Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism

Trimble duly sought to make the best he could of his unexpectedly bad hand in the run-up to the elections, which were to be held on 30 May 1996. As ever, he set a cracking pace. Elaine McClure of the Ulster Society recalls that Trimble was perhaps ‘the only Unionist leader with the guts to canvass the main street of Newry [an overwhelmingly nationalist town]. There was always an excuse for not doing the town, such as the top part of Hill Street. But he took his red, white and blue bus there, and it was a huge psychological boost to those remaining Unionists.’39 But Trimble’s aim was also to reach out to those members of the Catholic community who were not so staunchly nationalistic. The encouragement which Trimble gave to the candidature of John Gorman typified this approach. Gorman was a third-generation Catholic Unionist: his maternal grandfather, Dr Patrick O’Brien, had been a close friend of the moderate southern Irish Unionist, the Earl of Midleton, at the start of the century. Gorman’s father, a native of Co. Tipperary, had served as a major in the Royal Horse Artillery Irish Guards in the First World War and was thereafter the last Adjutant of the the Royal Irish Constabulary. He moved north – as loyal Catholics and Protestants from the south did after Partition – and served as County Inspector of the new Royal Ulster Constabulary for Londonderry and Fermanagh. Later, he became deputy head of the RUC mission in Greece during the Civil War in the Hellenes in the mid to late 1940s. Gorman himself fought in the Second Battalion, the Irish Guards, in the Second World War, winning a Military Cross in Normandy; the Intelligence Officer of the Battalion was Captain Terence O’Neill, later the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1963–9. After the war, Gorman joined the RUC, becoming District Inspector for Ballymoney, Co. Antrim. Gorman and Trimble came to know each other when Gorman subsequently headed the Housing Executive, and Trimble was the foremost authority in the Province on housing law. Gorman, who would have become actively involved in Unionist politics much sooner than he did but for the Orange link, was precisely the kind of man whom Trimble admired. For he embodied the diversity of traditions and allegiances that had been obscured by 30 years of Troubles. Trimble further addressed this topic in his speech at the 1996 UUP conference in Ballymena, Co. Antrim, when he extolled the Catholic Unionist tradition as personified by Sir Denis Henry, who was present at the creation of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, represented South Londonderry at Westminster, and was subsequently appointed as the first Lord Chief Justice of the newly created Province of Northern Ireland.40 Forge an enduring settlement, believed Trimble, and such allegiances could reassert themselves. Trimble later recommended that Gorman become the chairman of the elected Forum, and he received a knighthood in 1998.41

Gorman was not the only Catholic whom Trimble sought to recruit to be a flag-bearer for the Unionist cause. He endorsed the appointment of Patricia Campbell, the daughter of an RUC constable, as organiser of the Unionist Information Office in London. This was set up in 1996 under the aegis of David Burnside, which held twice-yearly receptions and occasional briefings for journalists. Under Burnside’s tutelage, she edited a magazine, The Unionist, brimming with anodyne articles. These were accompanied by pictures of kittens and puppies frolicking with each other, bearing such italicised captions as Reconciliation is possible and a cover photograph of a cherubic sleeping new-born in swaddling clothes headlined Let’s keep The Peace For Their Tomorrow.42 It prompted some mirth in journalistic circles that so ruthless an operator as Burnside (affectionately known in the PR trade as ‘the kneecapper’) should produce such sentimental copy; a more serious point was that none of these treacly images did anything to increase any real understanding of the Unionist cause. Even when Unionists finally grasped the importance of PR, they could only rise to the challenge by coming up with images that erased their distinctive message almost completely. Nonetheless, Campbell’s appointment – like that of Gorman – incarnated a mood of change that seemed to abound in certain Unionist circles during this period. Indeed, keen as Trimble was for more women candidates, only seven were actually selected for the Forum elections (out of a total of 78) – of whom only one was successful.43 Selecting standard bearers remained a local affair, where Trimble’s personal preferences counted for little. ‘New Unionism’ was for much of the time a glimmer in his eye, rather than a reality.

