Coverage from inside the beautiful Assembly Buildings in Belfast’s Fisherwick Place of the annual Presbyterian General Assembly. The one year term of Moderator as head of the family of churches was taken in 1966 by Rev Alfred Martin. After a service in which he accepted his new post he wasted no time in preaching to those gathered about the ills facing society including drinking alcohol at weddings.
However, the Assembly became more famous that year for what happened outside the meeting. The rival Free Presbyterian Church was led by an ongoing Moderator in the shape of Rev Ian Paisley and he was marching upon the Assembly with 1,000 followers to protest what he believed to be attempts to merge with the Roman Catholic church. While the chances of this ever happening seem remote, the protest took place nevertheless with undercurrents of protest about Northern Irish society in general. At one point the march turned violent and four police officers were injured in widely publicised scenes.
The fallout from the angry confrontation, which brought Belfast City Centre to a standstill, reverberated for a long time with Paisley ending up serving a three month jail sentence for his part in it and Prime Minister Terence O’Neill being forced to contemplate banning marches. Paisley would now be an implacable enemy of O’Neill for the remainder of his term in office.