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Posted on Tuesday 12 January 2010

I will admit to being in love with Ireland – not the kind of love that people with Irish Heritage have. It’s another kind. It’s a fascination with what Yeats called "a terrible beauty" in his poem Easter 1916 [about the cruel supression of the uprising of 1916 which burned much of Dublin]. There’s a dark passion in Yeats and Joyce, or the I.R.A. that is both awful and glorious. And the Irish countryside is both those things too – a terrible beauty known to anyone who has been to Galway or driven the West Coast. I don’t know how the remnants of my adolescent romanticism got fixated there – but that’s where they lie.

Ian Paisley is a fundamentalist Protestant Minister who founded the Democratic Unionist Party in 1971 [when we lived there]. Every night, the news had something about Ian Paisley’s Party – was he a paramilitary fanatic, a theologian, a lunatic, a savior? No one knew. And the bombs blew up the pubs, and the British soldiers couldn’t do anything right, and the I.R.A. remained shrouded in mystery. It was so like the Middle East of today that comparisons are eerie.

Well, over time [40 years] they’ve moved to this thing called devolution that purports to give Northern Ireland home rule – with some kind of peace between the warring factions – Protestants and Catholics.  Following his January 2008 retirement as a religious leader, Paisley announced that he would stand down as DUP leader and First Minister of Northern Ireland. Peter Robinson was elected unopposed as leader of the DUP  and succeeded Paisley as First Minister at a special sitting of the assembly in June 2008. And suddenly we have this most tawdry of scandals involving Robinson’s wife, Iris – a scandal that seems to have no bottom:
Paisley ‘beyond fury’ over Robinson sleaze
Iris had affairs with father of 19-year-old and another DUP member
Suzanne Breen, Northern Editor
January 10, 2010

The Rev Ian Paisley is "beyond fury" following revelations about the behavior of Peter and Iris Robinson, sources have told the Sunday Tribune. The former DUP leader is deeply saddened by fears that the party he founded, and led for 37 years, could face heavy electoral losses if urgent action isn’t taken. It is understood that Paisley, as a family man, is appalled that Iris Robinson had an affair with a teenager she had known from the age of nine and who was in an emotionally vulnerable position following his father’s death.

Meanwhile, it emerged this weekend that Iris Robinson also had an affair with 19-year-old Kirk McCambley’s father, a butcher who died from cancer. She had another affair with a fellow DUP member in the 1980s which was witnessed by the security forces.

Paisley is understood to share the feelings of many people across Northern Ireland that the DUP vote could collapse in May’s Westminster election. While the majority of DUP MPs still publicly support Peter Robinson, a growing number of senior colleagues have grave doubts about his future.

Willie Frazer of Fair, a group representing thousands of IRA victims, is also demanding Robinson resign. North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds is favourite to take over with East Derry MP Gregory Campbell as his deputy. However, it is unclear if Dodds wants the job. "Peter must go and go as quickly as possible. He is damaging us all," a party officer said. One prominent politician stated: "The danger is that we will all be punished at the polls for the Robinsons’ behaviour"…
So, it seems that Iris, herself a Member of Parliament and hyper-religious homophobe, has a chronic history of sexual dalliances, and actually had an affair with the local Butcher before he died, the father of her recent teenage lover, Kirk McCambley. It’s hard to imagine a more damaging set of affairs to the Party of Ian Paisley – the very embodiment of the kind of holier-than-thou fundamentalism that later swept our country. Iris has outdone Ted Haggard or Mark Sanford by a mile, particularly in the climate of the Northern Irish Protestant community.

It’s inconceivable to me that Peter Robinson can carry on in the politics of Northern Ireland. It’s hard to even imagine Iris returning home to have any kind of reasonable life in Northern Ireland at all. This is a "Scarlet A" that will haunt her for the rest of her life. Ireland can tolerate and venerate the alcoholic, philandering poets – but this kind of thing is not their cup of tea. Like the title says – "beyond fury."

I read that the Robinsons have a summer place here, in Florida. I’d suggest moving here under the name Giordano and opening a Pizza Parlor or a Water Slide. Fallen Fundamentalists seem to do well here in the colonies..
The two faces of Iris: A fine portrait of Iris Robinson by a friend.

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