Reformed 'dinosaur' contemplates political truce with his Antichrist

Ian Paisley

BELFAST - Ian Paisley, now in his 81st year, has lived a long enough life to see Ireland, north and south, change dramatically.

The transition has been on such a scale that it has even changed him, leading him to shake hands this week with Archbishop Sean Brady, head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, which Paisley has so often denounced as anti-Christian.

The Archbishop found the encounter "helpful and constructive", while Paisley said it had led to "a very good and useful exchange of views". They will meet again.

Yet the Paisleyite faithful need not worry: the old Protestant warhorse's anti-Catholic instincts are intact. His website features denunciations of "the blasphemous mass" and "the filth and guilt of Rome". But while his religious certainties remain firmly in place, the gradual fading of the Troubles has compelled him and everyone else to adapt to changed circumstances.

The man so often described as a dinosaur has, by exercising his impressive brainpower and reservoirs of sheer cunning, evolved unexpectedly well.

Practically none of Northern Ireland's new era is of his making - he fought tooth and nail against its emergence. Yet as the smoke clears after years of violence, he is undoubtedly No 1: head of the biggest party and in complete control of Protestant politics.

He will be the crucial figure at talks this week in Scotland, where London and Dublin will press him to share power with republicans. Sinn Fein has said it is up for it, but Paisley has yet to say yea or nay.

His call will shape the course of politics for years to come. But whatever happens in politics, most people in Northern Ireland are getting on with vastly improved lives.

While the worst year in the Troubles saw almost 500 deaths, now there are about five a year. These are mostly the work of loyalists, many of them grudge killings.

This toll is the lowest it has been since the 1960s. But the continuing killings, even at such low numbers, are one reason why there has been no official announcement that the Troubles are over.

Deprivation levels are probably lower than ever, with unemployment down and decades of slum clearance creating high standards of housing stock. Public expenditure has been high for decades, with Northern Ireland receiving billions from Westminster each year.

Belfast has sprouted splendid new buildings, for business and entertainment. Locals go to see the Buena Vista Social Club and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

There are new roads, expansive plans for dockside developments, new restaurants and "super pubs". It may not have the rocket-speed growth of Dublin's Celtic tiger, but the improvement has been steady.

In the 1960s, when Paisley started his controversial career, the middle class was overwhelmingly Protestant. Today a new Catholic middle class has its fair share of the country's growing number of BMWs.

This is partly because, almost under cover of the Troubles, London introduced several highly effective tranches of anti-discrimination legislation. The Catholic civil rights movement of the late 1960s had decisively won the argument that they were unjustly being denied houses and jobs.

Paisley vehemently opposed that movement, and the idea of any concessions to Catholics. "Ulster is Protestant" was one of his war cries. Today a remarkable inversion has taken place, with Catholics no longer complaining of wide-scale discrimination. Alienation has become much more of a Protestant phenomenon.

The poorer sections of the Protestant working class include many who have become almost completely detached from the education system. Many Protestant middle-class students are opting for English and Scottish universities. Having gone across the water, they tend not to return.

The Catholic working class has, meanwhile, become much better plugged in to the education system, though it has not received any huge benefit from any peace dividend. The peace process has produced no high-profile factories, for example.

Yet it has certainly acquired a distinct new sense of empowerment.

Many are intensely proud of Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who have become international figures with real clout. Last week, the two republicans were to be found, as so often, negotiating with Tony Blair at Chequers.

Sinn Fein is the largest nationalist party and the chances of a political settlement rest on a Paisley-Adams deal. When the two men became active in the 1960s, the concept of an accord between them was beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

For much of the turbulent period that followed, Sinn Fein was little more than a cheerleader for IRA violence, while Paisleyites maintained a rigid opposition to any arrangement involving even the most moderate Catholics.

Many were appalled when the past few elections established beyond doubt that Sinn Fein and Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party were top of the heap in their respective communities. But in today's Belfast there is hope where before there was none, and the hope has grown that the two hardline elements can thrash out a deal.

IN PAISLEY'S WORDS

* "Woe to the Royal House of Britain for flirting with the Roman Harlot! Woe to the Government of this United Kingdom for parleying with popery! Rome may paint her face and attire her hair like Jezebel of old, but I still recognise the murderous wrinkles on the brow of the old scarlet-robed hag."

* "I recognise what seed she [the papacy] is of. She is the seed of the serpent, the offspring of Belial and the progeny of hell. Her eye gleams with the serpent's light. Her clothes reek of the brimstone of the pit. The leaders of the now apostate reformed churches are tripping over one another to slabber on the Pope's slippers." (From his 1982 book No Pope Here.)

* "I renounce you as the Antichrist." - Paisley to Pope John Paul II, who was addressing the European Parliament in 1988.

- INDEPENDENT