Paisley: A Life

The 8th May, 2007.

At Stormont in Northern Ireland, a process was under way

that few believed they would ever witness -

the end of one of the most brutal and intractable conflicts

in modern history.

At the centre of it all was the Reverend Ian Paisley,

a man who for more than 50 years

had been at the heart of Ireland's troubled history.

Demonstrations continually!

Praise God, we'll fight again.

For many, Paisley's deafening words of doom

had helped stoke some of its worst excesses.

Once and for all, to show the world where Ulster stands.

But now, Paisley was being feted by the British Prime Minister,

a former leader of the Provisional IRA and

the Prime Minister of Ireland,

a man whose hand he had, until then, refused to shake.

We saw him as a ranting preacher who was always shouting abuse

at everything to do with the South

and everybody else despised him absolutely.

For years, he'd denounced republicans

as terrorists and murderers.

The Troubles were started in Northern Ireland

by a deliberate republican conspiracy.

And said that even dealing with them

was the very worst form of treachery.

I suppose there was some degree of not knowing

whether or not we would hit it off sufficiently.

This was the final chapter

in one of the most controversial careers in British politics.

This has always been our stance.

Against all the odds,

the man known for decades as Dr No...

No surrender!

Never! Never!

..had just finally said yes.

At long last, we are starting upon the road...

Ian won't be the first figure in history

that has begun identified as one thing

and ended indentified as something completely different.

But the truth is that in the end,

when put in a position of leadership and given the chance to make peace,

he made it.

IAN PAISLEY: 'Lord, as this battle goes on,

'the forces of Popery and the forces of lying and slander rage,

'and the forces of false ecumenism

'that would lead us back to bondage.

'Stand fast in the liberty where Christ has made us free.

'God save Ulster and God Save the Queen.'

When Ian Paisley was born in 1926,

Northern Ireland was the United Kingdom's newest addition.

At the end of the Irish War of Independence,

Ireland had been split in two.

The new entity of Northern Ireland had a Protestant majority

wedded to the union with Britain and fervently opposed to

the overwhelmingly Catholic state in the South.

Paisley grew up in a very rural world

of deeply held religious beliefs and high church attendance.

His family were Protestant Unionists of the most zealous kind

whose lives were defined by the absolute authority of the Bible

and the need to be born again -

to be saved from the hellfire of eternal damnation.

This burning holiness of God...

'My grandfather got converted at the age of about 16.'

And he must have been a very powerful speaker,

because he went home, he cleared out his father's barn in Sixmilecross

and he started to preach.

And he converted his own father and mother. He converted his sister.

He then converted his neighbours.

Paisley was one of three children.

His parents were educated but poor

and on a Pastor's pay, the family often struggled to make ends meet.

My dad tells the story, whenever he's spoken about it,

that, you know, his own father said to him,

"I don't know where the next meal's coming from,

"but we will survive this, we will get through this."

And it was a difficult time for the family.

Paisley followed in his parents' footsteps.

As a teenager, he preached his first sermon in a tin hut

and was soon heard in small gospel halls all over Northern Ireland.

At the age of 20, he was ordained as a minister.

Paisley's religious beliefs defined his life.

In the political sphere,

there are principles that I have imbibed

and I believe they are principles that are Biblical-based

and I believe that I have a right to contend for those.

I don't see how anybody can condemn a man for doing that.

If he's going to be a two-timer and say one thing to one person

and another thing to another, well, that will catch up on him.

I recall he was a physically big man

and he occasionally would get so passionate,

he would actually bang on the forms and the form would virtually bounce.

Yet they were under God's wrath...

After the prayer meeting was over, we would say to each other

"Big Ian thinks God's deaf," because Ian used to...he bellowed.

He has a great voice, a massive physical man and a great voice.

Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ

and thou shalt be saved.

For my father, preaching was a physical act.

He sweats when he preaches, he punches, he jabs.

And that created a certain amount of awe for me as a child,

to watch this man perform.

Because when I saw others do it, it was pretty poor.

You know, but when I watched him do it, it was magnificent.

Whatever he did, Paisley wanted to be in control.

So in 1951, when he found a Presbyterian congregation

split by a feud, the 25-year-old persuaded the dissidents

to break away and set up a new church,

the Free Presbyterians, with him as their leader.

If Paisley is known for one aspect

in terms of the way that he

prospered both in the church and in politics,

it was as a splitter and a divider.

That's how he built the church

and it's how he also built his political party as well.

People can say what they like.

There's talk that I'm a splitter.

I can't split anything.

They said that about Christ.

They said Christ was a divider.

The Lord Jesus Christ said, "Well, I am.

He said, "I have not come to send peace on earth, but a sword."

From his new church, Paisley began to preach a message

that would remain consistent throughout his life -

about the evils of Catholicism.

Romanism has controlled in this land for many centuries.

And Romanism has bred poverty

and ignorance and priest-craft and superstition.

Paisley's brand of Christianity

harked back to the 16th century Protestant Reformation.

It meant that throughout his life

he harboured a particular hatred of the Pope.

How much I...

