Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Prioritising paid work has meant slow blogging over the past couple of days.  A more lengthy assessment of the CSR's effects on Northern Ireland is in the offing. But in the mean time it's interesting to note that the Finance Minister formerly known as 'Red Sammy' Wilson  has throughout the run-up to cuts struck a more realistic figure than his DUP colleagues, whom Belfast Telegraph Political editor, David Gordon, notes are becoming increasingly Keynesian (and it takes one to know one). Meanwhile the party's former leader, the Reverend Lord Doctor Ian Bannside Paisley, has taken what appears to be a dig at his successor's new found love of integrated education.  In a thoroughly baffling News Letter column he includes this gnomic offering: The lively debate concerning education which this week has exercised many is a debate that we cannot luxuriate in or afford commissions on, while there presently is not the funding for classroom assistants, for library b...

On Monday last I posed some questions about a letter, issued on behalf of Ian Paisley Senior, which marked his retirement as MP. The document was distributed with a very prominent picture of Ian Paisley Junior, the DUP candidate for North Antrim, posing with his father. I observed that there is a strong argument that the photograph constitutes campaigning, particularly because, by the time it hit doormats in the constituency, the election had been called. Over at the North Antrim Local Interest List, Nevin develops the theme . The letter, which is dated mid March, was not distributed until the 6-8 April. Why the delay? Nevin notes the striking coincidence that Paisley's correspondence is dated from the very day the election was called. It appears that the letter was not printed on official Commons notepaper, but undoubtedly the portcullis livery which it carries is intended to give the impression that it is distributed by Ian Paisley in his capacity as MP, rather than in his ...

Sadiq Khan, a Labour transport minister, is to be subject to a Conservative complaint , after he used House of Commons stationery and prepaid envelopes to write to constituents lauding his record. The Tories consider his actions an infringement of parliamentary rules which prohibit the use of such resources for campaigning. Last month, to mark the end of forty years representing North Antrim, part-time, at Westminster, Ian Paisley sent a letter , on stationery headed by House of Commons livery, to his constituents. It doesn’t feature the word DUP and although it is deeply self-valedictory, it is possible to argue that the text does not represent campaigning. Included in an envelope with the document we have a photo of the ‘Reverend Doctor‘, or whatever his fawning acolytes like to style him, posing with ‘óg’, ‘Junior’, ‘Baby Doc’, a chip off the old block. If the DUP used its communications allowance to fund this piece of electioneering it could constitute a breach of rules. ...

It might be premature to talk about 'the fall of the house of Robinson', but David Gordon has updated his excellent book on the Paisleys to account for recent events. As the Political Editor for the Belfast Telegraph it's impressive that he managed to find the time! The original review if here . Details of the new chapter from the publisher: The Iris Robinson sex-and-money scandal forms part of the crumbling of the Paisleyite movement in Northern Ireland politics’, a new version of an acclaimed book argues. First published in autumn 2009, The Fall of the House of Paisley, by Belfast journalist David Gordon, charted how Ian Paisley's time as Northern Ireland's First Minister came to an abrupt end in 2008. The new version, published this week, has been updated to examine the impact of the scandal surrounding Iris Robinson which broke early in the new year. Gordon's book received highly positive reviews and repeatedly made the non-fiction best-seller lists du...

The media has already established its angle on the North Antrim general election contest. It’s all about Jim Allister and whichever Paisley is nominated to rebuff his challenge. To a degree the preoccupation with the DUP / TUV contest is understandable. After all, in 2005 Senior romped home with more than 25,000 votes and Ulster Unionist candidate, Rodney McCune, was beaten to second spot by Sinn Féin. However, four years have elapsed and Northern Ireland’s electoral landscape looks rather different. Conservatives and Unionists will hope to improve their vote share considerably in the constituency. The TUV’s irrelevance to Westminster politics is manifestly obvious, and the Paisleys‘ reputation has been tarnished, even within their traditional heartlands. If voters in North Antrim need any reminder of the venality which caused the family’s downfall, they need only glance at a whopping £500,000 advice centre in Ballymena. Of course, if UCUNF is to benefit from a fragmented DUP v...

