Review
Paisley: Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press)
The Big Man
Bruce has set himself a difficult task, and he doesn’t quite pull it off, says David Shiels.
Now that Ian Paisley is in (and out of) Government with Sinn Fein, many historians will begin to reassess the ‘Big Man’s’ life and career. Was he a moderate all along, just waiting for the right moment to share power and reach a deal? In Paisley, Steve Bruce does not quite reach this conclusion, but he has certainly made it his mission to ‘explain’ Paisley from a relatively sympathetic point of view. From the outset, it should be said that this is a commendable book which is certainly worth reading.
But it is also a strange book. Bruce seeks to offer a parallel study of Paisley’s religious and political careers: the book is not a biography, but it is not quite a general history of the DUP and the Free Presbyterian movement. For this reason, Bruce is in danger of falling between many stools, and indeed he sometimes does. On occasion he feels it necessary to offer a general history of Ulster’s politics and religion, right from the 17th Century. This leads him onto dangerous ground, and he makes some unfortunate errors. (He surely means the Stuart Monarchy, not the Stewarts). Moreover, it sometimes seems as though Bruce is not entirely sure about what he is trying to argue. At the beginning he describes Ian Paisley as ‘unique’ – leading, as he did, a significant political party and his own Church – but then sets about comparing him with other religious and political leaders in Ulster, and further afield. (Why, for example, does he feel it necessary to argue that Ian Paisley was nothing like the Islamic fundamentalists now in our midst? It is very true that Paisley is nothing like these leaders, but then they never claimed to be peaceful and Democratic Parliamentarians).
On the religious side of things, I suspect that Bruce is hindered by the fact – to which he openly admits – that he is not a believer. For this reason he relies on the sociologist’s trick of looking at surveys, and seems surprised to find that many of Paisley’s followers are not quite as bigoted as liberal types would sometimes have us believe. As for Paisley’s politics, Bruce is also too forgiving, and does not rigorously examine the many twists and turns in Paisley’s career. Paisley is a difficult person to categorise because it is hard to detect any real consistency of thought. Bruce attempts to find some consistency and suggests that – if Paisley’s thought had to be compressed into just two propositions – we could sum his thinking up as thus: ‘I am doing God’s will’, and ‘You cannot trust the elite’. Unfortunately, Bruce does not ask if God’s will changed over time, or precisely what might be meant by ‘the elite’. These are very difficult, and highly contested, concepts. Did other politicians not also believe they were doing God’s will? Tony Blair showed signs of believing that he was acting under Divine influence – was this the same influence that was guiding Paisley?
As for ‘the elite’ – was this made up of people protecting a certain set of vested interests, or did it just happen to mean whoever was in power at the time? Terence O’Neill may have represented the elite, but other Unionist leaders – Brian Faulkner, James Molyneaux, David Trimble – each represented something very different. Paisley seems to have distrusted them all. Throughout this book, Bruce gives liberal Unionism a hard time, and he seems to believe the fact that Paisley had beaten all previous Unionist leaders vindicates this approach. In doing so, he subscribes to the now commonly held view that there could never have been a lasting deal without the support of Paisley.
In reality, Paisley’s success owed a lot to luck and longevity – he had the stamina to outlast each of his rivals – and partly because of his willingness to accommodate the liberal Unionist position. Only time will tell if this is to be a lasting accommodation, or if a new liberal Unionist front will open up post-Paisley.
