The Chuckle Brothers



The death of Ian Paisley is a reminder of just how far Northern Ireland has come since its people turned their backs on years of violence and religious sectarianism.

When Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness became First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Peace Agreement, the two men struck up an unlikely friendship and became known to the media as the 'Chuckle Brothers'.

I heard Martin McGuiness react to the news of Ian Paisley's death on TV when he said that he had "lost a friend" and went on to release the following statement:


"Over a number of decades we were political opponents and held very different views on many, many issues but the one thing we were absolutely united on was the principle that our people were better able to govern themselves than any British government."
"I want to pay tribute to and comment on the work he did in the latter days of his political life in building agreement and leading unionism into a new accommodation with republicans and nationalists."
Now that's both remarkable and encouraging in equal measure, not least because I read somewhere recently that Ian Paisley once refused to shake the hand of Cherie Blair, the wife of the then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, on the grounds that she was a Roman Catholic.   

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