David Gordon played his own part in ‘The Fall of the House of Paisley’ by providing the print media’s most comprehensive coverage of the political dynasty’s links to property magnate Seymour Sweeney, and reporting other scandals which rocked the DUP during 2007 and 2008. Indeed the journalist brought to popular attention a number of the important scoops which underpin his new book’s narrative. It should be acknowledged, however, that a local blog , with its relative lack of resources, doggedly matched the Belfast Telegraph for detail as the extent of cronyism in the Paisleys’ North Antrim constituency became apparent. The book’s blurb describes its contents as ‘the slow demise of a powerful political dynasty’, but the actual succession of events which precipitated the departure of Ian Paisley Junior from government, and subsequently resulted in the resignation of his father from the First Minister’s office, unfolded relatively quickly. Gordon’s book moves the story along with suit...

It’s worth mentioning a new book due to be launched in November. The Belfast Telegraph’s resident politics attack dog, David Gordon, has penned ‘The Fall of the House of Paisley’ . Gordon promises to “pinpoint the structural flaws in the House of Paisley and shine an uncompromising light on the Northern Ireland political class”. The book is available from the Three Thousand Versts Bookstore .

Deirdre Nelson, the Ballymena councillor who recently defected from the DUP, has officially announced her intention to fulfil council duties as a member of the Conservative party. It is, admittedly, a little curious that Nelson’s disillusionment with her former party seems to date from Ian Paisley’s departure as leader. The North Antrim MP’s rabble rousing style hardly conformed to the inclusive, pan-UK unionism which the Conservatives espouse. But that is the type of politics which the councillor explicitly endorsed when she explained her decision to colleagues at the council’s offices at Ardeevin, according to the Ballymena Times . “I have watched, with interest, the recent moves by the Conservative Party to begin to steer Northern Ireland away from sectarian politics into normal UK politics and to ensure that Northern Ireland fulfils (its) role as an integral and necessary part of the United Kingdom, in which all traditions are welcomed. “This, coupled with the recent visit by Da...

Reviewing the previous 12 months in politics in Northern Ireland, Mark Devenport observes that 2008 witnessed the DUP sidelining its long-standing leader, Ian Paisley, and the personality cult which attended his leadership. Perhaps 2009 will be the year that the DUP’s partner in sectarian carve-up, Sinn Féin, relegates its own aging demagogue, Gerry Adams, to the hinterland of enforced semi-retirement. The provos’ president was reduced to a series of intemperate ethno-nationalist diatribes over the course of 2008. In a bizarre role reversal Martin McGuinness was deployed as good cop to Adams’ bad. Increasingly, the West Belfast MP’s influence, even as a figurehead, might hinder Sinn Féin. His rhetoric is likely to prove counterproductive as republicans become ever more institutionalised at Stormont. Additionally, and significantly, his patronage of executive liability, Caitriona Ruane, will become an impediment to removing the party’s most embarrassing minister. Adams hard-line...

The low profile which Ian Paisley has maintained since his retirement has actually impressed me. I suspected that his ego would require him to remain a public figure and that he could easily become the ‘ghost at the feast’ of Northern Ireland politics. As yet he has not fulfilled that role and has contented himself, in terms of public participation, merely with a column in the News Letter. It is predictable enough that this week he has used this platform to attack Glentoran and the Irish Football Association for rearranging a fixture to last Sunday. I am always slightly bemused by the suggestion that playing sport is a violation of this so called day of rest. If, as Paisley believes, God provides us with Sunday for our own benefit, that we might “rest both mind and body from the matters that occupy us during the other six days”, enjoying that day by watching or playing football is a fine way to rest the mind and rejuvenate the body!