I denounce you as...

PARLIAMENT AND PAISLEY SHOUT

Mr Paisley!

Mr Paisley!

Mr Paisley, I now exclude you from this House...

'Show me the Pope in the Bible.

'Show me the massing priests in the Bible.

'Show me the confessional box in the Bible.'

Show me Transubstantiation in the Bible.

Show me the doctrines of Rome.

They're not there. They're not in the Bible.

Next to his faith,

one of the most important influences in his life was his wife, Eileen.

They got married in 1956 after a five year courtship.

He was 30.

She was the 23-year-old daughter

of a devout East Belfast Baptist family.

They had five children.

My mum met my dad when she was 17 or 18

and they've been in love ever since.

Mum knew everything about what Dad was planning on doing

before anyone else.

They would have discussed it.

Let's say grace. Father, we thank thee for these tokens of thy love.

Bless them to us, for Christ's sake, amen.

To his closest followers, Paisley was always a prophet.

And as head of his own church, he drew huge crowds -

and saved souls - throughout the 1950s and '60s.

We will stand to sing.

Let's really sing it with all our hearts. Everyone.

# Would you be free from your burden of sin?

# There's power in the blood Power in the blood... #

Everywhere he looked, Paisley was convinced that

Protestant Unionism was increasingly under siege,

from social liberals and modernisers to Catholics and Irish Nationalists.

Ulster was regarded as almost a sacred entity, almost like the way

the Jewish would have regarded, or some Jews would regard Israel

as, you know, the chosen land,

or the land that was given to them by God.

Ulster was seen in that light as having been given to us.

It was the last bastion of Protestantism in Europe.

PIPE BAND MARCH PLAYS

Paisley's religious beliefs also defined his politics.

They drew on an ancient fear forged by centuries of Irish history.

Protestants had first arrived in large numbers

in Ulster in the 17th century.

Bitter historical experience had convinced them that at any time,

the indigenous Catholic population might rise up and slaughter them.

'And I believe this,

'if we do this, our enemies will be confounded.

'The lying tongues will be silenced.

'And that Ulster shall remain firm to the very end.'

It's the same fear that the South African whites had

against the blacks,

the same fear that American whites, the Tea Party,

has against Barack Obama.

A very deep fear that predated the 1960s

and Paisley knew that very well and fed off it,

manipulated it,

and used it for his own advantage.

All the slander, all the lying about me will not stop me

in my campaign in Ulster, to keep Ulster out of the South of Ireland.

In 1966, tensions in Belfast between Catholic republicans

and Protestant loyalists reached a new peak.

Republicans marked the 50th anniversary

of the Easter Rising against British rule by holding a march.

Preaching that this was the start of a new Catholic-inspired plot

to destroy Ulster, orchestrated by a resurgent Irish Republican Army,

the IRA, Paisley organised a counter march.

I have already told your folks, I'm not speaking to,

I don't speak to the press.

You'll hear me preach at the service and that is all.

This is the first approach we have made to you.

No, it isn't. Will you excuse me, sir?

Sergeant, these men here are...

'He was involved in very sort of extremist organisations,'

one in particular called Ulster Protestant Action,

which campaigned to keep areas Protestant.

Paisley didn't just denounce Catholics,

there were Protestants he detested, too.

Liberals - as he saw them - who were prepared to negotiate

with the Catholic-dominated Irish Republic.

In 1966, he set up his own newspaper and used it to attack

the Northern Irish Unionist Prime Minister, Captain O'Neill.

Captain O'Neill sold the pass to the Roman Catholic Church.

'Again, Paisley was making demands and standing up for issues

'which the Unionist Government was not prepared to do.

'And why was that?'

Because there was a weakness within Unionism,

just as there was a weakness within the Protestant churches

who were becoming more friendly with the Catholics,

the Unionists were becoming more friendly with nationalists

and this was all a sign that the Protestant state of Northern Ireland

was under attack from within.

O'Neill was the archetypal member of the ruling class

that had governed Northern Ireland for decades.

What is at stake, brethren,

is little less than the British connection.

Aristocratic and educated at Eton,

he was the complete antithesis of Paisley,

the working class street preacher

who as a child had experienced severe poverty.

Can we ask you if you think that

the Reverend Paisley is a threat to peace in Ulster?

Well, his activities don't exactly lead to harmony,

shall we put it that way?

In order to cement his reputation as a leader of his people,

and to identify himself with the Protestant heroes of history,

Paisley appeared to be looking for conflict with the establishment.

I think there's absolutely no doubt that he set out to provoke

the police on various occasions to force them to arrest him

and in the ambition, possibly, of ending up in jail.

In June 1966, Paisley organised a march

near a very Catholic area of Belfast.

It was predictably provocative and ended in widespread rioting.

The authorities were forced to act, charging him with unlawful assembly.

Paisley and two of his key acolytes were arrested.

Well, of course we were found guilty.

Fined £40 per something like that,

and bound over to keep the peace two years.

Well, Dr Paisley, myself and the Rev John Wylie decided

we'd not accept this binding over.

We ended up going to jail for three months.

