Ulster rallies planned

Press, 11 February 1981, Page 9

Ulster rallies planned

NZPA-Reuter Belfast The hard-line pastor politician, lan Paisley, announced plans for Protestant mass rallies throughout British-ruled Northern Ireland to oppose unity with the Irish Republic. The Protestant clergyman, a member of the British and European Parliaments, alleged that the British Prime Minister (Mrs Margaret Thatcher) was now prepared to integrate Britain’s six Northern Irish counties into a united Ireland. Last Friday, Mr Paisley paraded 500 supporters before journalists on a lonely hillside in the middle of the night, saying they were only

a few of thousands prepared to “defend our firesides, our children, our wives, and our British heritage.” He has refused to accept assurances by Mrs Thatcher, who met the Irish Prime Minister (Mr Charles Haughey) in Dublin on December 8, that Northern Ireland would remain British as long as this was desired by its one-million-strong Protestant majority.. Mr Paisley said at a news conference in Erlfast City Hall yesterday: “I appeal to the entire Loyalist community and their leaders to join us in a great crusade to save our little province from its intended fate.”

| He produced a covenant for signing by Protestants similar to one initiated in 1912 by the Protestant leader, Lord Carson, to keep Northern Ireland out of the independent Irish Republic. Officials who administer Northern Ireland privately dismissed Mr Paisley’s Friday parade as a political stunt as his Democratic Unionist Party faces key local elections this summer. At their historic December 8 summit meeting the Irish and British Prime Ministers agreed to study “possible new institutional structures” to give better expression to their “unique relationship.”