It is appropriate that Ian Paisley is spending his last day as First Minister cuddling up to fellow UK regional nationalist, Alex Salmond. His Scottish counterpart is rather more circumspect than Paisley in public, but together perhaps privately they can reflect on the evils of the ‘Brits’ . Immediate concerns, however, are focussed on the handover of the First Minister’s position from Paisley to his successor, Peter Robinson, and the potential for Provisional Sinn Féin to derail the process by declining to re-nominate Martin McGuinness for the Deputy First Minister’s post, a position which is tied to that of the First Minister. With his customary flair for understatement Paisley has deemed any potential failure to nominate, “an evil thing”, although you might be forgiven for thinking that it would not constitute the Provisionals’ most evil action throughout the years. Nevertheless the threat is being taken seriously, to the extent that Gordon Brown invited both SF president Gerry ...

In the introduction to ‘ Paisley: From Demagogue to Democrat? ’ Ed Moloney asks ‘was Paisley the only member of his flock who never really or truly believed his own gospel?’ and the book certainly points to a cynicism within the man which dictates that the only principles which he does not expect to be unbending are his own. This biography of the outgoing DUP leader plots the machinations whereby, fomenting division and fuelling hatred, he opportunistically carved out both his own church and political party from the main bodies of Presbyterianism and unionism respectively. Moloney’s updated book is particularly lucid charting the symbiotic, nurturing relationship between Paisleyism and republicanism throughout the troubles and into the present dispensation. The IRA’s campaign provided the climate of fear in which Paisley’s politics could thrive and conversely his brand of sectarianism and recalcitrance contributed to an atmosphere where violence could flourish. Often the DUP leader...

Saturday morning saw me tramping around Belfast’s limited collection of book shops searching for a copy of Frank Millar’s, David Trimble – The Price of Peace , to no avail. Amazon also currently list the book as ‘out of stock’ despite its release date being last month, although that site does include a page advertising a previous edition of the book as David Trimble – The Prince of Peace , which made me chuckle. To compound my frustration, Alex Kane has clearly acquired a copy of the book and discusses its contents in his News Letter column . Kane’s piece draws on Millar’s book and a polemic by A Tangled Web’s David Vance (Unionism Decayed) to illustrate two very different strands of unionist thought. Frank Millar’s sympathetic treatment of Trimble, Kane views as representing the pragmatic strain of unionism which prioritises carving out the best deal available and Vance's book is an example of what the columnist describes as “moral high-ground unionism (the view that almost an...

As Ian Paisley conducts his ‘victory lap’ I have begun to read Ed Moloney’s biography ‘From Demagogue to Democrat’. The book will require its own review, but for the time being I will say that refreshing the memory as to the very real damage which the man inflicted on this country is timely, given the plaudits he is receiving from all quarters. Rather than the sense of gratitude and relief which seems to characterise attitudes to the ‘new Paisley’ from those who abhorred the old, there should instead be anger at the utter bare-faced audacity and blatant hypocrisy of the man. We should be no more grateful to Paisley for his pragmatic decision to suspend his incitements to violence and hatred and to refrain from wrecking power-sharing initiatives, than we should be to McGuinness / Adams et al for deigning not to shoot people or blow them up. Thus I read with incredulity the revelation in last week’s Belfast Telegraph MORI poll , that Catholic respondents gave Paisley an approval rat...

Mick Fealty has chosen to focus on Northern Ireland’s democratic deficit in his reflection on a year of devolution , carried on Comment is Free. Yesterday I alluded to deficiencies in our system of government as regards accountability, but it is worth quoting Mick’s most pertinent paragraph in order to slightly develop the point. “With mandatory coalition it is simply not possible to vote the government out. Even if voters shift their allegiance there is no decisive tipping point at which the electorate can collectively punish parties that don't come up to scratch. At most, success and failure are only relative points on a single continuum. The danger in the long term is that it institutionalises mediocre government and the system fossilises into elective patronage that cannot be challenged.” Yesterday none other than the First Minister delivered a r are moment of perspicacity and transparency , acknowledging that government here is “not perfect and not wholly democratic, but the ...