Paisley spent his three-month imprisonment

masterminding how best to exploit his new-found martyrdom.

Until now, he had mostly shunned the press.

But on his release from prison, he held an impromptu press conference.

The authorities tried to smuggle me out of this prison

at this unearthly hour.

Paisley had already conquered the pulpit and the soap box.

Now it was the turn of the microphone.

There never was any violence at our meetings. Never any violence.

Our people are not a violent people.

The prison, Crumlin Road Prison,

is a place that I wouldn't wish my worst enemy to be in.

Well, Doctor Paisley loved the time in prison.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable season. He wrote a book.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable time.

By 1969, Paisley's congregation had quadrupled in size,

so he opened a massive new church in Belfast.

As Ireland's most militant fundamentalist,

it was finally time for his congregation

to become a constituency.

As he considered entering politics,

another opportunity arose for Paisley to prove his credentials

as a staunch Protestant Unionist.

The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement had begun a campaign

of non-violent disobedience, calling for equal rights for Catholics

in terms of housing, voting, jobs and the police.

What many saw as progress,

Paisley denounced as another republican plot.

The Civil Rights movement... As I said in those days,

the CRA, just straighten up the C and it forms an I - IRA.

-You believe that?

-Yes, certainly.

It was only a front.

Paisley refused to believe that the Civil Rights movement was

genuine at all. His line was that this is an IRA plot.

In the early stages of the Civil Rights movement,

and for a long time, it was NOT an IRA plot.

There was no IRA presence within it.

I'd just like to say that

Protestants and loyalists of this province

have demonstrated their willingness today

to take their stand in defence of their heritage.

It was Paisley's responsibility for one particularly violent incident

that has remained controversial ever since.

On New Year's Day 1969, the Civil Rights protesters set out

to march from Belfast to Londonderry.

What happened to them at Burntollet Bridge

became an iconic moment at the start of Northern Ireland's darkest years.

It began with a speech made by Paisley the night before

at a rally in Derry.

Well, Paisley's presence and confrontations

and counter-demonstrations always increased tension.

There was no relaxation

while Paisley was around or might be about.

Paisley brought along his close associate, Major Ronald Bunting.

Journalists were barred from the meeting

as they addressed the local loyalist faithful together.

Paisley then departed, leaving Bunting to lead the attack.

Paisley was a great man for lighting a fuse

and then scampering off, leaving others to handle the explosion

and the aftermath of the explosion.

And of course, Burntollet was a prime example of that.

A lot of the people on the march - it was a student march, mainly.

And a lot of people were actually secondary school students.

They were 15, 16, 17-year-old girls.

As the marchers approached Burntollet Bridge,

Paisley's accomplice, Bunting, and his followers were waiting for them.

They were armed with stones, iron bars and spiked clubs.

In a well-organised ambush,

Bunting's mob attacked the unarmed marchers,

bombarding them with missiles and then charging them

and badly beating both men and women indiscriminately.

During the four-day march, more than 200 people were injured,

many of them seriously.

I have no doubt that the attackers at Burntollet

were inspired by Paisley.

He was an ugly presence on the political scene and played

what I still regard as a vile role in stoking up sectarianism.

Any time it looked, and maybe it was an illusion looking back on it,

but occasionally it would look as if things were settling down.

Any time that began to happen,

Paisley was at hand to inject sectarian venom into the situation.

Paisley's personal responsibility for Ireland's troubled history

dogged him throughout his life.

His connections to the men of violence

often appeared to be very close.

Two months after the attack at Burntollet Bridge,

Belfast's water supply was hit by a series of bomb attacks

carried out by loyalists.

Some of the perpetrators were later shown

to be closely connected to Paisley.

The guy who was charged and convicted of those bombs,

Sammy Stevenson, was his bodyguard.

He was certainly, I think, very close to people who were

involved in violence.

When Paisley was questioned about it later, that this

fella was a member of his church and a member of the Ulster Protestant

Volunteers, of which Ian was the leader,

he said that he couldn't be held responsible for all the actions

of all the people within his group.

But on reflection, I look back and say he should have.

Then was the time to realise the power of his words

and the influence he was having over individual people.

CAR HORN HONKS

But in terms of political power, Paisley's image as the hard man

of Protestant Ulster was a real benefit.

So, when Northern Irish Prime Minister Terence O'Neill

called a surprise election, Paisley grasped the opportunity to stand

against him and enter mainstream politics for the first time.

I am a Protestant minister, sir, and I have always said I would only go

into politics if the situation and the crisis pushed me into politics,

and the Bannside electors have pushed me into taking this stand.

The campaign was brutal, uncompromising and one-sided.

I'm no friend of Captain O'Neill.

The sooner he packs his bags and goes to Dublin,

the better for all of us.

This is no ordinary election.

Captain O'Neill represents himself as the Cassius Clay

of the Unionist Party, the greatest ever Prime Minister of Ulster.

This, of course, is utter rubbish and nonsense.

LAUGHTER

From the beginning of his career,

Paisley has had only one abiding ambition,

and that was to be number one, the top dog.

