Paisley: Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland

310 Pages·2009·1.52 MB·English

by  Steve Bruce

PAISLEY
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PAISLEY
Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland
STEVE BRUCE
1
3
GreatClarendonStreet,Oxfordox26dp
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ISBN978-0-19-928102-2
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Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements xi
ListofAbbreviations xiii
ListofTables xv
1. UlsterProtestants 1
2. EarlyYears 22
3. OntheMargins 69
4. ComingtoPower 94
5. ChurchEstablished 135
6. ChurchandParty 174
7. PaisleyandTrouble 209
8. WithGodonhisSide 246
Appendix 267
Index 285
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Preface
This is the second time I have written at length about the Right
HonourableIanRichardKylePaisleyMP,MLA.Afewwordsexplain-
ing how the Wrst book—God Save Ulster!—came to be written and
how this diVers from its predecessor might help the reader judge it.
Much of my early work was a product of frustration with British
social science in the 1970s. I have a very clear recollection, as an
undergraduateatStirlingUniversity,ofoneofmysociologylecturers
advancing an evolutionary view of human development in which
religion and nationalism, such powerful forces in the past, had
been displaced in the modern world by social class. That was a
widely held view, even among those who were not committed to
the Marxist version of that story (and there were plenty who were).
Thesentimentsandromanticloyaltiesthatdrovesimplerpeoplehad
beensupersededbymaterialinterests.AlthoughIhadnomorethan
a few impressions on which to base my reservations, I was sure
that my social theory teacher was wrong. Although not personally
religious, I was fascinated by religion and, after a Wrst degree that
combined religious studies and sociology, I wrote a doctoral thesis
in the sociology of religion. When my supervisor, Roy Wallis, was
appointed to the chair of sociology at The Queen’s University of
Belfast,Ifollowed,andunderhisguidanceIdevelopedtwointerests.
InonestrandofworkItriedtoexplainthedeclineofreligioninmost
modern industrial societies over the twentieth century. In the other
I studied examples of the enduring salience of religious ideas and
identities.AndlivingroundthecornerfromIanPaisley’schurchon
theRavenhill Roadin BelfastIhadaprimeexamplewithinwalking
distance.
Through a happy accident I became known to some of the staV
of the BBC in Northern Ireland and in 1984 I was commissioned to
researchaWlmbiographyofPaisley.Iimaginedthatitwouldbelargely
a matter of reading the oYcial histories of the Free Presbyterian
ChurchofUlster(FPCU)andtheDemocraticUnionistParty(DUP),
andWndingafewrepresentativesofchurchandpartytoaddpersonal
viii Preface
colourtothestory.IdiscoveredthattherewasnooYcialhistoryand
little or no serious commentary and was forced to collect my own
primary material. Arranging Wlming brought me into contact with
Dr Paisley and his colleagues, whom I discovered to be quite happy
to talk about their movement to anyone who took the trouble to
understandtheirreligiousbeliefs.OnceIhadmadetheWlm,itseemed
sensible to continue the research in order to Wll a signiWcant gap in
our knowledge of the conXict in Northern Ireland, and in 1986 God
SaveUlster:TheReligionandPoliticsofPaisleyismwaspublished.
DrPaisleyandhisassociateshaveproducedaconsiderableamount
of documentary material. The Revivalist appeared as the oYcial
organ of the FPCU fairly regularly from 1951 to the 1980s and
since then there has been Truth for Youth. Since the mid-1960s
the Protestant Telegraph (replaced for a time by the Voice of Ulster)
hasactedasarecordofthepoliticalcampaigningarmofPaisleyism.
Almost complete sets of these publications were made available to
me by Free Presbyterians and by the Linenhall Library, whose
staVwereextremelyhelpful.Iwasabletocollectsomesimpleinfor-
mation about the ministers and their congregation from a brief
questionnaire. Twenty-seven FPCU ministers were interviewed and
I interviewed Dr Paisley on a number of occasions. Over a period
of two years I attended many church services and other religious
meetings.Leadingpartyactivistswereinterviewedatlength.During
the course of the research there was the 1984 European Parliament
election and the 1986 Westminster by-elections and I was able to
talk to many DUP activists during those campaigns. Although few
opinion poll datawere directly cited in God Save Ulster! I beneWted
greatly from the survey work done by my colleagues at Queen’s
UniversityandfromaccessviatheBBCtocommercialpolls.
Fourthingspersuadedmetowriteafollow-uptoGodSaveUlster!
First, and most obviously, a lot has happened in Northern Ireland
since 1986. In the 1990s the major terrorist organizations called a
halt to the most disruptive of their activities; with considerable
assistance from the USA, the British and Irish governments crafted
apoliticalsettlementthat,atthetimeofwriting,hasnotfullytaken
hold but still seems set fair to produce a long-term solution to the
Ulster crisis; Sinn Fein displaced the Social Democratic and Labour
Preface ix
Party (SDLP) as the main voice of northern nationalism; and the
DUPovertooktheUlsterUnionistParty(UUP).
A second stimulus was the publication of a large amount of
biographical material. Partly as a result of many of the protagonists
reaching old age and partly because the ceaseWres have radically
changed the climate, a large number of biographies and autobiog-
raphiesthatcastnewlightontheTroubleshavebeenproduced.
Thirdly, and this explains much of the diVerence in emphasis be-
tweenthisbookandGodSaveUlster!,whatisinterestingaboutPaisley-
ismhasbeenmarkedlyalteredbyachangeinrealworldandachange
in opinion. The real change was the rise of what is loosely called
‘fundamentalism’.ThesuccessoftheNewChristianRightinAmerica
brought Protestant fundamentalism to the fore. And changes in the
Muslim world made us all familiar with Islamic fundamentalist or
‘Islamist’movements. Increasingawarenessof whata realjihadlooks
like made me much more aware of the relatively constrained nature
of Paisleyism. As I have learnt more about the character of such
theocracies as that imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the
AyatollahsinIran(andintendedbytheMuslimBrothersinEgyptor
Hizbollah in Lebanon), the liberal critiques of Paisleyism that were
commonplace in the 1980s have come to seem hysterical. Dennis
Cooke,forexample,entitledhisbiographyofPaisleyPersecutingZeal.
Compared with the ecumenical Protestant’s desire for greater inter-
churchcooperation,Paisley’sunkindlycriticalopinionsofCatholicism
(and of his Protestant rivals) might seem ‘persecuting’, but, when
compared with the Islamic jihadi view that defection from the true
faithofIslamshouldbepunishedbyexecution,Paisleyismappearsina
verydiVerentlight:NaggingZealwouldhavebeenamoreappropriate
title.MyviewsofPaisleyismhavealsobeenchangedbymyincreasing
knowledge of the loyalist paramilitary world with which Paisley is
(mistakenly) associated by his critics. After God Save Ulster! I spent
manyyearscultivatingparamilitarycontactsandeventuallywroteThe
RedHand:ProtestantParamilitariesinNorthernIreland.Thechanging
realitieshavealsobroughtachangeinperceptionsthathasmadesome
ofmy1986concernssomewhatredundant.InwritingGodSaveUlster!
I felt obliged to stress the impact of Paisley’s religion on his politics
because so many people then shared the view of my inadvertently
inspiring social theory teacher: that religion did not matter. Twenty