Peter Robinson has been chosen by his party’s Assembly group to succeed Ian Paisley as leader. The undemocratic nature of this process aside, questions have been raised as to Robinson’s ability to unite the various factions in the DUP. I highlighted an excellent article by Alex Kane on this site , and yesterday on Everything Ulster , which argues that Robinson cannot heal the fissures which ultimately lead to Paisley’s resignation. On Slugger O’Toole a post which discusses Frank Millar’s updated biography of David Trimble, quotes a paragraph dealing with the future of the process, in which Trimble played such a pivotal role, from the book’s conclusion, “[the DUP] expect Irish republicans and nationalists to take and sustain the cross community initiatives and outreach necessary to stabilise and secure Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom. That task falls to the party of the constitutional status quo. And to meet it, the new DUP will have to reinvent itself all over ...

Over the past couple of days I have sifted through a quantity of the newsprint devoted to evaluating the impact of the Belfast Agreement 10 years on. Some accounts are thought provoking and some less so. Most acknowledge that Northern Ireland has benefited from the agreement as regards consolidating peace and facilitating a degree of economic recovery. The more thoughtful articles also contend that the way in which the agreement has been implemented and the peace process outworked, has actually compounded division in our society, as well as sending a deeply troubling message about the rewards which political violence can accrue. Yesterday Lord Trimble, who played such a pivotal role in leading unionism to acceptance of the agreement, wrote in the Daily Telegraph about the work still to be done in order to create a truly peaceful society and criticised the Labour government’s repeated concessions to republicans in their desperation to implement the deal. Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s arti...

We do not need any great reminder of the influence of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity in Northern Ireland. After all our largest political party is rotten with those who believe they are being guided by God. In fact our outgoing First Minister, who is accustomed to preaching the most virulent form of Christianity, will shortly be replaced by Peter Robinson, who attends with his wife the revivalist evangelical Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle, one of the largest church congregations in Europe. It is quite an indictment of the nature of the party when Robinson is considered to be on the godless secular wing of the DUP. In case we needed another reminder of the influence of fundamentalist Christianity, 30,000 people (that is thirty thousand people) from our little province of 1,500,000, attended rallies featuring the evangelist Franklin Graham in Belfast’s Odyssey Arena over the weekend . Of course, in the United Kingdom, people are entitled to freedom of conscience and free...

The row over victims’ commission legislation which has broken out in the Northern Ireland Assembly lends particular pertinence to novelist Glenn Patterson’s sardonic piece, on Comment is Free today, accusing the twin nationalisms axis of “a consensus of crowing” . DUP / SF have of course achieved remarkably little since forming a government, despite their indulgence in constant self-congratulation. And in the unravelling of a deal which the carve-up were attempting to impose, we gain a startling insight into the high-handed fashion by which business is conducted by these two parties. In January it was announced that rather than appoint one victims’ commissioner (which would have cost the public purse approximately £250,000 annually) a victims’ commission comprising 4 commissioners would instead be appointed (at the cost of approximately £750,000 per annum). The ludicrous pretence used to justify this decision being that the First and Deputy First Ministers had been so overwhelme...

Like Ian Paisley before him, Bertie Ahern’s announcement that he will resign next month has been greeted with a plethora of political obituaries. Paisley’s resignation was presaged by suggestions of improbity and to say that there was a whiff of fiscal impropriety hanging over Bertie Ahern would be quite an understatement. Nevertheless these retrospective articles have in the cases of both men, at times bordered on eulogy. Columnists and colleagues alike, once a resignation has been tendered, have instantly begun to downplay and ignore the unfolding scandals which caused them. With Ahern, unlike Paisley, the praise has been unambiguous and almost universal. Fintan O’Toole’s article on Comment is Free has been completely atypical: “Allegations that he had taken large sums of cash from private donors while he was minister for finance in 1993 and 1994? That he had failed to pay tax on at least some of that money, even though he was in charge of the tax system? That he had been brazen...