“I knew when I was doing it, 'I don’t care about your Queen'.”
The Coalisland woman was later shot and wounded along with her husband Michael in a UDA murder bid at their home on the shores of Lough Neagh in 1981.
Speaking about their survival, Mrs McAliskey said: “They left us for dead. I should have died. They left our house without a shot unfired.”
But away from the cameras a remarkable bond developed between herself and the former DUP leader and First Minister.
When the then Miss Devlin became active in civil rights protests during her tenure in Queen’s University, she unilaterally decided to visit Paisley's home in East Belfast to establish why he habitually blocked marches by the students from the university into the city centre.