PAISLEY DEFIES COURT ORDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31117, 21 July 1966, Page 15

PAISLEY DEFIES COURT ORDER

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright) BELFAST, July 20. Northern Ireland’s ultra right-wing Protestant leader, the Rev. lan Paisley, defied a court today by refusing to enter a two-year bond to keep the peace.

The fiery, self-styled “Moderator” of the breakaway “Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster” had been fined £3O in connexion with religious rioting on June 6. Five of his followers were found guilty with him of unlawful assembly in a case brought by the Attorney-Gen-eral. The prosecution claimed

that Mr Paisley’s followers had called police Nazis and shouted “Northern Ireland is a police state” in a street demonstration. They held their meeting to coincide with an assembly of Presbyterian church leaders. Northern Ireland’s Presbyterian Church is the largest Protestant group there and does not recognise Mr Paisley’s breakaway church. Mr Paisley was given 24 hours to decide whether to go to gaol or agree to keep the peace for two years. He later told crowds of supporters outside the special magistrate’s court that he would issue a statement on “whether to appeal or go to Crumlin road gaol for three months.” Four of the accused—two of them also clergymen—were each fined £3O and ordered to enter bonds for similar sums to keep the peace. Another of Mr Paisley’s followers, a Belfast housewife, was fined £5; the seventh accused was acquitted.