Opinion

Rest of us bear Paisley's burden

ALTHOUGH politics and personality are often intertwined in life, the death of a politician requires respect for the person before review of the politics.

Separating the two is particularly difficult in the case of Ian Paisley. More than any other public figure in 20th-century Ireland, his politics were built on personality, to the extent that his supporters' beliefs and behaviour were known for many years as Paisleyism.

However, despite this significantly divisive role in politics for most of his career, the immediate priority in the aftermath of his passing is to recognise the loss which his death brings to his family and friends. A man who valued the warmth and love of his family, Mr Paisley rarely ventured far without the support of his wife, Eileen. To her, his death is an immeasurable loss.

Even his political enemies will recognise his record in representing all his constituents and in often seeking to distance his public politics from his personal concern for the welfare of others.

His public career in politics will receive a more critical appraisal. His early role as a religious preacher concentrated as much on denigrating Catholicism as it did on promoting fundamental Protestantism.

His anti-Catholic insults were in stark contrast to the growing liberalism and tolerance of the 1960s. For that reason, Mr Paisley will not be remembered fondly by many older nationalists.

He extended his fundamentalism into politics by opposing the civil rights campaign. His counter-marches and prayer meetings contributed significantly to the sectarian tensions which ultimately exploded into violence.

At the same time, he portrayed himself as protecting the soul of unionism, hounding a succession of union-ist leaders for the slightest deviation from a vision of unionist purity, which he defined and redefined in his own political interests.

Many were surprised, therefore, when he agreed to share power with Sinn Féin in 2007. It was a decision which created a period of unprecedented administrative harmony and unexpected political stability. It was his finest hour.

However, it did not last. He was soon undone by the political standards which he had expounded in a lifetime of rhetoric and protest. The man who had claimed credit for toppling O'Neill, Chichester-Clarke, Faulkner and Trimble was swept into the dustbin of political history by the same brush which he had invented 40 years earlier.

Today the party which he founded is constrained in policy and politics because the theory and practice of Paisleyism lives on. For him that represents an unfortunate political legacy. For the rest of us it is a burden which we have not yet learned to unload.