Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside, PC was a Unionist politician and Protestant religious leader from Northern Ireland. He became a Protestant evangelical minister in 1946 and would remain one for the rest of his life. In 1951 he co-founded the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church and was its leader until 2008. Paisley became known for his fiery speeches and regularly preached and protested against Catholicism, ecumenism and homosexuality. He gained a large group of followers who were referred to as 'Paisleyites'. Paisley became involved in Ulster unionist/loyalist politics in the late 1950s. In the mid-late 1960s he led and instigated loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. This led to the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s; a conflict that would engulf Northern Ireland for the next thirty years. In 1970 he became Member of Parliament for North Antrim and the following year he founded the Democratic Unionist Party, which he would lead for almost forty years. In 1979 he became a Member of the European Parliament. Throughout the Troubles, Paisley was seen as a firebrand and the face of hardline unionism. 

April 6th, 1926 in Armagh  /  Died:   Sep 12th, 2014