Trimble was especially exercised during the campaign by the remarks of the Tanaiste’s special adviser, Fergus Finlay, on Channel 4’s Dispatches programme. Finlay stated that talks without Sinn Fein were ‘not worth a penny candle’.44 Bruton was also furious, because he believed the remark took the heat off the Provisionals.45 Why, he wondered, should the IRA call a new and this time more credible ceasefire if they knew that the process could not go on without them? The only way in which republicans would do so was if they feared that there was a possibility that a settlement could be achieved by the constitutional parties alone. Finlay concedes that the remark enabled Unionists to say that his boss was surrounded by fellow travellers of the Provisionals. From an Irish prespective, Finlay’s remarks had ‘reactionary consequences’, as the Soviets used to call them. Finlay remembers Sean O hUiginn’s regretful remark: ‘True diplomats learn early in their careers that the truth is sometimes best served by silence,’ opined the head of Anglo-Irish affairs. As far as O hUiginn was concerned, the problem with Finlay’s remark lay with its overly stark presentation, and not its substance.46 The Provisionals could now sit pretty and wait for the two Governments to come to them. The British were doing this anyhow, as exemplified by Major’s Irish Times article of 16 May 1996, in which he further diluted the Tories’ demands on when decommissioning would have to be carried out. But keen as Major was to obtain a renewed IRA ceasefire, he could never move quickly enough for the Provisionals.

Trimble, though, was also in trouble. The novel electoral system, just as he had predicted, would ‘shred’ the Unionist vote: a poster appeared in the closing days of the campaign depicting a splintered Union flag, with the words ‘Division and Weakness, Or Unity and Strength’. Such fracturing also occurred in his own party: at the UUP manifesto launch at Belfast’s Laganside, the late John Oliver recalled Martin Smyth looking round at the large numbers of outsiders whom Trimble had brought in and remarking: ‘You’d have thought this was the Ulster Society campaign, not the UUP campaign.’47 Smyth’s observation pointed up the deep unease about Trimble within the UUP, which long predated the Belfast Agreement: namely, that as a latecomer to the party, he was not really one of the UUP tribe. For his part, Trimble also found the party organisation at the grassroots to be in worse condition than he imagined. His fears were vindicated. In the 30 May elections, on a 64.5% turnout, the UUP remained the largest single party, with 24.2% of the vote, winning 30 seats; the DUP won 18.8% and 24 seats; the SDLP won 21.4% and 21 seats; Sinn Fein won 15.5% and 17 seats. Two points were significant: first, despite the IRA’s return to violence, Sinn Fein turned in their best performance ever, garnering 116,377 votes. Trimble was in no doubt as to the reason for the republicans’ success. In a lengthy interview with the editor of the Dublin Sunday Independent, Aengus Fanning, Trimble observed that many SDLP voters had crossed over to Sinn Fein under the illusion that it would be a vote for Adams’ peace strategy and against republican militarists. These nationalists had succumbed to this logic because ‘the boundary lines between Sinn Fein and the SDLP’, he believed, ’had been blurred by the Hume-Adams pact’.48

The other significant aspect of the Forum elections of 1996 was the shredding of the Unionist vote, which fell 5.2% on the 1993 council elections result. Consequently, the UUP won under 50% of the vote of the majority community; the DUP took 18.8% of the total; McCartney’s UKUP took 3.6% for three seats; whilst the PUP and UDP took 3.5% and 2.2% respectively. Neither of the latter two would have won seats in the main constituency system, but they squeezed in under the Province-wide top-up system which guaranteed two extra places to the ten largest parties.49 Moreover, the UUP’s failure to win half the vote meant that when the rules for the talks were finally settled, the UUP was dependent upon at least one other unionist grouping to push through its policies (under the rule of ‘sufficient consensus’, any important proposal had to win the support of the representatives of over half of each communal bloc). This proved crucial especially after September 1997, when the DUP and UKUP walked out. For it left the UUP dependent upon the smaller loyalist paramilitary parties, who had their own objectives on such issues as prisoner releases that were not necessarily congenial to constitutional unionists. This played a part in forcing Trimble to acquiesce in those demands on Good Friday 1998. Trimble believes that Ancram was very pleased with these results, because they increased the divisions within Unionism. It had long been the policy of the British state, Trimble contends, to wear down the Unionist family, so as to make them more pliant to the broader needs of central government. Ancram disagrees with this analysis: it would have been far easier, he says, if Trimble had won a majority, thus diminishing his worries about Paisley and McCartney (who were then still in the talks).50 But whoever is right, what is beyond dispute is that the Forum election was the first of a series of poor UUP electoral results under Trimble’s leadership – though the decline long predated his ascent to the top job.

