Giving The DUP Some Lip!

Dr John Coulter ✍ As a political commentator, I’ve earned a reputation for speaking my mind on issues and readers of The Pensive Quill and The Blanket before that will know how forthright I’ve been in expressing my views!

Mind you, as a Presbyterian minister’s son growing up in the heart of the north east Ulster Bible Belt in the Sixties and Seventies, expressing what I thought was not always the wisest of policies.

Here’s a link to some of my more youthful misadventures I’ve penned for The Pensive Quill.

This month, there has been extensive media coverage about the internal bickering going on within the DUP. I grew up in the heartland of political North Antrim where the DUP and the late Rev Ian Paisley established themselves electorally.

During the Paisley senior era, while the party may have had its internal problems, challenges and disputes, it always managed to keep them under wraps and largely away from the public gaze.

This year marked the 40th anniversary of my late dad’s first electoral foray when he was the Ulster Unionist Party candidate for North Antrim in the 1983 Westminster General Election.

After Paisley senior won the North Antrim Commons seat in 1970, standing as a Protestant Unionist, the forerunner of the DUP, the Ulster Unionist Party in that constituency had either supported Paisley Senior as the agreed UUUC/DUP candidate, or had parachuted in an outsider.

But in 1983, my dad - Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE - was the locally-selected North Antrim candidate for the UUP as well as being a Presbyterian minister, senior Orangeman and a lecturer in the Ballymena Technical College.

Five new Westminster seats had been created for the 1983 poll - among them East Londonderry and East Antrim, so the DUP had its eyes on a hat-trick of election victories in geographical north east Ulster.

The original DUP plan was for Paisley senior to run in the new East Antrim, much of which came from the old North Antrim constituency, with Jim Allister (then a North Antrim DUP Assembly Member in the former so-called Prior Assembly from 1982-86) running in the new-look North Antrim, and prominent former Coleraine Mayor James McClure running in the new East Londonderry constituency.

However, with the selection of my dad as the North Antrim UUP candidate, to keep his large majority, Paisley senior switched back to the new North Antrim, sending Jim Allister into East Antrim.

As a party, we knew we had a massive challenge in taking on Paisley senior in his home political turf. But it stopped ‘Big Ian’ from roaming into East Londonderry and East Antrim to canvass for Messrs McClure and Allister respectively.

The net result was that whilst Paisley senior comfortably retained North Antrim with a 13,000 vote majority, the UUP’s William Ross and Roy Beggs senior took East Londonderry and East Antrim. Ironically, both Commons seats later fell to the DUP.

But that 1983 election was a tough challenge as some of the Paisley supporters turned violent. During a canvass of the former Fair Hill Market in Ballymena, dad was punched and kicked.

He carried a personal protection weapon and the assault ended when a Paisley supporter went to punch dad in the ribs and hit the butt of his handgun! Realising some of the UUP team may be armed, the assault stopped almost immediately.

There is no suggestion that Rev Paisley knew about, sanctioned, or even approved of the assault on my dad by his supporters.

It was not the most pleasant of things for a son to see the bruises on his dad’s side. To say that I was angry is an understatement. I have made no secret about being a born again Christian. But being ‘saved’ certainly does not mean I am perfect. Born again believers have tempers, too.

After this incident in Ballymena, I took a phone call at our home. It was from a man claiming to be the Rev Ian Paisley and he had that deep booming voice Paisley senior was known for. Thinking it was a prank caller, I was just about to scream some abuse down the phone when my dad came alongside me.

Remembering the trouble I’d been in during that notorious mission hall service in the late 1960s for using bad language, I decided it was better to tell dad that a man claiming to be Ian Paisley was on the phone.

Dad took the call. It really was Paisley senior! He wanted to tell dad to stand aside in the election and let him give Sinn Fein an electoral drubbing!

Could you imagine the trouble I would have been in with dad and Rev Paisley if I’d used the same very unChristian language to the DUP leader and Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster that I had used to that young evangelist who was taunting me at the mission hall in the 1960s!

Sinn Fein in North Antrim in the 1983 election was a two man and a dog outfit and polled less than 3,000 votes compared to Paisley senior’s almost 24,000 votes and dad’s almost 11,000 votes.

