The prophet who likes to keep the future to himself

Ian Paisley, viewed by some as ‘a force for stability’, is reasserting his authority over the DUP after a period of ill-health. Some of his progressive political associates have suffered a loss of power as a result. This bodes ill for any prospect of reaching a power-sharing arrangement with Sinn Fein by the 24 November 2006 deadline set by the British government.

Dr Paisley, now in his eighty-first year, still has two vital political issues to settle. Will he tell his followers that Sinn Fein can now be trusted and lead his party into an Executive; or will he turn his back on a ‘deal’ believed by some to have been carefully crafted by his lieutenants in widely-rumoured clandestine talks between his party progressives and their arch-enemies, Sinn Fein?

DUP/Sinn Fein liaison is further indicated by the Sinn Fein briefing paper written for Mitchell Reiss, the American envoy, on 19 May 2006 and leaked to BBC Northern Ireland’s political editor Mark Devenport. The document revealed not only the frustrations of Sinn Fein over a stalled ‘early return of the institutions’, but also their willingness to sequence events to meet the needs of the DUP. Without a commitment to power-sharing by the November deadline, the Hain Assembly and the salaries of its members will terminate.

The collapse of the current devolution experiment could force the Ulster Unionist Party, which is balanced on a financial knife-edge, into melt-down. Finishing off Ulster Unionism would leave the DUP with a stranglehold over a disgruntled and cynical unionist electorate at a time when opinion polls stress that both the Agreement and devolution lack a popular mandate.

Bitter in-fighting between unionists has weakened the Union over time and eroded Ulster’s ‘Britishness’. Disaffected unionist voters feel that they have the status of permanent losers, helping to explain the rising abstentionist vote. Both unionist parties can be criticised for entering negotiations from a position of weakness. Trimble’s unionists and the DUP both ignored the sage advice of the anti-home rule unionists of 1912, who pledged themselves to ‘stand as one’. In that context, Ian Paisley’s claim to the mantle of ‘traditional unionism’ reveals his gift for hyperbole. The DUP’s approach has been to follow the path David Trimble carved out while taking care to cover its tracks and to rein in potential mavericks. The DUP does not conform to the typical characteristics of a British political party. For example, the DUP is not transparent, and few of its members are willing to talk, while those that do are insistent upon remaining anonymous.

Despite this, details have emerged of rumoured ‘secret contacts’ with Sinn Fein. These, it is said, began a considerable period of time ago between representatives of the progressive wing of the DUP and significant figures in Sinn Fein. Martin McGuinness has claimed that such talks took place — a claim firmly denied by the DUP. The contacts, said to have been facilitated by quiet Americans, are rumoured to have met initially under the cover of the politics section of Belfast’s historic Linenhall Library. A variety of locations, some outside Northern Ireland, are said to have provided the venues for subsequent talks.

The lack of transparency arises from the curious structure of the party, which is built around the charismatic personality of one man, ‘The Doc’. Having previously founded the Free Presbyterian Church, which he led in a crusade against the apostate mainstream Presbyterian church, Paisley next turned his attention to the political hustings, and deployed similar belligerent tactics. The Protestant Unionist Party followed, later to be transformed into the secular DUP.

These were the vehicles which Paisley used to challenge the unionist establishment over their appeasement of irridentist Irish nationalism. The climax of this long feud turned on the terms of the Belfast Agreement. Adopting an anti-agreement stance, which was soon modified, the DUP made sweeping electoral gains as it pursued the twin objectives of a devolved solution and seats on the Executive.

These elements are at the core of Ian Paisley’s life and explain his appeal to the affections of hundreds of thousands of his supporters. He combines the roles of an Old Testament prophet and a politician. It is impossible to imagine a figure more removed from the ‘fashion’ politics of Tony Blair and David Cameron than Ian Paisley, though his stance as a secular politician has inhibited prophetic outbursts against Britain’s post-modern society.

The party is characterised by unexpected features. The DUP is comparable with parties in the Republic of Ireland, particularly Fianna Fail. Both the DUP and Fianna Fail exhibit a form of ‘democratic centralism’ similar to that in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Both parties are unforgiving towards those who speak out of turn, or buck tight internal discipline.

There are additional factors including the use of proportional representation, not only to maximise party strength, but also to jettison party candidates who have lost favour. Under PR, party bosses can allocate to a candidate a ward in a multi-member constituency where he has little prospect of gaining sufficient votes to escape elimination early in the count.

Kinship plays a crucial role, with both wives and offspring standing for election. They build on the vote-catching prowess of their relative, who also gains from a widening cohort of first-preference votes. Another similarity with parties in the Republic is the ingrained parochialism which militates against creative thinking. This indicates that Paisley’s party could accommodate itself to Ireland’s political culture.

The progressive faction in the DUP may have a more pragmatic view of the future. Would they be willing to make the adjustment to an all-island solution, an idea first mooted by Desmond Boal, a key figure during the party’s formative years?

Paisley himself fulfils a role not unlike that of an Irish chieftain of old, commanding total loyalty from his tribe.

As Paisley’s inevitable departure nears, the second issue gains increasing importance. The question of how the transition will be managed is not far from the surface, yet is rarely spoken of in party circles. The issue of the successor will have a profound influence on the future of the party. The DUP might not even survive the departure of its founder/prophet. If ‘The Doc’ fails to ensure a smooth handover by anointing his heir apparent, the party could well implode due to conflict between the family fiefdoms within the DUP.

The role of Paisley’s Free Church could prove decisive because approximately half of the Assembly Party are Free Presbyterians. Acting as a kind of Praetorian Guard, they might move to ensure that the next leader is a fundamentalist rather than a progressive.

It is generally believed that the autumn will produce a period of intense activity as the two governments and Sinn Fein strive to conclude a ‘deal’ with Paisley. However, the run-up to the November deadline will differ significantly from the events of two years ago, when it was widely surmised that a deal was imminent. At that time Ian Paisley looked gravely ill, his face was gaunt, and he appeared to have lost a considerable amount of weight.

With Paisley’s health apparently in decline, a meeting of the party’s Executive was specially convened in mid-autumn 2004 at Belfast’s Stormont Hotel. A member of the Executive who was present revealed that the advantages of a prospective deal were sold to a quiescent party membership. It seemed as if the unthinkable was about to happen — the DUP and Sinn Fein sharing the Executive government of Northern Ireland together. The deal sat firmly within the parameters of the Belfast Agreement, but there had been sufficient movement to allow the DUP to claim that they had negotiated a better option than that of David Trimble.

But suddenly everything was called off with Paisley’s challenge to Sinn Fein to ‘repent in sackcloth and ashes’ effectively ending any prospect of a deal. Had Paisley learned of these rumoured ‘clandestine meetings’ with Sinn Fein? Other influences may also have been at work — his son Ian Paisley Junior, and the former Ulster Unionist Party leader and long-term ally of Ian Paisley, Lord Molyneaux, are both believed to have been hostile to a deal at this stage.

Ian Paisley has made a startling recovery and is back in control. Any backstairs arrangements that may have been made by his lieutenants and hinted at in the ‘leaked’ Sinn Fein briefing paper could be stalled, even if Sinn Fein can keep their criminal wing under tighter control than they did in 2004 when the IRA robbed the Northern Bank of over £26 million.

It looks as if the leader who asserts, inter alia, ‘Leave it to me, boys! I’ll save Ulster!’, will let us all know towards the end of November whether the power-sharing question raises a cry of ‘Never! Never!’, or a resounding ‘Yes!’.

Clifford Smyth is author of ‘Ian Paisley: Voice of Protestant Ulster’ (Scottish Academic Press).