SEVENTEEN The Yanks are coming

THE days following the Forum elections presented Trimble with the severest test yet of his leadership. For it was in the fortnight leading up to 10 June 1996 – the date set by the two Governments for the commencement of all-party negotiations – that the pattern of the talks was settled. Ever since the South Quay bomb, despite sometimes fierce disagreements between the two sets of negotiators, intergovernmental policy had been drifting in a pro-nationalist direction. This included the terms of entry into negotiations; when and how decommissioning would be dealt with; and, most dramatically, the issue of who would chair the talks and his remit. Unionists understood the reasons for this slippage only too well. Under ceaseless prodding from the Irish, the British were always tempted by the idea that they could win the prize of a second ceasefire. The nature of the game, as ever, was to give republicans enough whilst not losing the Unionists. But how would Trimble respond? If presented with a fait accompli by the two Governments, would he bring the current process to its knees – by withholding the consent of the largest Unionist party? Or would he break with his brethren in the DUP and UKUP, who adamantly opposed any resiling from earlier commitments, to keep the current talks process alive? No one knew for sure on what terms the UUP leader would settle. And as Viscount Cranborne observes, no one he has ever dealt with in public life plays his cards closer to his chest.1

The UUP’s public position, as outlined by Trimble in the Irish Times on 29 May 1996, was simple enough. He referred back to the Major – Bruton communiqué of 28 February 1996, in which they stated that the opening session of talks would deal with first a ‘total and absolute commitment’ to the Mitchell principles of non-violence. In accepting this report, Trimble noted, the UUP had acknowledged the validity of the Mitchell compromise – that there had to be a decommissioning in parallel to negotiations. The commitments would have to be given immediately and honoured shortly thereafter – and not ‘parked’ as a fourth Strand which ran independently of the rest of the talks and whose success or otherwise could not affect the rest of the process. Secondly, there was the question of the agenda. Unionists were especially upset that the rules on the emerging Strand III were too intergovernmental in character and excluded them from any serious role in renegotiating the AIA. The whole thing, he believed, smacked of a classic Anglo-Irish imposition from above, instigated at the behest of those he called ‘the little Hitlers’ in the DFA and their ‘collaborators’ at Stormont. Strong words – but what did he really mean by them?

As ever, Trimble’s supporters in the Conservative party were fired up by his language. They worried that the Government would dilute the conditions on decommissioning in order to secure a second IRA ceasefire (such as ‘parking’ the issue). On 19 May 1996, Andrew Hunter faxed the following concerned message to Trimble regarding his intentions: ‘Robert Cranborne and I both feel there are too many grey areas, but see little point in demanding more than you are reported to find acceptable’. Trimble replied on the same day: ‘I have not agreed anything with Major. There are too many grey areas. I find difficulty in seeing any differences between Major and Spring in terms of his procedures: tho’ John claims they are different. I do not want to sound too hardline during the election. But I will insist on clarity before 10 June.’ It may well have been that Trimble had not agreed anything in a formal sense, though the Prime Minister had picked up on the ‘vibes’ which the UUP leader was exuding. Major recalls thinking – correctly – that Trimble’s hostility to Mitchell was ‘more sound and fury than genuine opposition’.2 So what was the purpose of Trimble’s denial of such an agreement? He frequently preferred that unionist sympathisers on the mainland make the running for him – ‘doing my dirty work’ was the expression he often employed – rather than for himself to make a fuss. Thus, he appears perfectly capable of encouraging English Unionists to maintain the pressure ad interim, whilst planning an accommodation all along. ‘Calling off the dogs’ too soon would have resulted in a worse deal.

