Murmurs of 'betrayal' over power-sharing

By Gareth Gordon Political correspondent, BBC Northern Ireland

They're used to talk of betrayal in Carleton Street Orange Hall, Portadown.

Its walls echoed with the word during the long years of the Drumcree dispute.

The meeting was addressed by UK Unionist Robert McCartney

The other night in a room named after the late figurehead of Drumcree defiance, Harold Gracey, the word was used again, this time - odd as it may seem - about Ian Paisley and the DUP.

John Watson is a life-long member of the party and was one of its election agents.

When his party membership runs out at the end of the year it won't be renewed "in light of the DUP's overwhelming immoral compulsion to put the IRA murderers and terrorists into government," he says.

Then, he did something he probably doesn't do often. He borrowed from Gerry Adams.

"We have gone away you know. We won't be voting for you again. No surrender, Paisley."

To help galvanise others who feel like himself, John Watson booked the Gracey Room on a cold December night and invited the anti-Agreement UK Unionist leader Robert McCartney to address as many people as he could attract.

About 80 people attended the meeting

About 80 turned up. Some, but not all, DUP voters and members.

Some, but not all, members of Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church.

A poster stuck to the door proclaimed the DUP/Sinn Fein "unholy alliance."

They listened as Mr McCartney attempted to forensically deconstruct the DUP's position over the St Andrews Agreement.

He spoke for a full hour and a half. Most seemed to have their minds made up before he even spoke a word.

For David Trimble to go into government with Sinn Fein was bad enough but for Dr Paisley - a man they once revered - to even think of doing it is another thing altogether.

David Calvert has spoken of his regret

The fact he so far hasn't done so didn't seem to be the point. "He's going down that road," said one man.

John Gray, whose son is a Free Presbyterian minister, was more harsh.

"If you're a Christian and promise your people who vote for you that you'll never sit down with terrorists - and I believe he's about to sit down with terrorists - the very thought of him even thinking about it is treason."

Mr McCartney said at the beginning there had been an attempt to blacken the meeting with false claims that it had been organised by paramilitaries.

Pastor Kenny McClinton, the LVF's intermediary with the decommissioning commission, was there.

So was victim's campaigner Willie Frazer and a former DUP councillor in Belfast, Harry Toan.

Then there was David Calvert, once a member of the DUP executive; a previous Stormont assembly member and a councillor for 20 years before he fell out with the party and was expelled in 1993 following a row over the selection of candidates.

In 1987 he was shot and wounded by republican terrorists.

"It is of deep regret to me to see the way in which the party is going at the moment, " he said.

"I have no wish to see the party colluding with Sinn Fein/IRA in government.

"I think it is wrong. Dr Paisley always deemed it to be wrong and I really don't understand why he has decided to go down this road. I do not believe he has the party backing. I do not believe that the people on the ground support that."

John Gray said power-sharing with republicans was "like treason"

Mr McCartney had a theory on why Ian Paisley was apparently thinking the unthinkable.

He claimed the DUP leader was gradually being "encapsulated in the British establishment."

He added "it's nice you know for him to be loved instead of reviled." It sounded like a calculated insult.

But generally the mood was one of sorrow not anger. Many hoped the DUP would "come to its senses."

If it didn't they wouldn't be voting for it again. Although some seemed to still need convincing about the argument from Mr McCartney that anti-Agreement candidates should run in all 18 constituencies.

Better still there be no election seemed to be the thinking.

That would mean the DUP had not done a deal. Then there would be no more talk of betrayal.