Paisley engineered fall of NI prime ministers in violent campaigns

I concur with your editorial (September 13) of the late Ian Paisley whose political career was punctuated with nakedly sectarian acts and deeds and the destruction of many political initiatives and moderate leaders of unionism who were engaged in genuine attempts to bring peace and stability to Northern Ireland.

From the 1960s Dr Paisley was engaged in subversion and even engineered the fall of two NI prime ministers, Capt Terence O’Neill and Major Chichester-Clark, with the assistance of his own newspaper the Protestant Telegraph.

Following the formation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, which was set up to influence public opinion on the lack of civil rights for Catholics, prime minister Terence O’Neill, despite fierce opposition from his own party, looked favourably on the introduction of more moderate policies which included ‘one man one vote’ for all in the gerrymandered local elections. This political accommodation of Catholics was regarded as appeasement to IRA violence and enraged the virulently anti-Catholic Ian Paisley who conspired to ‘rid Ulster of this Lundy’.