The final words of Trimble’s response to Andrew Hunter were significant. ‘I am also going cool on [Senator George] Mitchell since an unsatisfactory response yesterday from Anthony Lake [Clinton’s then National Security Adviser] to my request for assurances that Mitchell was still committed to his report.’ Nationalist Ireland was keen on a key role for Mitchell in the talks, in particular as chairman of Strands II and III, regarding this as a symbol of the further internationalisation of the conflict (and thus the dilution of British sovereignty). Trimble was concerned for several reasons. He liked Mitchell personally and could endorse his report – which he believed presented the Provisionals with some difficulties – but he feared that in a presidential election year the former US Senate Majority leader would be susceptible to pressures from Irish-Americans, who would force him to resile from his own report.3 He wrote to Major on 20 May 1996 to state that he had spoken to Lake who ‘told me that Senator Mitchell was acting in a private capacity, independently of the US administration and Mr Lake said he would be annoyed if the Senator was approached by anyone involved in the US elections. On decommissioning, Mr Lake said he had not spoken recently to the Senator but that he had no reason to believe that the Senator had changed his mind.

‘In view of the somewhat ephemeral and indirect nature of the assurance on the second issue, I would not be able to agree to any involvement by Senator Mitchell as matters stand [author’s emphasis]. Last Monday, however, you mentioned the possibility of arranging a private discussion for me with the Senator. If you are minded to pursue the possibility of the Senator’s involvement in the process, I would now need to have such a discussion before I could agree to such involvement.’ In this letter, Trimble attached his note to UUP candidates in the forthcoming Forum elections. In this message, however, he appeared more inclined to exclude Mitchell: ‘I have made it clear to Major that we want a non-political chair for those stages of the talks [chairing Strands II and III] i.e. not Mitchell. Mitchell did a fairly good job in the Report on decommissioning. It is possible that he could help to persuade the paramilitaries to accept his report and commence actual decommissioning alongside talks. We have not agreed any such role, but we have not closed the door either.’

At Trimble’s next formal meeting with the Prime Minister on 3 June 1996, Major said that he wanted Mitchell to be the overall chairman of the talks process. Trimble says he was surprised by this step, and that he told the Prime Minister that the choice of Mitchell would be unpopular with the Unionists. Major, though, was quite determined to do so. The Government believed that the appointment was important for relations with the United States and in any case there was no one else available.4 John Hunter, who accompanied Trimble to this meeting, states that when Major told Trimble that Mitchell would be the chairman, the UUP leader swallowed hard – but made no real attempt at that meeting to fight the appointment.5 Andrew Hunter recorded in his diary entry of 4 June that when he met Major in the division lobby, the Prime Minister denied that he would concede on Mitchell. This was because: ‘a. He could not deliver because Unionists would not live with it; the negotiations would break down; there would be too many empty chairs. b. Even if he could deliver he would not. c. To entice further comment I nebulously agreed. d. PM said “we simply aren’t in this business to let the Irish have it all their own way. They may do little other than cause immense trouble and be exceedingly tedious but we are on the Unionists’ side.”’ But Major’s notion of being ‘on the Unionists’ side’ depended on a reading of where the Unionists were. Increasingly, it would not be alongside Andrew Hunter and other like-minded friends of Ulster in Great Britain.6

The next day, most of the headlines were devoted to the question of when decommissioning would be addressed. Trimble agreed that the opening stages of talks could begin while a deal on arms was worked out over the summer break, though the UUP would not let the negotiations proceed to a substantive phase until they saw actual ‘product’. ‘The Prime Minister said he will not agree to this issue being sidelined,’ stated Trimble.7 But that, of course, was precisely what was happening – and Trimble acquiesced. Partly, it was because he feared that if he joined the DUP and UKUP in opposing Mitchell in principle, and brought about a stalemate, he would create enemies in America where he was trying to ‘win friends and influence people’.8 But he may also have calculated that the Provisionals would not call another ceasefire – in which case the issue of when decommissioning was addressed was entirely academic, since their political wing could not gain admission to the talks without first ending the violence. Indeed, the events of those June days in 1996 would have appeared to support such an analysis. On 5 June, the IRA issued a statement that it would never decommission short of a final settlement; and on the 7 June, an IRA unit killed a Garda officer, Jerry McCabe, during a mail van robbery at Adare, Co. Limerick. Bruton was enraged by Sinn Fein’s refusal to condemn the act, for which the IRA admitted responsibility a week later, and there was a wave of revulsion in the Republic.9

But the killing did not take the pressure off Trimble by illustrating the irreformable nature of the republican movement. Indeed, if anything, the pressure was increasing upon him daily. On 6 June, the British and Irish Governments produced a joint paper which gave Mitchell the role of chairing the plenary sessions as well as the subcommittee on decommissioning; whilst Mitchell’s colleagues General John de Chastelain and the former Finnish premier Harri Holkeri would be independent chairman and alternate respectively of the Strand II segment of the talks.10 The Unionist community was deeply uneasy. Paisley and McCartney were irrevocably opposed; Trimble appeared to be opposed to this paper as well, though with reservations.

