Opinion

Patrick Murphy: Poor Ian Paisley is clearly the victim of an unfortunate political upbringing

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy is an Irish News columnist and former director of Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education.

July 28 2010: Irish News cartoonist Ian Knox shows the Paisley family united against party enemy Peter Robinson 
July 28 2010: Irish News cartoonist Ian Knox shows the Paisley family united against party enemy Peter Robinson  July 28 2010: Irish News cartoonist Ian Knox shows the Paisley family united against party enemy Peter Robinson 

This column has a good mind to fall out with the lot of you. It is disappointed and indeed disturbed at your attitudes and behaviour, which have plunged our society to unprecedented depths. You should be ashamed of yourselves. So there.

Oh dear, you say, what has caused this outburst? England not winning the World Cup? Boris Johnson losing his job? Sky TV allegedly reducing the width of the GAA pitch in Omagh?

None of those. It is your negative attitude to MP (well, currently half an MP) Ian Paisley Junior, a politician who has served his country (well, a different country, but never mind) with selflessness and patriotism.

He has been suspended from the Commons for bringing the House into disrepute, although some might suggest that in the context of British parliamentary history, that was quite an achievement.

He has also been suspended from the DUP, although whether it would be possible to bring it into further disrepute is a job for a committee of theologians with a lot of time on their hands.

But it is still a sad day when an MP is expelled from the Commons for 30 days and you lot collectively think, "Serves him right." How could you be so unkind? Many have doubted his claim, for example, that he does not remember helicopter flights, courtesy of the Sri Lankan government. It is perfectly possible to forget such things.

I know members of the civil rights movement, for example, who remember little about their helicopter flight, shortly after internment here in August 1971. Mind you, they were semi-conscious, having been severely beaten before being flown to Magilligan for further torture.

 Ian Paisley resigning as junior minister in 2008
 Ian Paisley resigning as junior minister in 2008  Ian Paisley resigning as junior minister in 2008

But this shows that it is possible not to remember helicopter flights sponsored by a government responsible for sectarian killings, torture and other human rights abuses - and not to remember flights in Sri Lanka either.

Sri Lanka is a bit like the north with rice. A former British colony (just like us - well most of our island), its three decades of civil war (same as us) ended with a national unity government (same system as us, only nationalists said we had two nations in our government). The United Nations reports that 80 per cent of those arrested under Sri Lanka's Prevention of Terrorism Act (same law as us) have complained of torture.

So Mr Paisley merely went to help a much-misunderstood government. Perhaps he did not want Sri Lanka to be seen as an abnormal society, like here, even though his father made such an outstanding contribution to our abnormality.

Paisley senior was an anti-Catholic bigot, who opposed the civil rights campaign, even though his followers would have benefited from the reforms it demanded. One example might illustrate his bigotry, which was fuelled by right-wing US fundamentalism.

His Protestant Telegraph was apparently the only European publication to carry a 1967 speech by controversial governor of Georgia, Lester Maddox, who said that Americans should stand up for God, capitalism and law and order. (If God is an American capitalist, presumably there will be no immigrants in heaven.)

Paisley praised Maddox as a courageous Christian leader, even though he was electorally backed by the Ku Klux Klan and threw three black students out of his restaurant at gun-point, calling them "dirty communists". (His election symbol was a pick-axe handle.)

So surely, fellow citizens, you must recognise that Ian junior comes from a politically dysfunctional family and should be regarded as a victim of circumstances? Any decent social worker could argue that he may have been traumatised by his political upbringing and his father's later expulsion from both the Church and the political party he founded.

Patrick Murphy
Patrick Murphy Patrick Murphy

Yes, one English newspaper wrote this week that Ian junior was involved in "an avalanche of revelations" so extensive that it had no room to cover them. Yes, he had to step down as a Stormont minister and, despite having one of the worst Westminster attendance records during 2010 - 2015, he claimed more expenses in 2012-2013 than any other MP.

But in his defence Mr Paisley has said that the Commons would be very dull if MPs were "robotic professional" politicians, whose outside interests were null and void. (Some of his interests now appear very void indeed.)

So Mr Paisley is clearly a victim of an unfortunate political upbringing. He needs our sympathy and understanding. He may have to stand for re-election, but whether he stands for the DUP or the UNP (Sri Lanka's United National Party) remains to be seen.

The main difference is that the right-wing UNP is more tolerant of minorities. Now behave yourselves out there.