The popular history on the Reverend Ian Paisley in Northern Ireland is that he spent thirty odd years as a priest preaching from a gospel of hate/hand me down bible, riling up working class protestants, making himself responsible for an uptick in loyalist violence, participated in the peace process with apparent reluctance, and then shocked everyone when he sat down with Sinn Féin to negotiate a program for government.
Now of course it's all at least partially true, but for a brief moment in 1972, shortly after the re-branding of the Protestant Unionist Party as the DUP, Paisley began taking on an integrationist tone when he told Unionists to move past the suspension of the old Stormont and even condemned the aggressive tactics of Bill Craig and the Vanguard Unionist group, saying that it would be a mistake to adopt the 'deplorable tactics of their enemies'. He was a rarity in the Unionist community when he suggested that a new Stormont Assembly could keep NI separate from the UK. Of course he was still parroting lines about patrolling Republican neighbourhoods, but it was a surprising message from Paisley nonetheless. It never really caught on and he went back to the bible thumping soon after.
How can this message catch on and keep Paisley to a (more) moderate path going forth? If he can somehow get it to work, how does that bode for the Troubles and the Sunningdale agreement? Would Craig and Vanguard see a boost in support from embittered DUP extremists? What ramifications would this have on the Troubles and Britain as a whole?
Now of course it's all at least partially true, but for a brief moment in 1972, shortly after the re-branding of the Protestant Unionist Party as the DUP, Paisley began taking on an integrationist tone when he told Unionists to move past the suspension of the old Stormont and even condemned the aggressive tactics of Bill Craig and the Vanguard Unionist group, saying that it would be a mistake to adopt the 'deplorable tactics of their enemies'. He was a rarity in the Unionist community when he suggested that a new Stormont Assembly could keep NI separate from the UK. Of course he was still parroting lines about patrolling Republican neighbourhoods, but it was a surprising message from Paisley nonetheless. It never really caught on and he went back to the bible thumping soon after.
How can this message catch on and keep Paisley to a (more) moderate path going forth? If he can somehow get it to work, how does that bode for the Troubles and the Sunningdale agreement? Would Craig and Vanguard see a boost in support from embittered DUP extremists? What ramifications would this have on the Troubles and Britain as a whole?