By Niall O’Dowd

Who would have thunk it? Ian Paisley, the dark star of Northern Ireland politics for so many years, may turn out to be the man who finally puts a peace deal together to permanently copper-fasten the Good Friday Agreement. 

Paisley has been a force in Northern Ireland politics since the late 1950s, an incredible span for any leader. During that time he has moved from the lunatic outer fringes to the very center of political life there. It is a legitimate question whether Paisley moved to the center, or the center moved towards him. 

Paisley, in fact, has come to the same fork in the road that Sinn Fein did a decade or so ago. One path leads on to more of the same, interminable conflict, the other road leads to peace. It is a profound decision for him to make. 

It happens at a time when he is said to be suffering from a terminal illness. Now Paisley once again sweeps to center stage, and he may well lead his party into government with Sinn Fein, an occurrence that would have been dismissed as a sick fantasy just a few years ago. 

But Paisley is an enormously gifted politician who saw off every Unionist leader up to David Trimble, always screaming of a sell-out and forcing John Hume to once remark that if they removed the word “no” from the English language, Paisley would be speechless. 

Down all the years Paisley personified “not an inch” politics. He slammed every tentative step towards a resolution of the conflict, and made it extremely difficult for any Unionist leader who dared sup with Nationalists.

But even the hardest of hardliners at some point faces the reality that saying no is not enough. Ariel Sharon in Israel appears to be at the same point, and we all know the example of Richard Nixon going to China and Margaret Thatcher giving her imprimatur to Gorbachev as examples where a deal with the devil was finally consummated. 

The reality is that if there is a deal, the old man may have had no choice but to become part of it. He has been cleverly boxed in by the two governments and may well choose the path of joining the Northern Ireland power sharing government with Sinn Fein as the lesser of two evils. 

It seems that the British and Irish governments made it known in no uncertain terms that if Paisley was not in, then an alternate Plan B solution would go ahead without him. 

Among the suggested countermoves was a special session of the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly to call every member to account on whether they wanted to vote themselves out of existence. Paisley’s party, the Democratic Unionists, would have been badly exposed as the only party to vote against power sharing. The other suggestion pushed hard by Sinn Fein was for Joint Authority over Northern Ireland by the two governments.

Those realities faced Paisley full square in the face this week. The train was finally leaving the station. 

Gerry Adams, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair had had enough of years of negotiation, frustration and hopes dashed. The deal on the table was simply too good for the governments to ignore or put on the long finger. The decommissioning of all weapons by the IRA would bring an official end to the longest running guerilla war in Europe. 

For Blair a deal in Northern Ireland would burnish his peace credentials at a time when he is under increasing attack at home because of his warlike stance on Iraq. With an election coming up Blair would welcome the chance to appear as the peacemaker in the conflict that has bedeviled the islands of Ireland and Britain for so long. 

President George W. Bush, too, has entered stage left. No doubt his calls to Paisley and Adams, as predicted here a few weeks ago, were made because a deal seemed very close. Surely Paisley cannot ignore the combined weight of world leaders such as Ahern, Blair and Bush and let them down once again. 

Then there are his own party lieutenants, some very able politicians including Peter Robinson who are at the point in their political careers where they either get to practice their craft or fade into obscurity. There is no question that there is a modernizing wing of Paisleyite unionism that sees this as the best opportunity they will ever have to get into power. 

There is much to be resolved in the next few days. The odds look good that a deal will be struck, but there is still a fear that Paisley will balk, like so many other unionist leaders have done when the deal is finally up to his signature. 

His remarks earlier this week that the IRA needs to be “humiliated” and wear “sackcloth and ashes” were vintage Paisley. Let’s hope its his last outburst of that kind, and all credit to Adams for replying with restraint, cognizant of the prize that’s well in sight.

If Paisley signs off on a deal he will change his entire political and historical legacy. That, for a man seriously ill, may well be the most important consideration of all.