He brought down O'Neill by alleging that he was selling out traditional

Unionist values and was associating, fraternising with the enemy.

O'Neill's campaign to liberalise politics in Northern Ireland

by encouraging better relations with the Catholic South

was anathema to Paisley.

Anyone who showed any signs of wanting to arrive at a

solution for the whole community was attacked by Paisley as an apostate.

They were betraying traditional Unionist values.

our place within the United Kingdom,

our Protestant religion, all of this was being betrayed.

And because they were doing that, they were guilty of apostasy.

Although O'Neill won the election,

Paisley decimated the Prime Minister's vote.

So, when O'Neill didn't turn up for the official count,

it was his opponent who took the cheers of the crowd.

Paisley was on the march to political office

and nothing could stop him.

There are 6,331 true blue Protestants...

CHEERING

..who will never bow the knee to the capitulation policy

of Captain O'Neill.

APPLAUSE

GUNSHOTS AND PANICKED SHOUTING

As Paisley savoured his growing political success,

tension between the two communities, Catholic and Protestant,

republican and loyalist, led to violence in the streets.

Later that summer, in August 1969,

after the police tried to disperse nationalists protesting

against the loyalist march in Derry, there was a widespread outbreak

of serious rioting that lasted for three days.

You can never reconcile two irreconcilables,

and as far as we are concerned, Roman Catholics can live here

and can have their place here, but as far as the hierarchy

of the church is concerned, until it is prepared to recognise

the constitution of this country,

then we are going to have a difficult position.

The local police were unable to stop the fighting,

and so, for the first time, British troops were deployed

on the streets of Northern Ireland.

ANGRY AND PANICKED SHOUTING

The government's apparent inability to stop the violence

boosted Paisley's popularity.

Ian Richard Kyle Paisley...

24,130.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I accordingly declare...

In April 1970, Paisley's electoral victory finally came.

CHEERING

He stood out from the rest because he was a conviction-led politician.

He wasn't one of the professional politicians who joined politics

to get a job.

He was there and he didn't care less.

Paisley the preacher and street demagogue

was now Paisley the elected politician.

Later that same year, he stood for election to the House of Commons

and won again.

He remained MP for North Antrim for the next 40 years.

He even stood for the European Parliament

and won another dramatic victory.

Paisley was at all times fired by his ambition to run,

or to be seen to run, Northern Ireland.

He was a master of opportunism.

And of course, standing for Europe,

despite what he had said about it in the past, was an opportunity which

he beat the drum about throughout his entire subsequent career,

was that, "I have more votes than anybody else,

"I am the most popular man. I am the great I am."

Paisley now had his own church, his own newspaper

and even his own new political party,

the DUP - Democratic Unionist Party - set up in 1971.

And in each of them,

no-one was under any illusion as to who was the boss.

I'm working as hard as I can...

to get proper security into Northern Ireland.

If I have your vote, you can help me to do that.

-How are you, sir? How are you doing?

-Good...

I was involved in drawing up the rules and constitution of the party

and it was at that moment that you realised just how

dominant Paisley was. We would have spent hours wrangling over

some new rule or article in the constitution and he would

simply overthrow it and say, "I'm not having that."

Get that one vote in...

-Oh, aye.

-The last shall be first, it's scriptural.

So, although it called itself the Democratic Party

it was totally dominated by Ian Paisley.

-TANNOY:

-Vote Paisley - number one.

But Paisley's work as a constituency MP showed another, to some surprising,

side of his character - the tireless

champion of his constituents, from both sides of the sectarian divide.

Nice to see you...

Whenever he became a Member of Parliament, North Antrim had

the worst public sanitation issues,

fire problems, all sorts of stuff.

My dad changed all that. He worked darn hard for people.

He got things changed.

He passionately cared for the people,

and something he told me as a politician - "You're their servant.

"Get out there and serve."

EXPLOSION

What happened just then?

The brutal tit-for-tat violence between the two warring communities,

and also the British Army, now began to spiral out of control.

Starting with Bloody Sunday,

1972 was the worst year in Northern Ireland's troubled history.

There were almost 1,500 bombings and nearly 500 deaths.

CHILDREN'S CHORAL SINGING

Paisley's role in stoking those sectarian tensions has always

been hotly debated.

I never started the trouble at all.

The Troubles were started in Northern Ireland by a deliberate

republican conspiracy.

..Don't just interrupt, you have asked a question.

Let me tell you it was a republican conspiracy that

brought about what has taken place.

The IRA and the effect of their terrorism -

that was fodder for him,

that was the thing that fired up his whole political career,

opposition to IRA violence which was evidence of a

great nationalist plot to subsume Northern Ireland within a united Ireland.

As a front-line politician in Northern Ireland's bitterly-divided society,

Paisley and his family lived under constant threat.

Ever since I can remember, my father's had to carry

a gun for his own protection.

Our house has always been completely bullet-proofed,

bomb-proofed,

been a secure room in it, alarmed to police stations.

There's always been an armed guard. It was like a fortress.

