Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism

But the danger of them driving the digger at police lines during the night remained. Trimble then knew that there was only one option open to him. He had to find the one man reputed to enjoy influence upon these militants: Billy Wright, who had acquired an almost folkloric status amongst hardline loyalists in the region as ‘King Rat’. Trimble had never met Wright before – the UUP leader states that Wright was not visible to him at Drumcree I – though the Portadown loyalist was certainly known to him as an aggrieved constituent. Wright had once turned up in his Lurgan office to complain about alleged harassment by soldiers of the Ulster Defence Regiment/Royal Irish Regiment: Trimble’s secretary, Stephanie Roderick, recalls that Wright was very polite but that he had the coldest, most piercing blue eyes she had ever seen.38 According to Trimble – who had the matter verified by his security spokesman, ex-UDR Major Ken Maginnis – some UDR/RIR soldiers had put a bounty on Wright’s head: those soldiers on patrol who observed Wright obtained a £50 bonus, whilst there was a £25 bonus for sightings of Wright’s side-kick, Mark ‘Swinger’ Fulton. Indeed, in a Commons debate on media coverage of terrorism that he himself had introduced in 1992, Trimble had condemned a Channel 4 Dispatches programme, entitled The Committee, which alleged that there was a secret body consisting of senior RUC officers, businessmen and politicians to plan the assassination of republicans. Wright appeared on the programme, leaving Trimble with the impression he engaged in paramilitary activities with the approval of the police.39 ‘I hold no brief for Mr Wright,’ declared the MP for Upper Bann. ‘I am told that he is a gangster who tries to cloak his crimes with political motivation, occasionally gets involved in sectarian crimes about which he then boasts to journalists, giving interviews to them regularly. Whether he has committed all the offences of which he boasts I do not know, but I can hazard a fair guess as to why he collaborated with Dispatches and gave credence to the accusation that some RUC officers collude with paramilitaries … He had a clear interest in harming the police force.’40

The full truth about Wright will probably never be known. What can be ascertained is that Wright was 35 years old in 1996. He apparently joined the Young Citizen Volunteers – the YCV, or the youth wing of the UVF – aged fifteen after the massacre of ten Protestant workmen at Kingsmills in his home patch of south Armagh in 1976.41 Like so many who had felt the sharp end of republican terrorism, he moved to the northern part of the county where he determined to make a last stand. At that stage, he had never been sentenced for any offence, though in the early 1980s he had been remanded for one year on charges of murder and attempted murder; these were dropped.42 He originally supported the loyalist ceasefires of September 1994, but soon became disillusioned. Wright reserved particular disdain for the ‘doveish’ Belfast leadership of the PUP-UVF. Much of the PUP-UVF ideology was based upon the notion that they had hypocritically been pushed into ‘fighting the war’. The PUP-UVF asserted that the Protestant working class had suffered as much from Stormont’s neglectful policies as their Catholic counterparts. Since their men had been dying and going to jail to maintain the privileges of the Unionist elite, they were now entitled to an independent political perspective. At times, the PUP spoke of how much they had in common with the Provisionals in terms of shared experiences of deprivation. Such talk was anathema to Wright. Leave politics to the politicians, he asserted, and let us provide the muscle. Wright believed that the PUP-UVF were putting their socialism ahead of their Unionism and that the UVF should be a broad church in terms of its ideology. He regarded men like David Ervine as traitors and saw the PUP as the pawns of British intelligence, seeking to create further splits in the Unionist bloc. They, in turn, believed that Wright was a drugs dealer who used the cause of Ulster to further his criminal ends.

Trimble met with Wright twice, once in a room in the church hall, once in the vicinity of the digger. On one level, Trimble found it disgusting. Wright told Trimble ‘quite mendaciously’ that he had not been involved in the killing of McGoldrick. On the other hand, recalls Trimble, ‘he was rational. He wasn’t stupid by any means. It was easier to talk to him than the men on the digger.’ Trimble suggested the option of a St Patrick’s Day parade by nationalists as a quid pro quo. Initially, Wright opposed it, Trimble says, but Wright soon came to understand its necessity in the context of the talks then going on to achieve a resolution of the crisis (Paisley, believes Trimble, did not agree with this proposed compromise and therefore sought to scupper it).43 Wright later said that ‘Mr Trimble spoke to me on the basis of anti-violence. He asked me to use any influence I had to ensure there was no violence during the protest. It was not a pre-arranged meeting. He believed I had influence on the wilder elements at Drumcree and on the streets of Portadown.’44

Wright might have done so, but his main aim was not conciliation. Rather, his objective was victory for his people at Drumcree. Trimble also says that Wright informed him that if the RUC and Army were about to move forward on the loyalist crowd – and he had reason to believe that they would do so at 2 a.m. on Thursday 11 July – then the paramilitaries might retaliate. Trimble states that he rang Mayhew and asked him to pull back the security forces in the light of the warning; the Ulster Secretary, for whatever reason, agreed to the request and Army manoeuvres and the police profile were lowered by 7 or 8 p.m. on Wednesday 10 July. Wright denied that this part of the conversation took place, but whatever the truth of the matter one senior RUC officer is under no illusion as to the impact of ‘King Rat’s’ presence: ‘Wright’s threats were a part of the reversal of the ban on the march,’ he states.45 Jim Blair also believes that ‘the Wright factor’ played its part in this decision, though he is not sure that it was necessarily the main element in the ultimate ruling.46 Trimble now says of the ‘digger episode’: ‘At the end of the day, looking back at it, I now think it was all a bluff.’ Gracey subsequently even said to Trimble that he had an understanding with Wright dating back to 1995 that nothing serious would happen.47 At the time, though, the threat appeared real enough. Daphne Trimble recalls that Trimble was desperately worried that bloodshed could both end his career and the chance of peace. If things went wrong, and the whole country erupted in violence, he would be blamed as MP for the area and any prospect of a deal with nationalist Ireland would be lost – perhaps for ever. This explains why he took the huge risk which he did in meeting Wright, even though he knew that if it emerged it would cost him dearly in terms of opinion on the British mainland as well as amongst Catholics.48

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