[ABCNEWS.GO] For most of his half-century in Northern Ireland politics, Ian Paisley was synonymous with two words: "No" and "Never."The Protestant minister who became the province's most divisive
...politicians call things
divisivewhen when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never
divisive,they're
principled...
politician used the slogan "Ulster Says No!" to oppose Anglo-Irish negotiations over the future of Northern Ireland. His most famous response to that peace initiative -- "Never! Never! Never! Never!" -- expressed the starkest possible rejection of any compromise with Catholics and the Irish government.
Paisley died Friday at age 88, his wife said in a statement.
From the 1960s through the 1990s, often backed by menacing Protestant mobs, Paisley used street protests to thwart compromise with the province's Catholic minority and to topple moderate Protestant leaders from the rival Ulster Unionist Party. Some 3,700 people died in those four decades of strife called "the troubles."
But Paisley's final years demonstrated that, in politics, "never" doesn't last forever.
In 2007 Paisley stunned the world by agreeing to lead a coalition government in Northern Ireland alongside senior Irish Republican Army veterans, long his arch-enemies. Paisley struck such a strong rapport with his co-leader, the former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, that the press pack dubbed them the "Chuckle Brothers."