By John Gibney, RIA
On August 16th 1969, an Irish diplomat visited a US politician to discuss the violence that had erupted in Northern Ireland in previous days. Seán Ó hÉideáin of the Irish embassy in Washington DC had been instructed to do so by his superiors in Dublin, and obtained an interview with Alexis Johnson, the Acting Secretary of State.
The main purpose of the meeting was to seek US support for an Irish proposal that a peacekeeping force be sent to Northern Ireland to deal with a situation that was spiralling out of control. While explaining the backdrop to the crisis, Ó hÉideáin told Johnson that 'unfortunately, a small extremist group, under Rev. Ian Paisley, had advocated hatred and violence'. At least one of the US officials present knew exactly who Ó hÉideáin was talking about.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Archives, John O'Donoghue interviews Ian Paisley for RTÉ News in 1968
As both Protestant cleric and unionist leader, Paisley remains one of the most distinctive figures in modern Irish history, and one of the most controversial. He was active in the public and political life of Northern Ireland for over half a century, culminating in his unlikely political partnership with the former IRA commander and Sinn Féin politician Martin McGuinness at the head of the Northern Ireland Executive from 2007 to 2008.
Paisley's avuncular turn as one half of the so-called 'Chuckle Brothers’ was in stark contrast to aspects of his earlier career. What that consisted of is reflected in the testimonies of contemporaries; in this case, Irish officials and politicians, many of whose views are revealed in the latest instalment in the RIA’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy series, which publishes archival material on Irish foreign relations.
So what did Irish diplomats and politicians think about Paisley as the Troubles erupted in earnest in August 1969, and in the immediate years that followed? While Paisley himself does not directly appear in the documents published in the volume – we never read him in his own words – the resonance of his activities permeates the Irish documentary record, often published here for the first time.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Archives, RTÉ News footage shows Paisleyites holding a counter-demonstration against Queen's University students in Belfast in 1968
A word derived from his name appears more often than his name itself and speaks to his influence as he came to political prominence during the 1960s. When the 'Battle of the Bogside' erupted in August 1969 Bernadette Devlin contacted the Irish Department of Defence and said that ‘‘they were fighting a united force of police and Paisleyites’. The next day it was reported in the Irish Department of External (now Foreign) Affairs that ‘a new development was an attack on the Cathedral by the police and Paisleyites’ in Derry.
As violence spread elsewhere that month, nationalist politicians in Northern Ireland were contacting the Irish authorities to report ‘a serious deterioration had occurred in the overall situation in Belfast, that B Specials had been drinking and had begun to hand over their rifles to Paisleyites’. Furthermore, ‘the Catholic area of Ardoyne in Belfast was surrounded by Paisleyites and B Specials and that the inhabitants were without any protection whatever. Unless British troops were moved in before night-fall, a massacre of the inhabitants of the area was inevitable’.
The key word is Paisleyite, a reference to the followers and supporters of Paisley and testament to his influence. The historian Joe Lee once observed that Paisley was best seen as ‘a spokesman…for ‘Paisleyism’: a particular type of militant, sectarian loyalism that was hostile to any supposed concession to the Catholic minority.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Archives, RTÉ News footage of thousands of loyalists joining Ian Paisley in a protest outside Stormont in 1969
As Minister for External Affairs, Patrick Hillery, put it when speaking to one British minister in December 1969 about the proposed foundation of what became the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) ‘the use of the word "Ulster" and "Defence" was emotive and, to some minds, indicative of what Paisleyism stands for’. On another occasion Hillery observed that he ‘thought that Paisley felt he had a divine mission… and indicated that Paisley got people emotionally upset’.
Even aside from his role a populist demagogue, there were also concerns about the prospect of electoral success for Paisley and his allies (initially through the Protestant Unionist Party, and the the DUP) as they challenged the Ulster Unionist Party, then the ruling party in the old Northern Ireland (Stormont) parliament. The emergence of ‘Paisleyism’ as an electoral force was seen to have the potential to push the existing unionist regime to the right, thus narrowing the prospects of it bringing in the various political reforms that the Irish government felt were essential to defuse the crisis in Northern Ireland.
This was noted in 1970 by diplomat Florrie O’Riordan as he sought to explain ‘the frightful menace of Paisleyism and its grip on the Unionist Party now…That a decent society might vomit out Paisley is possible but unless a decent society is created we can’t know…the bully-boy elements are, of course, determined to continue their domination and the bully-boy elements are entrenched in the [Ulster] Unionist Party. They were there before Paisley…Perhaps if Paisley hadn’t arisen, they might have had to invent him – he is in a long line of such useful sectarian demagogues, used to influence passions among the poor in east Ulster’.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Archives, Eddie Barrett reports for RTÉ News on Ian Paisley preaching at a Free Presbyterian Church Gospel service in the Mansion House, Dublin in 1978
This was hardly a compliment, though the documents also contain reports of British officials and politicians articulating their distaste for Paisley (‘a most sinister man’, as one British minister put it). Irish officials were firmly of the view that Paisley in this period was a divisive and dangerous figure.
But as Irish diplomat Eamonn Gallagher astutely observed in 1970, ‘Paisley may be regarded as the tip of an iceberg. Reunification of the country, with the acquiescence of the Protestant community, will not be possible until the kind of thing Paisley represents is reduced to manageable size’. His comments reflected the recognition that a deal with unionism would have to be done, no matter how unlikely it might have seemed at the time.
Dr John Gibney is Assistant Editor with the Royal Irish Academy's Documents on Irish Foreign Policy programme and is one of the editors of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy Vol. XIV: 1969-1973.
Documents on Irish Foreign Policy is a partnership between the Royal Irish Academy, the National Archives of Ireland and the Department of Foreign Affairs
Follow RTÉ Brainstorm on WhatsApp and Instagram for more stories and updates
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
