Former DUP leader Ian Paisley has died aged 88
Listening to 5Live, Dominic Laurie I think, the most pressing issue was to ask, and keep asking, if the ‘intransigent’ Ian Paisley prevented the peace process from being successfully implemented much earlier….was it his fault the conflict kept going?
Might of course have had something to do with the IRA….I don’t know, but it’s possible.
Of course he prevented the peace process from moving forward. He refused to surrender.
Yes Alan, he did but you quite rightly put the answer: the IRA and spin-offs.
Of course, as RJ fails to mention in the first comment, without Paisley there would have been no culmination of the Peace Process.
Sky News called him a bigot repeatedly earlier on, so I chose to avoid the BBC assuming it’d be worse.
Radio 4 news at 6 last night did a very fair report on Paisley’s political career including a tribute from Martin McGuinness, who said he had ‘lost a great friend’.
I knew the BBC post mortem that followed was going to be different, though, with a few well chosen commentators and themes that would predictably push the BBC’s anti-Unionist, pro-Sinn Fein agenda.
This will be an interesting one to follow over the coming days to see if the BBC meets its commitment to ‘balance’ and ‘impartiality’. Not good so far, by the sounds of it.
Interestingly, the BBC went a lot easier on Ian Paisley than they did on Mrs Thatcher when she died.
I actually met the man. I was at Heathrow waiting for my flight to Belfast. Mr Paisley was on the same flight, he was flanked by 2 overt security men in departure and another 2 covert, who I have to admit stood out like a sore thumb. Anyway on the flight over he went up and down the plane and shook everybodys hand . I’ll be honest at the time I didn’t have a clue who the man was. But he came across as ok.
R.I.P.
Didn’t always agree with what you said, but you opposed the murderers, and you stood up for your principles.
You were wise enough to see the realities of the “peace process” – again, I did not always agree – but you achieved one thing that most politicians, ergo J.E.Powell, never will: you achieved a better life for the people you represented, and quite a few that you didn’t. Perhaps that is why McGuiness said what he did.