John Coulter with a column on the career of Ian Paisley from the Irish Daily Star that initially featured in Newshound on 21 Januray 2014.
For it is written, Vengence is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
In this case, the immortal piece of Biblical Christian advice provided in Romans Chapter 12 should refer to ex-First Minister and DUP boss Ian Paisley, now Lord Bannside.
Tonight's (Monday) second part of the 'double whammy' against the DUP by Paisley senior is expected to lift the lid on the normally ultra-secret world of the hardline fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church.
Big Ian founded his breakaway sect in 1951, two decades before he launched the DUP after double-jobbing in Stormont and Westminster.
It is not just the star of the Paisley dynasty which has crashed and burned, but the denomination he founded, commonly dubbed 'the Free P's'.
Even though the Free P's only had about 16,000 members out of one million Northern Protestants, the Paisley-led sect once enjoyed an iron-fist grip on the DUP.
The price for deposing Paisley as First Minister, DUP chief and Free P Moderator was to confine the sect to the insignificant fringes of Protestantism.
Tonight's BBC programme is also expected to confirm the very strong influence which Paisley's wife, Eileen, had on the Big Man.
She was in politics as a Belfast councillor long before Big Ian clinched his Stormont Bannside seat.
For years, she penned a column in the influential Revivalist magazine, the Free P's official organ. The Free Church was often branded the DUP at prayer.
The depth of perceived betrayal among the Free P faction of the DUP at Big Ian, first signing the St Andrews Agreement, and then entering a power-sharing Executive with the Shinners and launching the highly successful 'Chuckle Brothers' routine with Sinn Féin's Marty McGuinness, should never be underestimated.
In a theological 'Night of the Long Knives', Paisley senior was deposed.
Well before these two programmes on Paisley were aired, it was suspected the content would be the Lord's revenge on those who had forced him out of church leadership.
And that's why the DUP delegation poured cold water on the Haass agenda. Agree to Haass, and the party would suffer the same fate as Davy Trimble's UUP for signing up to the Good Friday Agreement.
The DUP could never get round Protestant victims groups' opposition to dead IRA men being equal to innocent civilians murdered by republican terrorists.
And there was no way the DUP could sell to loyalism that IRA terrorists should be given immunity for details about unsolved Provo killings.
It was the UUP agreeing to the early release of terrorist inmates as part of the Good Friday Agreement which finally sealed the party's decline.
Top DUP negotiator wee Jeffrey Donaldson had seen this pitfall when he was in the UUP; he did not want to walk the DUP into the same trap which befell Trimble, and as we will see tonight befell Paisley.
Perhaps, too, we will see with Baroness Eileen tonight an example of hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?
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Where is all the love for there fellow men and women that the was wrote into the free P's bible and which was talked and roared about for years-
ReplyDeleteI read some-where that neither paisley have set foot inside their own church since the day of the big boot-some faith there-but mammy and daddy paisley still have a son in the DUP serving as a MP-a case of party over religion-them party meetings must be a sight to behold-
They say that revenge is a dish best served cold but the two old codgers in the Paisley family have left it to late in their days to start a new party or new church-A sad end for the two gits-
Michael henry
ReplyDeleteI don't know about a dish served cold.
The thought of him crashing and burning much more appealing.
Hierarchy of victims is amusing. Of course Prods never killed anyone. And on it continues. Bye Bye Ian, now fuck up and fuck off.
ReplyDeleteLarry,
ReplyDeleteI agree more of Sophie and less of the big pulsating mass!