The DUP was the political wing of Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church. That may not be strictly accurate, but for much of its lifetime the firebrand preacher used the party as a platform for flinty rhetoric that very often skirted the boundaries of sectarianism and extremism. For most of the 37 years that Paisley led the DUP, until he stepped down in 2008, the party had a marginal role in Northern Ireland politics. It was eclipsed by the more mainstream Ulster Unionist Party, just as Sinn Féin was in the shadow of the SDLP. Without those two moderate parties, the Good Friday agreement would not have happened, but since the signing of that historic peace accord in 1998, the political landscape in Northern Ireland has…

Source: The Times December 06, 2017 00:10 UTC