By holding elections at this most inappropriate time Tony Blair caved in to pressure from the Irish government, Sinn Féin, SDLP and the DUP. In the name of democracy elections were demanded and any refusal would have been heralded as a denial of democracy.
Today unfortunately the SDLP is the biggest loser. The UUP position remains quite solid but rebels, who have more in common with Paisleyism than the DUP itself, remain inside the UUP. The biggest challenge now faces the DUP. Until now Paisley took the easy road as perennial sideline critic who once chose jail from which to write his 'letters from the prison cell'. One poster proclaimed, "Moses choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season".
In the 1950s and 1960s Protestants from the mission halls and sects seemed further removed from the establishment than Catholics. I was cradled in this environment and still recall the sense of shame on admitting to membership of the Church of God – a Shankill Road holiness church described by a local Anglican minister as "no church but only a wooden hut." Children from similar backgrounds faced ridicule from teachers so my parents agreed I could say I was Presbyterian. My father believed all mainline Protestant Churches had gone soft and we shared with Free Presbyterians the notion that the Catholic Church was the biblical harlot. The crucial difference was that for us Protestant Churches were biblical 'daughters of the harlot'. To wear clerical garb like Ian Paisley, was to return to the ways of the harlot and some of our people were aghast when a pastor wore his collar 'back to front' to gain admittance to a hospital patient!
Paisley's promotion of a political role for born-again Christians conflicted with most mission halls which devoted their energies exclusively to preaching or occasionally, like Amy Carmichael, to bettering the conditions of the poor.
Our hall rejected any authority outside the Bible and had no room for priests, bishops, popes, moderators or presidents. My father considered all politics 'a dirty game' whereas Paisley reserved his strictures for the (UUP) Glengall Street 'cesspit'.
Last week outside a polling station in South Belfast, I spoke with DUP people alongside supporters of an anti-agreement unionist candidate backed by Martin Smyth and Jeffrey Donaldson. I discovered the DUP activists were all members of Paisley's Church. When I said I once attended their church they became quite open about their religious views.
I said that when I was last in Paisley's Church in 1971 thousands had crammed in. Today they said, the congregation had dwindled to a few hundred people. In the late 1960s/early 1970s people had flocked to hear Ian Paisley's political/religious message.
The congregation swelled during the never-ending political crises before Paisley reportedly dropped the 'political interlude' from Sunday evening services.
The chat was so good that one voter told us that if the UUP and DUP could get on as well at Stormont Northern Ireland's problems would be solved! But, I mused, politics tied to the fundamentalist gospel makes democratic compromises impossible and distorts the gospel. Still there are elements within the DUP like Peter Robinson who may not be so entrapped. In 1987 Robinson, as deputy leader of the DUP alongside UUP secretary Frank Millar jnr, was involved in the unionist task force whose report never saw the light of day. It advocated devolved power-sharing but Paisley and Molyneaux binned it resulting in Robinson and Millar resigning forthwith.
There could therefore be some flickers of light at the end of this tunnel but it will prove very difficult for Paisley to relinquish the strength coming from his outsider position. Rumours abound about vacating the leadership and about Robinson opening channels with Dublin. Paisley now hankers after respectability and political success but after a lifetime outside the camp this could prove well nigh impossible. Republicans, whose activities alongside their failure to provide transparency on decommissioning precipitated this crisis, might help free the DUP from the grip of fundamentalist obscurantism.
This would require courage, particularly on the part of the DUP – something that until now has been conspicuously lacking.