And it's only now when you look back on it, if I had

my kids now and if they had to go through it,

I would hate it for them.

By March 1972, the local authorities had lost control of the situation.

The local parliament was closed

and direct rule was imposed from Westminster.

Would you be fool enough to say that this Constitution Act is

widely accepted in this community when it took 40 armoured cars

and 1,000 army men and police to do what they did today?

What are you doing with that man?!

CLAMOUR

But as a succession of Westminster politicians

and civil servants were to discover, finding solutions would be

an impossible task without the agreement of Ian Paisley.

I suppose my impression of Dr Paisley before I ever

got to know him was that he was a bigot...

a bit of a bully, a loudmouth,

and not really very adept at defending the real

interests of the people of Northern Ireland

which surely lay in jobs, housing

and welfare, rather than in banging on about

prejudicial anti-Catholic views?

If you are not content with Ulster,

if you don't like us,

then go to the south of Ireland and stay there!

CHEERING

LOYALIST BAND PLAYS

During the 1970s and '80s,

successive British Prime Ministers attempted

to broker a deal between the various warring parties in Northern Ireland.

In 1973, it was the turn of Edward Heath's government

when he signed the Sunningdale Agreement with the Irish Republic.

The agreement meant Unionists would share power with moderate

constitutional nationalists.

Paisley opposed it at every turn.

No surrender!

CHEERING

Dr Paisley was seen as an obstacle in Whitehall amongst civil servants.

An obstacle to ever making any progress in defeating the IRA

and stabilising the situation in Northern Ireland.

CHEERING

Paisley allied himself with loyalist paramilitaries to enforce

a general strike that brought down the power-sharing assembly

and ended the Sunningdale Agreement.

It appeared that as long as HE said no, the voters said yes.

CHEERING

My father, when he was public, in the public persona,

had to be tough, had to be strong, he had to be determined.

He had to be willing to say no, and strong enough to mean no,

and strong enough to deliver a no to get the right result at the end.

In the house he was himself and when the door closed, he was our dad.

I always taught my children... I always said to them,

"Look, you are my kith and kin.

"But you are yourself, you have entirely a personality that is yours.

We do not see eye-to-eye on everything.

You wouldn't be a...

It's not zombies we're rearing, it's Paisleys.

CHUCKLING: And they have their own nature.

Ten years passed before another serious attempt at peace was made.

Then it was Mrs Thatcher's turn - a Conservative

and staunch Unionist and an outspoken opponent of republicanism.

One of her closest political aides, Airey Neave,

had been murdered in a terrorist bomb

and she herself was almost blown up in Brighton by the IRA.

SIREN WAILS

To everyone else, Mrs Thatcher appeared to be Paisley's natural ally.

But when, in 1985,

she tried to break the deadlock in Northern Ireland by

signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, giving the South a limited say

in the affairs of the North, Paisley denounced her as a traitor.

Let Mrs Thatcher get the message -

it will be over our dead bodies...!

CHEERING

He galvanised Unionism's denunciation of the agreement with a speech

that rang out across Northern Ireland, Britain and the world.

We say never!

Never!

Never!

Never.

The betrayal by Margaret Thatcher of the Unionist community in

Northern Ireland with the Anglo-Irish Agreement...

and, again, Ian's ability

to articulate the case of those who were betrayed, I think, put him

right at the front and centre of the leadership of that campaign.

Paisley's fury at Mrs Thatcher extended to her

Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King.

Every time he came to Belfast, he was put under siege.

I remember the noise outside, you could hear the people

hammering on the gates and there was very strong feeling at that time.

SHOUTING

Ian Paisley came

and led a squad up the back stairs and was hammering on the doors.

I don't believe it's sane and prudent for Mr King to be

seen anywhere in Northern Ireland.

And a lot of distinguished visitors sitting looking

terrified at this hammering going on, because I was in the room.

He has committed the greatest possible crime, of treason...

-Yes!

-And the more he's seen, the more he is inciting people.

Any reaction to that incitement is his business.

On his head!

They were determined to make my life as unpleasant as possible.

Did you see Tom King squealing on the television,

squealing on the radio?!

Paisley reserved his most vicious personal attacks

for Mrs Thatcher herself.

Despite her clear opposition to the IRA, Paisley accused

her of being in league with republicans.

You know, some of the things which Dr Paisley

said about Margaret Thatcher were

so absurd as to be, really, beyond the pale.

For somebody, who only a year earlier, had been

attacked by the IRA, nearly killed by the IRA.

I mean, this was just so absurd.

It gave Northern Ireland a bad reputation, not just

with British public opinion, but more widely.

To be honest, she rather gave up on him in the end.

You are the blood-soaked ally of the IRA as long as you

go on saying no to our conditions.

No surrender!

CHEERING

Paisley always styled himself as the enemy of the IRA.

His was the side of law and order, theirs of terrorism and murder.

But his apparent links to loyalist terrorists

continually embarrassed him throughout his political career.

In November 1986, Paisley called his closest followers

to a closed meeting to celebrate the founding of a new organisation

called Ulster Resistance.

