page_title: Ian Paisley
section_title: 2000s: compromise and power
hierarchical_section_title: Ian Paisley / Political career, 1949–2010 / 2000s: compromise and power
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of en:Ian Paisley cropped from Image:Ian_Paisley.JPG. Photo taken on 14 May 2007 according to camera data of original image.
context_page_description: Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside PC, was a Northern Irish loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader who served as Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party from 1971 to 2008 and First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2007 to 2008.
  He became a Protestant evangelical minister in 1946 and remained one for the rest of his life. In 1951 he co-founded the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and was its leader until 2008. Paisley became known for his fiery sermons and regularly preached and protested against Roman Catholicism, ecumenism and homosexuality. He gained a large group of followers who were referred to as Paisleyites.
  Paisley became involved in Ulster unionist/loyalist politics in the late 1950s. In the mid-late 1960s, he led and instigated loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. This contributed to the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s, a conflict that would engulf Northern Ireland for the next thirty years. In 1970 he became Member of Parliament for North Antrim and the following year he founded the Democratic Unionist Party, which he would lead for almost forty years.
context_section_description: At the age of 78, Paisley retired from his European Parliament seat at the 2004 elections and was succeeded by Jim Allister. In September 2004, he agreed to meet Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, in his political capacity as leader of the DUP. At an early meeting with Ahern at the Irish embassy in London, he requested breakfast and asked for boiled eggs; when Ahern asked him why he had wanted boiled eggs, he quipped "it would be hard for you to poison them". Following rumours and a marked change in his appearance, it was confirmed in July 2004 that Paisley had been undergoing tests for an undisclosed illness, and in 2005 Ian Paisley Jr. confirmed that his father had been gravely ill. Paisley himself later said that he had "walked in death's shadow."
  Paisley again retained his North Antrim seat in the 2005 UK general election. In 2005, he was made a Privy Counsellor, an appointment traditionally bestowed upon leaders of political parties in the British Parliament. In the October 2006 St Andrews Agreement, Paisley and the DUP agreed to new elections, and support for a new executive including Sinn Féin subject to Sinn Féin acceptance of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the successor to the Royal Ulster Constabulary. This reversed half a century of opposition to Sinn Féin, such as his comments four months previously on 12 July in Portrush, following Orange Order parades, when he said, "[Sinn Fein] are not fit to be in partnership with decent people. They are not fit to be in the government of Northern Ireland and it will be over our dead bodies if they ever get there." Sinn Féin subsequently endorsed the PSNI, and in the subsequent election Paisley and the DUP received an increased share of the vote and increased their assembly seats from 30 to 36. On Monday 26 March 2007, the date of the British Government deadline for devolution or dissolution, Paisley led a DUP delegation to a meeting with a Sinn Féin delegation led by Gerry Adams, which agreed on a DUP proposal that the executive would be established on 8 May.
  On 8 May 2007 power was devolved, the Assembly met, and Paisley and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness were elected First Minister and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. Speaking at Stormont to an invited international audience he said, "Today at long last we are starting upon the road—I emphasise starting—which I believe will take us to lasting peace in our province." Paisley and McGuinness subsequently established a good working relationship and were dubbed the "Chuckle Brothers" by the Northern Irish media. In September 2007, he confirmed that he would contest North Antrim at the 2010 general election as well as serving the full four years as First Minister, stating "I might as well make hay while the sun shines."
  In 2007, Paisley was named as "Opposition Parliamentarian of the Year" in The House Magazine Parliamentary Awards and by The Spectator as "Marathon Man of the Year." Following his January 2008 retirement as leader of the Free Presbyterian Church and pressure from party insiders, on 4 March 2008, Paisley announced that he would stand down as DUP leader and First Minister of Northern Ireland in May 2008. On 17 April, Peter Robinson was elected unopposed as leader of the DUP and succeeded Paisley as First Minister at a special sitting of the assembly on 5 June 2008. On 2 March 2010, it was announced that Paisley would step down as a Member of Parliament at that year's general election. His son Ian Paisley Jr. was elected to succeed him in the seat at the general election on 6 May 2010.
  On 18 June 2010, Paisley was created a life peer as Baron Bannside, of North Antrim in the County of Antrim, and he was introduced in the House of Lords on 5 July 2010. Paisley opted not to take the title of "Lord Paisley" as his wife was already in the House as Baroness Paisley and he said that it would have implied she was "sitting not in her own right but as my wife".
caption: Paisley in May 2007
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