There was no way dad would have stood aside. The fact that Rev Paisley was even calling him in the first place was proof enough the former was concerned, not about losing the seat, but about the fate of East Londonderry and East Antrim.

The old Fair Hill Market incident would not be the first time my dad would feel the wrath of DUP anger. A decade later, during the 1993 local government election campaign whilst out canvassing, a staunch DUP woman was so incensed by the UUP canvassers, she set her dog on dad and he was bitten and had to have a tetanus jab!

Dad had the last laugh as that was the year the DUP’s majority grip on the old Ballymena Borough Council was broken and dad became the new Mayor of Ballymena, the first UUP councillor to hold the post for around two decades.

However, bearing in mind the trouble I landed myself in by swearing at that young evangelist in Co Tyrone in the 1960s, there was one incident in the mid 1980s which I never told my dad about.

In 1985, the Anglo-Irish Agreement of that year sparked a street campaign by loyalists and unionists against the so-called Dublin Diktat. Ulster Says No rallies were held across Northern Ireland. I was a staff journalist at the Belfast News Letter at that time.

I was assigned to cover an Ulster Says No rally in Coleraine one Saturday. The weather was atrocious. It rained constantly, and I don’t mean a persistent drizzle - the heavens opened and it was pelting down!

It was so bad, I couldn’t use my notebook to report on the speeches as it would have turned to a soggy mess. I used my dictaphone to record the speeches. I was thoroughly soaked, and whilst I loved my job as a journalist, I returned home in a foul mood.

But that was only the start of my troubles. Instead of asking the then RUC for a crowd estimate, I asked the parade organisers and duly put this figure in my report.

You can imagine the anger which erupted with my line management when the nationalist Irish News carried an estimate of the parade which was about 1,000 more than my article!

To say that the news desk was angry with me was putting it mildly. The pro-Unionist Belfast News Letter’s crowd estimate was much lower than the nationalist Irish News report of the same Coleraine event!

After my dressing down, I simply wanted to find a corner of the Donegall Street News Letter building, hide and get on with my work. No such luck!

Suddenly, the telephone extension beside me rang and an angry male voice who gave his name as a very, very senior DUP politician spoke - asking me where I’d got my estimate from.

At virtually the same time, a senior News Letter executive appeared at the door of the room where I was working and shouted - there’s the man who can’t get his figures right!

I may be a born again Christian, but I constantly let the Lord down. I snapped. I yelled down the phone - ‘why don’t you just fuck off!’ And promptly slammed down the phone. The room of colleagues fell silent. I glanced over my shoulder to see the senior News Letter executive standing silent and gobsmacked, too.

Colleagues in the room were clearly shocked. They had never heard me use such foul language before, and certainly not to someone on a phone.

The journey home to Clough, Co Antrim, from Belfast that night was a long one. Questions and concerns flooded my mind.

Was the person on the phone really who they said they were? Was this person merely pretending to be a very, very senior DUP politician? Would I get home to find my dad furious at my behaviour? Would I get disciplined, suspended or sacked for telling a very, very senior DUP politician to ‘fuck off’?

When I got home, not a word was said. When I arrived at the News Letter the next day, nothing was said - and the incident was never mentioned to me ever again. This is the first time I have mentioned the incident since it happened after that mid 1980s Coleraine Ulster Says No parade.

During my dad’s time as a Stormont UUP MLA, I would meet this very, very senior DUP politician on a fairly regular basis. Nothing has ever been said.

I was tempted on a number of occasions during dad’s time at Stormont to approach this very, very senior DUP politician and politely and calmly ask him if it really was him who phoned me at the News Letter in the mid 1980s. But remember the secular proverb - curiosity killed the cat!

Dad passed into eternity in September 2018 without me ever talking to him about that News Letter incident.

Perhaps when I meet him again in eternity, I will confess what I said to that very, very senior DUP politician. I can well imagine dad’s reaction. It will be the same phrase as used by Captain Mainwaring in the hit TV sitcom, Dad’s Army, to Private Pike - ‘You stupid boy!’

As the very, very senior DUP politician has never mentioned the incident to me, I’ll placate my conscience by thinking - maybe it wasn’t him, but someone pretending to be him to give me another dressing down for quoting the wrong source for my Coleraine crowd estimate!

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online.