It pledged to use all means to defeat

Mrs Thatcher's Anglo-Irish Agreement.

The meeting was filmed by a local cameraman.

We are not playing a game of bluff!

Mrs Thatcher, we mean business!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I intend to give this movement of Ulster Resistance

my undivided support.

I will give it whatever political cover it needs.

At the rally, leaflets were handed out stating

Ulster Resistance's intent to take direct action as and when required

to defeat Mrs Thatcher's Anglo-Irish Agreement.

We had the biggest, two years in a row, the biggest political rally

that there has been in the United Kingdom.

Ulster Resistance was really formed to say to the government,

"We will not take this lying down."

Paisley held eight more Ulster Resistance rallies all over

Northern Ireland.

To the outside world, he was increasingly

looking like a general with his own paramilitary army.

I want to walk publically

and tell the world that Dublin will never rule us!

Three years later,

Paisley appeared to have completely changed his tune when, during an

election campaign, he was confronted by journalists

about a loyalist arms scandal connecting illegal weapons

to Ulster Resistance.

I didn't set up the Ulster Resistance. That's untrue.

Er, the Ulster Resistance was set up by the leadership

-of Ulster Resistance.

-But you associated...

-What I said...

Over the previous 18 months, the Northern Irish police had uncovered

several large caches of illegal weapons, some of which

were apparently intended for use by Ulster Resistance.

Paisley's links with the organisation

were now highly embarrassing.

You have already heard my statement

and we have nothing further to say to it.

You needn't repeat or say anything more. That's all you're saying.

-REPORTER:

-I think we do need to know more.

That's all right, you go with your press.

You go with your press and do exactly what you like.

I have already made the statement.

But it wasn't just his connections to Ulster Resistance that

were to cause Ian Paisley a measure of political embarrassment.

Whether he liked it or not,

leading men of violence often cited him as an inspiration.

There was a survey done in Long Kesh one time, in the Maze Prison,

when many young loyalist prisoners were asked about what was

one of the main influences that put them behind bars

and they said it was Paisley's speeches.

My relationship with the paramilitaries have always been

that I have opposed killing,

always, and no matter who comes along

they can never find out...

What the government would like to do, even though they're in

with the paramilitaries themselves, and even although they put

them in government, they'd like to find somewhere in Paisley's past,

he was associated.

Many paramilitaries became disillusioned with

Ian Paisley over his increasingly ambiguous attitude towards them.

While he appeared to support them when it suited his political aims,

whenever there were acts of violence he was one of the first

to disown them.

My hands are clean on that issue, because I'm a Christian,

I don't believe in murder.

In fact, my party put up all over Northern Ireland,

"Thou shalt not kill" posters, which were torn down

by the paramilitaries.

I remember him doing an interview where he said,

"If anybody attacks our people, we will kill them."

He didn't say, "We will defend our people," or, "We will chase them."

He says, "We will kill them."

If an IRA man comes to a Protestant home and my men are there,

they will kill that IRA man. Yes, sir.

And when people did kill them, he disowned them.

The loyalist paramilitaries eventually became

so fed up with Paisley that they coined a new nickname for him -

the Grand Old Duke of York.

We'd been led to the top of the hill so many times by Ian Paisley

and he never came with us. He always backed off. He always kept himself

totally legal and didn't want to know, and I think from that

point of view, people were sick of it.

In Northern Ireland, there have been more clashes between police

and Protestants.

Northern Ireland's brutal conflict had been a regular feature

of British news bulletins for almost 30 years.

The peace process was at a stalemate with the IRA cease-fire

of 1994 having broken down.

In 1997, a Labour government won a landslide election in Britain.

The new Prime Minister was determined to give peace

another chance.

At the beginning, when I first came to office

and people frankly thought Northern Ireland was a pretty hopeless case,

and Ian Paisley at that time, you know, the view was that he would

never be the person who would actually do the peace deal.

A year after Blair's election victory, another attempt at peace,

the Good Friday Agreement, was signed in Belfast between the

British and Irish governments and the majority of Northern Ireland's

political parties, including Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing.

It was another attempt at power sharing between Catholics

and Protestants.

Yet again, Paisley refused to have anything to do with it.

They should be scrapped.

The whole progress, programme should be scrapped.

After decades of campaigning against any peace deal

with the Irish Government or Sinn Fein,

to outsiders, Ian Paisley appeared to be a relic of the past.

And as long as Ian Paisley is around there will be no surrender!

Thank you.

When a majority of people in Northern Ireland voted to support

the new agreement, Paisley found himself speaking for those

who did not - Unionists who were deeply uneasy that despite

the peace deal, the IRA was still armed.

Paisley attacked the Good Friday Agreement at every opportunity,

and especially those Unionist leaders who had signed it.

Here is Mr Trimble's paper to destroy the union.

To destroy the union.

In 1988, he said he was prepared to break the union.

And he has had his approval.

That's your own document - What Choice For Ulster? by David Trimble.

I think the DUP were being disingenuous at this time,

that the DUP party as a whole were attacking the agreement tactically.

