Northern Ireland's Dr No who said 'yes' to peace
Firebrand preacher whose rhetoric was integral to the poisonous politics of Northern Ireland's 'Troubles' also helped pave the way for peace
Ian Paisley, the firebrand preacher-politician who for decades brayed "No Surrender!" across Northern Ireland's sectarian divide, died yesterday aged 88.
Paisley's Biblical fulminations against popes and Irish nationalists echoed among the bullets, bricks and bombs to form the soundtrack to 30 years of blood-letting. Yet in old age he astonished the people of Britain and Ireland, who had grown used to the Reverend "Doctor No". He agreed to lead the province alongside former IRA guerrillas, swallowing his dislike of a US-brokered peace deal.
It was a mark of his personal journey that even Catholic republicans prayed for his recovery when he fell gravely ill. "I have lost a friend," former IRA commander Martin McGuinness said.
Paisley saw himself as a defender of Ulster Protestants' links to the Crown.
Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate will no longer rule
But the venom of his antipathy to all things Catholic - in 1988, he was hauled from the European Parliament, bellowing that the visiting Pope John Paul II was "the Anti-Christ" - was an integral part of the poisonous sectarian politics of "the Troubles", in which over 3,600 died.