…I found many of the tributes too maudlin about Paisley and too dismissive of David Trimble. The maudlin bit comes from amnesiac commentators who forget that the Provos and Paisley were two sides of a bad penny. But dissing David Trimble comes from a standard Provo script. And it’s a lie. Trimble was the democratic leader of a party not fully persuaded. So he took a terrible risk in signing up for the Belfast Agreement and was finally betrayed by Tony Blair. By contrast, Paisley was dictator of his party. But instead of making peace he destroyed every decent leader from Terence O’Neill to Trimble, delayed peace by possibly 20 years, and did a deal only when he was top dog.
Eoghan Harris (!) gets it dead right about Paisley. The rest is here.
0 Responses to “Paisley”