Although there were denouncing it,

in fact, all they wanted to do was use that

as a means for weakening the Ulster Unionists

so that they could then replace Ulster Unionism

as the majority party within Unionism and then from that basis,

they intended to do a deal.

Paisley now set out to destroy his main rival

and become the top dog in Northern Irish politics.

At every turn, he accused Trimble of being a traitor to Unionism.

What was more annoying was the

way people would be organised to dog my steps and to abuse me publicly.

CROWD SHOUTS AND JEERS

'They'd adopted the same tactics against O'Neill and others,

'and I knew it was being done in hope that,

'I would then get so fed up with it that I would give up.'

Paisley pulverised Unionism

and the Ulster Unionist Party, which he totally detested.

Trimble stood as an obstacle to Paisley's ultimate objective,

which was to get to the top of the heap.

By June 2001,

it was clear that the political landscape in Northern Ireland was

changing, and Ian Paisley's moment of real power was approaching.

Tony Blair was in despair at the outcome of this election.

He said to me, "Martin, Ian Paisley won't share power with you."

And I said, "Well, I don't agree with you.

"I think we can make it happen.

"It may take a year or two to do it, but I believe we can do it."

The leaders of Britain and Ireland now began to court Paisley and,

to keen-eyed insiders, it seemed as if he was beginning to soften.

The question was, would he now do what he had always

denounced as a betrayal and make a deal with republicans?

One of the interesting things about Ian Paisley was that,

I mean, he was really an outsider,

he was fighting against the Unionist establishment,

fighting against the British Government,

fighting obviously against Sinn Fein and republicanism.

'Once he then became in a position where he was responsible,

'then I think that altered his perspective.'

'I think we can't understand the man, unless we characterise his'

career as a constant struggle within himself between principle and power.

'Time and again he has to decide,

' "Am I staying with the principle,

' "or am I following the road to power?" '

And time and again in his career, he decides for power.

In September 2004,

Tony Blair called all the interested parties involved in the

Northern Ireland peace process to

intensive talks at Leeds Castle in Kent,

including former implacable enemies - the DUP and Sinn Fein.

Ian Paisley brought a large delegation,

including his deputy Peter Robinson.

It was at Leeds Castle that Peter Robinson took me aside and said,

"If you're going to get somewhere here,

"the Prime Minister is going to have to cultivate Ian Paisley,

"get to know him, establish a relationship with him."

So Tony Blair went to great lengths to establish this relationship.

But when the talks began, it was clear to everyone that

Paisley was gravely ill.

Peace in Ireland was now hanging on the health of a 78-year-old man.

I have my statement.

At the time, he and his party wanted to play his illness down,

in case it was perceived as a sign of weakness.

Many now believe he came close to death.

Ian Paisley said this himself to us at one stage.

After he had this near-death experience - as he put it,

having nearly met his maker, he actually decided

he wanted not to be Dr No, but to be Dr Yes before he died.

He had made a fundamental decision that he wanted to be

part of the solution having, at the beginning, been part of the problem.

For the next three years,

all sides were locked in a continual round of talks.

They flowed back and forth as the details were painstakingly thrashed

out and continuing republican activity threatened to derail them.

At the same time,

Ian Paisley made several private visits to Downing Street to meet

Tony Blair face-to-face, without any of his colleagues - alone.

Well, I found him a fascinating personality

and, you know, we shared a strong religious belief.

A lot of our conversations would be about...

..faith, actually, as much as about the politics of the situation.

I remember him once asking me,

"What is that God would have me do in this situation?"

What would be his purpose?

And I was very reluctant to answer that really, cos I thought

that should be between him and his maker, as it were.

I think he got to Blair, I think he got under Blair's skin.

And of course people say, "Oh, people exploited Paisley."

I don't know. I think when you look at the ultimate results

and weigh them up, final analysis, I think my dad was pretty

good at exploiting others to achieve what he needed to achieve.

To everyone concerned, it was increasingly obvious that

Ian Paisley had changed his traditional uncompromising stance.

He was even now talking to leading Catholics.

Was the prospect for him of leading

a new Northern Ireland just too tempting?

They had always seen him as an outsider, and therefore,

they hadn't gone through the mindset to say,

"He's actually top-dog in Unionist circles."

"He is somebody who has got to be treated

"as the putative first minister - the first minister designate."

He'd always chuckle and say, "No, no, no, no," but it was quite

clear that he was thinking that there might be that possibility.

'There is such a thing as forgiveness, you know.

'And forgiveness rests upon a rejection of your old ways,

'and there's no doubt about it that Sinn Fein have done that.

'I have to be honest,

'if people repent and turn from their ways and show their repentance

'by not going back to the old paths, then I've got to honour them.'

We had one final meeting with the DUP where the whole thing

looked like it was going to collapse -

they demanded more time and we didn't think Sinn Fein or the

Irish Government would give more time.

And then we persuaded Ian Paisley that the only thing that would

save this would be if he would meet Gerry Adams himself.

And he said, "I'll think about it," and he called us

from Heathrow on the way back to Belfast and said, "OK, I'll do it."