What happened next remains, again, a matter of controversy. Trimble knew that when the Unionist community was under pressure, there was a widespread desire for a common approach. Accordingly, he decided to meet with Paisley and McCartney at Castle Buildings on 8 June to hammer out an agreed line. All were as one, says Trimble, on not wanting the Frameworks Documents, nor the Ground Rules paper. According to Trimble, McCartney noted that he had reserved his position on the appointment of Mitchell, but was keen to know what was the UUP leader’s real position. Trimble states that he replied ‘we’ll have to see when we get there – but it could be difficult for you’. Trimble says he thought he had clearly signalled that he was not opposed to Mitchell per se, but rather to his powers as envisaged by the two Governments.11 Paisley and McCartney, however, were convinced that they had agreement with the UUP to fight the appointment of Mitchell; McCartney says that the agreement was based upon a document which he faxed to Trimble on the day before. He adds that he was never, at any stage, made aware of reservations by Trimble.12 Trimble felt that the DUP and UKUP might work with him to dispose of the Frameworks Documents, but that any such achievement would always be secondary to gaining party advantage over the UUP: he feared that if he rejected Mitchell, he would vindicate their contention that the process was rotten all along, and they would then be able to hijack Unionism for their form of protest politics.13 His preferred solution was for the Northern Ireland parties themselves to write the rules of procedure (including the chairman’s role) rather than have the two Governments impose them. Thus, he could claim a victory, even if the Ulster-British had suffered a symbolic defeat through the internationalisation of the conflict in the person of Mitchell.

McCartney noticed that Trimble, who had held his ground on Monday 10 June, was ‘weakening’ in his opposition to Mitchell by Tuesday 11 June: he sensed that some dealings were occurring between the UUP and UDP/UDA and the PUP/UVF.14 Between them, these three parties would have over 50 per cent of Unionist community support on the basis of the Forum elections and thus would satisfy the rules of ‘sufficient consensus’ for proceeding with the talks if they chose to accept Mitchell. The pressure from the two Governments was ferocious. Partly, it reflected the investment of time and prestige by both Major and Bruton, who had come to launch the talks. Any failure would reflect badly on them, with attendant effects on the UUP’s relationship with the two Governments. The talks had already started badly enough. Sinn Fein leaders, who claimed entry into the talks on the basis of their mandate in the Forum election, were denied admission because the IRA still had not declared a ceasefire. But they arranged for a piece of street theatre: to the intense annoyance of Mayhew, senior republicans turned up at the gates of Castle Buildings so their exclusion would be on view for the whole of mankind, and especially the Irish portion of it.15 Moreover, George Mitchell and his two colleagues had been waiting for nearly two days whilst the parties wrangled over his appointment and the procedures. As far as the Governments were concerned, the friend of the US President was being ‘humiliated’. Mayhew and Spring repeatedly apologised to Mitchell for the delay in seating him: they feared he might pick up his bags and go home (though Mitchell reassured them that he would sit it out till some kind of conclusion).16

But the pressure on Trimble was redoubled because key Irish and British players reckoned that such techniques might work. Nora Owen, the Republic’s Justice Minister recalls thinking if Trimble really wanted to reject Mitchell, he would never have come to Castle Buildings with the American already designated as chairman.17 British officials calculated similarly. ‘I think that Trimble came to the negotiations knowing he would have to accept Mitchell as chairman,’ observes one senior civil servant. ‘But in the process he wanted to establish himself as the key figure who had to be dealt with – in other words, he was saying “don’t think that you can go off and deal mainly with Adams and the DFA”. He therefore played along with Paisley and McCartney to extract the most he could on the rules and procedures. He was saying “I’m a serious character, I don’t care about being bolshie.”’ But it was a tactical escalation amidst a strategic retreat: John Taylor declared that to put Mitchell in charge of the talks ‘was the equivalent of appointing an American Serb to preside over talks on the future of Croatia …’.18