a “giant” of Irish history — fee fi fo fum, indeed — who had “sincerely done what he believed was right”. Former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Paul Murphy, described him as a “man of great honour”.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown surpassed his own capacity for talking total rot by declaring that the DUP leader’s “commitment and dedication to public service deserve our gratitude”. There was something in there about Paisley’s “immense courage” too, though by that stage most observers were surely feeling too nauseous to notice. Gerry Adams even said Paisley would be remembered “fondly”. In the same way as the bubonic plague, presumably.
There were notable exceptions to the oozing treacle of tributes. Alliance Party leader, David Ford, was not going to make a fool of himself by pretending that the life of a man who had dedicated himself to systematically dynamiting the values of compromise in which the Alliance Party believed, could now be rewritten as a feelgood fairy tale.
But the exceptions were exceptional precisely because they were exceptions. Most of the political and media comment was of such a sunny positivity that it made Balamory look like a work of Bergmanesque gloom by comparison.
That politicians would peddle this sycophantic guff on the retirement of one of their own is not very surprising. They all want the same meaningless tributes when they bow out. They’re giving in order that they might one day receive. So when Adams says Paisley will be remembered “fondly”, what he means is that he hopes he will be too — that the poems and the peacemaking will loom larger in our memories than his early work with the Belfast Brigade.
History, thankfully, is not as gullible as politicians might wish. The myth which the tasteless tributes to Paisley are perpetuating is that one halfway decent decision in the last act of a man’s life can redeem all the rest. It’s a Hollywood cliche: the villain who turns hero right at the end and thereby makes amends for all the bad that went before.
If only it were that simple. Just because Paisley agreed to share power with his traditional enemies at the end of his political career, the previous decades spent sowing hatred and bigotry are not suddenly made all right. Quite the opposite, it could be said, in his case. The only reason Paisley mellowed in his 80s was because he had finally manouevred and schemed and bullied his way into a position where he and his ilk would dominate the political institutions which were being established.
He stopped because he got what he wanted. Where’s the great nobility of heart in that? All bullies can be pacified if you give in to them, just as all violent extremists are “sincerely” doing what they “believed was right”. Sinn Fein’s “conversion” to democracy was on exactly the same terms.
Seen like that, the new shiny devolved Northern Ireland Assembly is not proof of their good will, but a symbol of their refusal to give an inch until their hunger was fed. What preceded this Assembly, it should be remembered, was not some terrible tyranny but a previous Assembly dominated by the centre ground SDLP and Ulster Unionists. Sinn Fein and the DUP connived to banjax that because it wasn’t under their thumb.
Gordon Brown might say that deserves our collective gratitude, but if he honestly believes it then he is living in a bigger fantasy world than Harry Potter.
It’s how people behave when they don’t get what they want which marks out their character. Judged on that basis, it’s no wonder Sinn Fein and the DUP now get along so famously — because what they share in common is that, whenever people said no to them, they could always be relied upon to respond abominably.
For half a century, Paisley’s contribution to civil life in Ulster has been malignant and malevolent. His rhetoric was deliberately inflammatory. His actions were designed always to make rapprochement impossible. People died by the score because of his words. When he wasn’t actively consorting with sinister masked men with guns, he was spurring more of the same on with bile spewed from the pulpit and the hustings.
Paisley thrived by bringing out the very worst, most un-Christian, qualities in those who followed him — their heightened sense of pride and grievance and sectarian resentment; their indifference to the sufferings of anyone who wasn’t part of their Orange tribe.
Here is the ultimate irony. For almost his entire life, Paisley was a vile caricature of a man of God whose contribution to life in Northern Ireland was overwhelmingly negative. His words made people unhappy and afraid, and they were right to be afraid. Because of him, Ulster’s agonies were massively more painful to bear and harder to end than they ever needed to be. But now it is those who refuse to join in with the disgusting tributes to the hateful old monster who are pilloried as hard-hearted and unforgiving. Apparently we are now the problem, and saints Paisley and Adams are the answer to Ulster’s prayers! Orwell couldn’t have devised a more damning perversion of truth and language than that.
Well, so be it. As the big man said: No surrunder. Ian Paisley was a repulsive individual, and nothing, nothing, nothing will ever make amends for it. Especially not the absurd sub-Ruritanian pantomime that is the Northern Ireland Assembly.
That’s not Paisley’s real legacy, anyway. His ultimate legacy is the condition of the Protestant working class in the North who followed this ranting Pied Piper down a cul de sac for 40-plus years and are only now realising there is no way out and no going back. While Catholics were using the North’s peerless education system to clamber out of poverty and overcome discrimination by their own efforts, forging a whole new confident and successful middle class, Protestants were being corralled by their own leaders into a ghetto from which it looks sometimes as though they will never emerge.
These are Ian Paisley’s people. This is what he did for them. Truly, is there no beginning to the man’s achievements? That they still regard him so warmly, or think that they owe him anything except a collective “thanks for nothing”, is their tragedy.