An agreement was finally reached in March 2007.

At the age of 80, Paisley had done what would have been

unthinkable five or ten years previously,

let alone at the beginning of his political career

when he regularly preached against a Catholic republican conspiracy.

He was now sitting down with the people he had previously

branded as terrorists and murderers.

For some of his closest followers, this was a step too far.

It was a shock that I can hardly describe

and we were just overcome by grief.

I'm sure the British Government, at the end of the day,

had a psychological profile of the man -

they knew what he wanted and in the end they could capture him

by luring him in, by giving him what he wanted.

So really that was the sort of breakthrough moment

and that was the moment, of course, the TV chose to write the obituary

of the Troubles, that's when they decided the thing was finally over,

cos the whole negotiation had been conducted without Paisley or Adams

or Paisley and McGuiness actually meeting.

So this was a really sort of remarkable moment.

But in return for becoming First Minister

of a new Northern Ireland devolved government,

Ian Paisley would have to share power with his Deputy,

Martin McGuinness, a former leader of the IRA and convicted terrorist.

To the surprise of many,

the former bitter enemies appeared to get on rather well.

The local press named them "The Chuckle Brothers".

No change, not an inch and no surrender.

THEY LAUGH

I think that people were very pleased to know that Ian Paisley

and I were capable of having a smile or a laugh together

and that indicated to the community as a whole that things

had definitely changed. I mean, people would have thought

we would have been incapable of having a good, cordial,

even friendly relationship. But I think we confounded all of them.

I remember hearing an interview in which an interviewer said to him

all the things that he had said about Martin McGuinness

and what he done and what he was involved in and really, you know,

painted the black picture.

"And here you are about to power-share with him.

"Do you believe that's the will of God?"

And I'll never forget Dr Paisley's response.

He said, "I hope so."

And I knew from that one little statement that even he could not say,

"I believe this is the will of God."

For the first time in his life,

Ian Paisley's flock did not follow where he led.

The man who had made a career out of shaming apostates

and turncoats was now himself accused of betrayal.

The Free Presbyterian Church, which he had founded and led

for over five decades, rejected him.

The personal pain it caused him and his wife Eileen was made clear

in the last major television interviews they gave.

Well, it was hurtful that that was the way they thought

they would treat us

and they did that.

And they will have to answer to the people

and they will also have to answer to God at the end of the day.

Our hearts were all broken for Ian,

the children and myself as well

and I felt he had been deeply wounded in the house of his friends

and I just felt that it was really iniquitous of them

and a really dreadful, hurtful,

nasty, ungodly, unchristian thing to do.

In politics, too, there now seemed to be enemies within.

The Democratic Unionist Party had allowed their iconic leader

to bring them into government,

trading on his unrivalled authority within Unionism to deliver a deal.

But a year after power-sharing was achieved, in 2008,

senior party members felt it was time for him to step down.

Paisley and his family felt betrayed.

In his final interview, he referred to his erstwhile friend

and successor, Peter Robinson, using Biblical language.

For once we're seeing the true nature of the beast,

that there was a beast here who was prepared to go forward...

to the destruction of the party.

Scriptures tell us that friends, people,

so-called friends are probably secret enemies.

Well, I think they assassinated him

and by their words and by their deeds

and by the way they treated him and I think they treated him shamefully.

Ian Paisley was a dominant force in British politics

for more than half a century.

But his funeral was private, conducted at his home

and attended only by close family.

It would be the final contrast in an unpredictable life story.

For many, the biggest contrast of all was that one man

could have done so much to help cause and conclude a conflict.

Paisley shaped Northern Ireland enormously

over the last 40, 50 years.

Without Paisley, Northern Ireland would be a very different place.

It might well have been a more peaceful place.

I think Ian Paisley did the deal in the end, because he genuinely

believed that if the IRA were prepared to come to a definitive end

to their use of violence as a tactic in the struggle, then he had to

respond that that was his duty, that was the will of the people.

Genuinely within himself, he felt that his lifelong opponents

had crossed the Rubicon and therefore he should cross it, too.

Because Captain O'Neill...

'I believe that the line I took was a consistent Unionist line.

'I believe that I never hid'

my light under a bushel. People knew what I was.

When you asked, "Who was Ian Paisley?"

"Oh, that guy!" They'll tell you all about him.

A deeply divisive figure in life,

Ian Paisley is likely to remain so in death.

The question for history will be

whether his final achievement outweighed what came before.

There will be those historians who say that he's a great man

because he was capable of putting

his whole 50-year past behind him

and embraced his enemy. That would be a benevolent view of history.

The cynical view would be

here is a man who accused all his political enemies of apostasy.

And he himself turns out to be the greatest apostate or turncoat

since the Emperor Julian.

That's the story.

As with other historical figures

that have made similar types of journey,

he will be remembered ultimately for the peace and not the schism,

which I think is to his credit and also what he deserves.

I am not infallible,

I never claimed to the Pope.

I just was just Ian Paisley,

an Ulsterman.

And I look back,

I have regrets.

But I have also rejoicing in my heart

that I kept the faith.