MORE than Thatcher or Blair or anyone for that matter, Ian Paisley has cast the largest political shadow over my life.
Well before I had hit double figures, he was a figure of both fear and ridicule. From the perspective of a Belfast Nationalist childhood, Paisley was the leader of a more numerous enemy who only had to yell down a megaphone and older folk would get angry.
When you asked why he was never murdered by the IRA the stock response was: "Every time he opens his mouth the Provos get more support."
I had missed Paisley in his 1970s pomp when ironically the peace process of today could have been delivered in 1974 but for the efforts of him and kindred spirits.
But by 1985 the protests against the Anglo-Irish Agreement showed the sheer power and pull he possessed.
Ulster Unionist leader Jim Molyneaux led the biggest party but we all knew who could really draw hundreds of thousands onto the streets of Belfast to proclaim "Ulster Says No".
There were snippets of humanity. His relaxed appearance on RTE's legendary Gay Byrne show stands out.
When we hit the early and mid-1990s it was Paisley and the DUP who were accused of holding up peace. And by the time of the Good Friday Agreement the DUP were effectively Northern Ireland's political outcasts. But the DUP were slowly coming into the tent.
Clearly with an eye on his own legacy but no less dramatic, and perhaps the biggest event in the politics closest to me, Paisley made peace. The images of he and Martin McGuinness signing the Belfast Agreement, the clear signs of like for one another, never ceased to be breathtaking. My instant emotion at his passing? A bit of sadness. But, as a friend asked earlier, how many innocents deaths were indirectly down to him?
In the end he made peace. It would be an irony if those who berate the many in Northern Ireland for living in the past do not appreciate that in many ways Paisley, for all his faults, helped deliver a future for the place.
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