Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism

Trimble declared that Ulstermen were aiming for negotiated separation rather than UDI. Not only, Trimble declared, would this new Ulster be able to rely on ‘native ingenuity’ but it would also enjoy food provided by provincial farmers and energy supplies from Antrim lignite and Fermanagh gas. In echoes of his first speech to the Assembly and to the Nobel Prize-winning ceremony in Oslo, Trimble acknowledged that more could have been done during the 50 years of Unionist domination to make nationalists feel at home. ‘We should say to the nationalists in our midst, “a united Ireland is impossible, but a united Ulster is possible, and we invite you to be part of it”,’ observed Trimble. Workers’ Weekly regarded such thoughts as ‘twaddle’ produced by an ‘introverted Unionist’. and in its edition of 22 August 1987 opined: ‘What is being said here in code is more or less the equivalent of what the Provisionals are saying – get out of the house but leave the money on the table.’ These musings would not be forgotten by Trimble’s rivals: years later, in a televised debate on the eve of the 1998 referendum on the Belfast Agreement, Paisley dusted off the pamphlet to illustrate his belief that the UUP leader was soft on the Union.38 Trimble, though, never took such reasoning to its logical conclusion to advocate full-scale independence – such as the ‘Republic of Northern Ireland’. He held several meetings with a Presbyterian cleric from Co. Tyrone, Rev. Hugh Ross, who headed the Ulster independence movement, but remained unpersuaded. Trimble believes that the bulk of Ulster Unionists would never wish completely to relinquish the link with the Crown.39

How does Trimble reconcile these varying positions? After all, one of them (integrationism) is based upon the notion of the inherent inclusiveness of Unionism; the other is based upon the ‘apartness’ of the Ulster-British from both the rest of the United Kingdom and the Republic. Trimble argues that equal citizenship is very much the first choice of all Unionists, as was the case in 1921; but that if that is not on offer, then they will have to find some alternatives which preserve their way of life. He had concluded that the Union was in such peril that he had to set as many hares running as possible – including contradictory approaches in which he did not necessarily believe himself. If integrationism took off, all well and good. If not, then alternatives would have to be found. Another reason why Trimble could embrace both apparently contradictory approaches is that there is an element of intellectual gamesmanship in Trimble’s personality, which owes much to his training as an academic lawyer: he will draft anything for the sake of an argument. What is certainly the case is that Trimble was one of very few people who straddled the two, mutually antagonistic strains within Unionism: one was the world of integrationism, of the vision of Northern Ireland as part of a broader, more cosmopolitan entity. This attracted many Unionist colleagues in the professional middle classes and amongst Queen’s undergraduates after the AIA. The other world was that of ‘little Ulster’ which, more often than not, had its roots in evangelical Protestantism and was much remoter from the British mainstream. He was not, though, the only Ulster politician to adopt a dizzying array of positions: as Clifford Smyth notes in his study of Paisley, ‘the Doc’ was also perfectly capable of adopting integrationism, devolution, or independence – depending upon which of them most advanced the Protestant interest at a given moment.40

Such activities, which were widely reported, can have done little to endear Trimble to the authorities at his workplace. The Queen’s of the 1980s was very different place from the Queen’s of the 1960s and 1970s. Political activism, once regarded as a public service, was now seen as less of an asset. It was not merely that the controversy-aversive University was determined to avoid a repetition of the killing of Edgar Graham for Trimble’s own sake; it was also because under the cumulative impact of fair employment legislation designed to eradicate sectarianism in the workplace, the University had become far more sensitive to such matters and its ‘image’. A campaign had been launched primarily (but not exclusively by nationalists) to allege that there was religious discrimination in the composition of the teaching staff. Most of them were Protestants – if not necessarily from Ulster – whilst the undergraduate population was ever-more Catholic. It thus echoed recent allegations contained in the MacPherson report that the Metropolitan Police is ‘institutionally racist’. In the words of Alex Attwood, who was president of the Students’ Union in the early 1980s and subsequently vice chairman of Convocation (a body comprised of all graduates) ‘Queen’s succeeded Short’s as the representative employment management issue in the North’.41 Queen’s responded by settling many cases out of court.

Although Trimble was never sued for harassment or discrimination (nor, indeed, was any complaint ever lodged against him) his face did not fit in this not-so-brave new world of pious neutrality. He says that Colin Campbell bluntly told him that he would never hold a professorial chair; Campbell says that he simply gave Trimble the advice which he gave to all colleagues at that stage in their careers – that Trimble would not obtain a professorship unless he increased his output of published materials.42 As editor of the Northern Ireland Law Reports, he would be summarising and synthesising, rather than doing original work of his own. What is beyond doubt is that Trimble did not fulfil his ambitions. The first chair which came up – to replace the departing Campbell – went to Simon Lee, a ‘superstar’ academic with good media credentials, and the second to his old friend Herb Wallace. Wallace, for example, also came from a unionist background, but he was not an active politician and he was thought less likely to blow his top in a crisis. Trimble also believes that his political commitments may have played a part: as Iain Macleod observed of R.A. Butler, ‘Rab loves being a politician among academics and an academic among politicians; that is why neither breed of man likes him all that much.’43

