John Stevenson and Roger East reflect on a significant student experience to cast a historical perspective on the DUP’s strategy towards the Protocol.

It was September 1969 and I was in the Ulster Hall, Belfast. Sitting beside me was my Atlantic College friend, Roger. Together we had been given special permission to come to Belfast for ‘Project Week’. Usually, students were expected to go somewhere else and do or study something useful or of cultural, historic or scientific interest. In view of the recent outbreak of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland and the arrival of British troops on the streets, I had been allowed to return to check up on my parents but also to observe and report back to the College on the situation that was yet to develop into ‘the Troubles’. 

Roger and I had met a year before when we arrived at the College and (although I was a back-street Belfast boy whose da was a lorry driver and he was an English public school boy whose father was a career diplomat) we had become close friends.

We were not in the Ulster Hall that evening to hear the Ulster Orchestra or to enjoy our favourite musical act. No, we, for the purposes of our research, you understand, were attending a Free Presbyterian Church service conducted by the Reverend Doctor Ian Paisley.

We were both rather frightened, I remember, as we arrived and as two of the youngest people in the congregation we received quizzical, close inspection from the serious, formally-suited ushers. I think we were also scared because we had been told that there would be a ‘silent collection’ which meant we were supposed to drop paper money into the collection bucket. I’m not sure we had any paper money.

The service came in two distinct stages. At first there was well over an hour of rousing, traditional hymn singing – the hall was full – interspersed with prayers, readings of Scripture and culminating in the Reverend Doctor’s sermon. The sermon was reasonably familiar to me but not, I reckon, to Roger, as I had attended Sunday School for many years in a Belfast City Mission Hall off the Lisburn Road. We were loudly ordered to examine the state of our sinful souls, entreated to mend our wicked ways, and ordered “to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our one and only true personal Saviour” or face torture in eternal agonizing hellfire. 

Each blood-curdling utterance by himself was greeted by loud shouts and hallelujahs from the congregation. No doubt his professors at the Bob Jones University of South Carolina would have recognized and approved of the style. It being a windy evening, the event was punctuated by the periodic slamming of the swing doors at the entrance to the Ulster Hall, each bang adding the mortal fear of gunfire or bombing to the immortal fear of God as prescribed by Dr. Paisley.

However, the transition from the first religious stage of the proceedings to the overtly political was shocking, brutal and terrifying. One second we were listening to fiercely, revivalist Protestant theology and then Dr Paisley thundered “O’Neill is a Lundy!” at the top of his considerable voice and the audience erupted. Union Jacks were waved, the preacher became the politician and the atmosphere, already febrile became incandescent. This guy really knew how to work his crowd! 

Although the whole thing ended in prayer, the next segment consisted of a hate-filled denouncement of Northern Ireland’s then Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Captain Terence O’Neill, and his proposals to make some modest policy changes affording the minority Catholic/nationalist community some of the civil rights that they were increasingly demanding. 

O’Neill was a “Lundy” (traitor) because he was “betraying the Protestant people of Ulster” and “selling us out to republicans.” The text for the sermon appeared to be “God deliver us from compromise,” the precise biblical chapter and verse for which remained obscure. However, the church congregation, now audience at a political rally, enthusiastically roared its approval to the Doc’s defiant, bellicose and rousing message.

When, in conclusion, Paisley thundered “Stand up if the Lord Jesus Christ has come to you during this meeting,” the congregation’s response was fortunately not unanimous, although the two of us, staying seated, were still fervently praying for invisibility. At the end, Roger and I spilled out on to the Dublin Road sweating, shaken and enormously glad to get away.

In retrospect, I now believe we were witnessing a standard and repeated machination of unionism whereby any indication of a minor liberal tendency exhibited by the leadership provokes a strong reactionary response from the grassroots.  What we had just seen was the traditional marching route of loyalism and unionism to all and any perceived threat to their culture and/or identity. That is to get the wagons in a circle, cry “what we have we hold,” say “no” to virtually everything and believe they are being sold out. 

The current DUP reaction to the protocol seems to be the modern version of the same processes at work within the loyalist mindset. Despite having championed a hard Brexit and backed the Conservative government that ‘got it done’ with an attached Protocol, they feel they have been sold out. The TUV are snapping at their heels like Paisley snapped at O’Neill and they have chosen to see in the out-workings of the Protocol a major challenge to their British identity and to try and harness hardline unionist votes while ignoring any of the potential practical and economic advantages.

They could, of course, have decided to make Northern Ireland work by going back into government and in liaison with other parties, put pressure on the UK and EU to make needed changes to the Protocol. Instead, predictably, they have reverted to type and said “no” to governing for us all in a grandstanding ‘line-in-the-sand’ political gesture. 

The DUP was founded by Ian Paisley and has become the largest and most powerful voice of mainstream unionism for some two decades. However, their current strategic choices, designed to harvest right-wing loyalist support, risk ignoring a new and more serious existential threat to their electoral base. This is the growing middle ground, the non-orange, non-green, more youthful sections of society represented particularly by the Alliance Party, who clearly simply want good government to deal with the real issues of the day. For them, this renewed thundering from the pulpit just does not look like salvation. 

Just as Paisley’s politics eventually became characterized by pragmatism over protest – giving it  a new sense of relevance – it’s not too late for the DUP’s current leadership to pursue a more pragmatic approach to the Protocol.