Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside (6 April 1926 – 12 September 2014) was a loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader from Northern Ireland who served as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from 1971 to 2008 and First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2007 to 2008.
Paisley became a Protestant evangelical minister in 1946 and remained one for the rest of his life. In 1951 he co-founded the Reformed fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and was its leader until 2008. Paisley became known for his fiery sermons and regularly preached anti-Catholicism, anti-ecumenism and against homosexuality. He gained a large group of followers who were referred to as Paisleyites.
Paisley became involved in Ulster unionist/loyalist politics in the late 1950s. In the mid-late 1960s he led and instigated loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. This contributed to the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s, a conflict that would engulf Northern Ireland for the next 30 years. In 1970 he became Member of Parliament (MP) for North Antrim and the following year he founded the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which he would lead for almost 40 years. In 1979 he became a member of the European Parliament.
Throughout the Troubles, Paisley was seen as a firebrand and the face of hardline unionism. He opposed all attempts to resolve the conflict through power-sharing between unionists and Irish nationalists/republicans, and all attempts to involve the Republic of Ireland in Northern Irish affairs. His efforts helped bring down the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974. He also opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, with less success. His attempts to create a paramilitary movement culminated in Ulster Resistance. Paisley and his party also opposed the Northern Ireland peace process and Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
In 2005 Paisley's DUP became the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, displacing the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which had dominated unionist politics since 1905 and had been an instrumental party in the Good Friday Agreement. In 2007, following the St Andrews Agreement, the DUP finally agreed to share power with republican party Sinn Féin. Paisley and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness became First Minister and Deputy First Minister, respectively, in May 2007. He stepped down as first minister and DUP leader in mid-2008, and was made a life peer in 2010 as Baron Bannside. He left politics in 2011.
Personal life Ian Richard Kyle Paisley was born in Armagh, County Armagh, and brought up in the town of Ballymena, County Antrim, where his father, James Kyle Paisley, was an Independent Baptist pastor who had previously served in the Ulster Volunteers under Edward Carson.Downing, Taylor; The Troubles: The background to the question of Northern Ireland, page 132, third printing; published by Thames Macdonald Ian's mother was Scottish.
Paisley married Eileen Cassells on 13 October 1956.The strongest link , Sunday Post Magazine, February 2006 They had three daughters: Sharon, Rhonda and Cherith; and twin sons: Kyle and Ian. Three of their children followed their father into politics or religion: Kyle is a Free Presbyterian minister; Ian was a DUP MP; and Rhonda is a retired DUP councillor.Paisley's daughter wins apology , The Telegraph, 19 December 2006 He had a brother, Harold, who is also an evangelical fundamentalist.
Paisley saw himself primarily as an Ulsterman."Ian Paisley: I'd never deny I'm Irish" . Belfast Newsletter. 19 September 2014. Despite his hostility towards Irish republicanism and the Republic of Ireland, he also saw himself as an Irishman and said that "you cannot be an Ulsterman without being an Irishman".Cochrane, Feargal. Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism Since the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Cork University Press, 1997. p.58
Religious career When he was a teenager, Paisley decided to follow his father and become a Christian minister. He delivered his first sermon aged 16 in a mission hall in County Tyrone.BBC News (Sept. 2014) “Obituary: Ian Paisley” , BBC News, 12 September 2014. Retrieved 12 September 2014 In the late 1940s he undertook theological training at the Barry School of Evangelism (now called the Wales Evangelical School of Theology), and later, for a year, at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Hall in Belfast.
By June 1950 Paisley was preaching at an 'Old Time Gospel Campaign' on waste ground off Moore Street in the lower Ravehill Road area of Belfast.'The House of Paisley, Series 1: From Pulpit to Politics (04:47–05:01)'. BBC, 3 April 2023. Retrieved 21 February 2024
A year later a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) was forbidden by church authorities to hold a meeting in their own church hall at which Paisley was to be the speaker. In response, the leaders of that congregation left the PCI and began a new denomination, the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, with Paisley, who was just 25 years old at the time. Paisley soon became the leader (or moderator) of the Free Presbyterian ChurchClifford Smyth, Ian Paisley: Voice of Protestant Ulster, p.5 and was re-elected every year, for the next 57 years.
The Free Presbyterian Church is a fundamentalist, evangelical church, requiring strict separation from "any church which has departed from the fundamental doctrines of the Word of God." At the time of the 1991 census, the church had about 12,000 members, less than 1 per cent of the Northern Ireland population.
Paisley promoted a highly conservative form of Biblical literalism and anti-Catholicism, which he described as "Bible Protestantism". The website of Paisley's public relations arm, the European Institute of Protestant Studies, describes the institute's purpose as to "expound the Bible, expose the Papacy, and to promote, defend and maintain Bible Protestantism in Europe and further afield."[ianpaisley.org Paisley's web site] Home page Paisley's website describes a number of doctrinal areas in which he believes that the "Roman church" (which he termed 'Popery') has deviated from the Bible and thus from true Christianity. Over the years, Paisley would write numerous books and pamphlets on his religious and political views, including a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, Ian Paisley, Emerald House Group Inc, 1997 Paisley set up his own newspaper in February 1966, the Protestant Telegraph, as a mechanism for further spreading his message.T. Gallagher, "Religion, Reaction, and Revolt in Northern Ireland: The Impact of Paisleyism in Ulster", Journal of Church and State, 23.3 (1981), p. 440
In the 1960s Paisley developed a relationship with the fundamentalist Bob Jones University located in Greenville, South Carolina. In 1966, he received an honorary doctorate of divinity from the institution and subsequently served on its board of trustees. This relationship would later lead to the establishment of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America in 1977.Ed Moloney and Andy Pollak, Paisley, Poolbeg Press, Dublin, 1986, pp.247–9. His honorary doctorate, along with his political obstinacy, led to Paisley's nickname of "Dr. No".
When Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother met Pope John XXIII in 1958, Paisley condemned them for "committing spiritual fornication and adultery with the Antichrist".Kyle, Keith. Keith Kyle, Reporting the World. IB Tauris, 2009. p.206 When Pope John died in June 1963, Paisley announced to a crowd of followers that "this Romish man of sin is now in Hell!". He organised protests against the lowering of flags on public buildings to mark the Pope's death.
In 1988, having given advance warning of his intentions, Paisley interrupted a speech being delivered by Pope John Paul II in the European Parliament. Paisley shouted "I denounce you as the Antichrist!" and held up a poster reading "Pope John Paul II ANTICHRIST". Other MEPs jeered Paisley, threw papers at him and snatched his poster, but he produced another and continued shouting. He was admonished by Parliamentary President Lord Plumb, who formally excluded him. He was then forcibly removed from the chamber."HEADLINERS; Papal Audience" , The New York Times, 16 October 1988.David McKittrick, "An amazing conversion? The Big Man makes a long journey" , The Independent, 10 October 2006. Paisley claimed he was injured by other MEPs—including Otto von Habsburg—who struck him and threw objects at him.
Paisley believed the European Union is a part of a conspiracy to create a Roman Catholic superstate controlled by the Vatican. He claimed in an article that the seat no. 666 in the European Parliament is reserved for the Antichrist.
Paisley continued to denounce the Catholic Church and the Pope after the incident. In a television interview for The Unquiet Man, a 2001 documentary on Paisley's life, he expressed his pride at being "the only person to have the courage to denounce the Pope". However, after the death of Pope John Paul in 2005, Paisley expressed sympathy for Catholics, saying "We can understand how Roman Catholics feel at the death of the Pope and we would want in no way to interfere with their expression of sorrow and grief at this time."
Paisley and his followers also protested against what they saw as instances of blasphemy in popular culture, including the stage productions Jesus Christ Superstar and Jerry Springer: The Opera, as well as being strongly anti-abortion.
Campaign against homosexuality
Paisley preached against homosexuality,Ian Paisley and politics of peace, Los Angeles Times, 24 March 2010 supported laws criminalising it and picketed various gay-rights events. He denounced it as "a crime against God and man and its practice is a terrible step to the total demoralisation of any country".Hunt, Stephen. Contemporary Christianity and LGBT Sexualities. Ashgate Publishing, 2012. p.132 Save Ulster from Sodomy was a campaign launched by Paisley in 1977, in opposition to the Northern Ireland Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform, established in 1974. Paisley's campaign sought to prevent the extension to Northern Ireland of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which had decriminalised homosexual acts between males over 21 years of age in England and Wales. Paisley's campaign failed when legislation was passed in 1982 as a result of the previous year's ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Dudgeon v United Kingdom.Stonewall timeline of Gay & Lesbian history available here .
Political career, 1949–2010
Early activism In 1949 Paisley formed a Northern Irish branch of the National Union of Protestants, the group being led in the UK by his uncle, W. St Clair Taylor.Richard Lawrence Jordan, The Second Coming of Paisley: Militant Fundamentalism and Ulster Politics, p.222 Paisley's first political involvement came at the 1950 general election when he campaigned on behalf of the successful Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) candidate in Belfast West, the Church of Ireland minister James Godfrey MacManaway.Clifford Smyth, Ian Paisley: Voice of Protestant Ulster, p.4 The independent Unionist MP Norman Porter came to lead the National Union of Protestants, while Paisley became treasurer, but Paisley left after Porter refused to join the Free Presbyterian Church.
Paisley first hit headlines in 1956 when Maura Lyons, a 15-year-old Belfast Catholic doubting her faith, sought his help and was smuggled illegally to Scotland by members of his Free Presbyterian Church. Paisley publicly played a tape of her religious conversion but refused to help with the search for her, saying he would rather go to prison than return her to her Catholic family. Lyons eventually returned both to her family and Catholicism.