Professorial chairs were not, though, the only avenue for advancement. In 1986, the post of Dean of the Law Faculty came vacant – an administrative post that involved much persuasion and cajoling. Normally, elections went uncontested and Trimble seemed to be certain of winning: indeed, to make absolutely sure of things, Trimble authorised Herb Wallace, as his unofficial campaign manager, to say that if elected, he would cease all active politics. Colin Campbell, the Pro-Vice Chancellor, asked Judith Eve, a colleague of Trimble’s from the Law Faculty to run. According to Herb Wallace, Campbell might have viewed Trimble’s political activities as detracting from the Law Faculty’s reputation (a third candidate, Geoffrey Hornsey, also entered the contest though he soon withdrew).44 In the ensuing battle royal, the ‘jurisprudes’ formed the core of the anti-Trimble camp, whilst the ‘black letter’ lawyers of his own department were the core of the pro-Trimble operation. Trimble was the more senior, and had more administrative experience, but the elegant Eve was viewed as the ‘safer pair of hands’. ‘She was cooler, and without moods,’ recalls Sylvia Hermon, then – as now – one of Trimble’s most ardent supporters. The election was so close a contest that postal votes from faculty members travelling abroad were solicited, yet the Trimble camp still thought they had the edge. One morning, Sylvia Hermon came in and picked up the News Letter: there, she found Trimble pictured on the front page, tied to the railings at Hillsborough Castle as part of an Ulster Clubs’ protest against the intergovernmental conference.45 ‘Short of raping the vice-chancellor’s wife on the front gates of the university, he could not have done much worse,’ wryly recalls Brian Childs, a colleague in the department of commercial and property law.46 It may have been decisive, for Eve scraped home by 18 votes to 16, with one abstention.

Trimble’s friends began to despair of his prospects. Trimble, though, was not to be deterred for long. Some months later, the post of the director of the Institute for Professional Legal Studies became available. The Institute was part of Queen’s, but was independent of the Law Faculty and was governed by the Council for Legal Education. It had been set up in 1977 for professional training of law graduates.47 Again, he seemed to have all the experience and duly applied; and, once again, a presentable younger woman entered the field. Her name was Mary McAleese, a Belfast-born Catholic, the 36-year-old Reid Professor of Criminal Law at Trinity College Dublin.48 Her publications portfolio may have been less voluminous than compared to that of Trimble, but she had two skills which he conspicuously lacked: she marketed herself superbly and was immensely adept with people. The 10-strong interview panel was chaired by Lord Justice O’Donnell, who led the questioning. He was assisted by Lord Justice Kelly, who as Basil Kelly had been Unionist MP for Mid-Down at Stormont and was the last Attorney General of Northern Ireland under the ancien régime. Trimble performed poorly, whilst McAleese dealt with the questions adeptly and she was duly appointed.49 The upward trajectory of McAleese’s career was maintained and she later became Pro-Vice Chancellor. In 1997, she received the Fianna Fail nomination for the presidency of the Republic and won the election.

Trimble’s record of disappointment in university politics contrasts very sharply with his successes since his election to Parliament in 1990. ‘The difference between university politics and party politics is that university politics are a closed hierarchical system, whereas party politics are open,’ he explains. ‘In terms of the UUP, oddly, my position wasn’t very different from that at Queen’s. During the Upper Bann by-election, very few unionist figures were favourable to me. I thus came in 1990, and more particularly in the 1995 leadership race as an outsider. The great thing about politics is that they are decided by wider groups. My position vis-à-vis the Unionist hierarchy was just the same as vis-à-vis the Queen’s hierarchy.’ So why does he have such bad relations with his academic and political peer groups? ‘It’s my lack of diplomatic skill,’ Trimble declares. ‘I know that’s a rather big failing. I’m argumentative by nature and get into arguments without any consideration as to who they are with and the career implications. As I get older my arguments are couched in less aggressive terms. From the point of the view of the “Good Ole’ Boys” in Glengall Street [the tightly knit clique of men who ran the party headquarters in central Belfast for years] I’m never one of them. I come from the outside and I’m a bit too ready to tell them what they should do.’50

EIGHT Mr Trimble goes to London

TRIMBLE’S self-analysis was shared by many of his party colleagues. In early 1989, he was finally elected one of four honorary party secretaries at a meeting of the 860-strong Ulster Unionist Council – yet his problems with his peer group endured. What his coevals immediately saw was a man in a hurry. ‘I was brought up by Jo Cunningham [later party president] that you listened for the first year,’ recalls Jack Allen, the long-time party treasurer. ‘David could never be accused of doing that.’1 Likewise, Jim Wilson, the party general-secretary recalls: ‘He had little time for convention and the rule book – because in the rule book you find reasons for not doing things. I suppose at that time I thought, “Hey, David you’re not going to fit in here, you’re rocking too many boats.” And he was also suspected of leaking officers’ decisions.’ (Trimble says he may have gossiped, but that he never deliberately leaked.)2 At the same time as being voluble, Trimble was not very sociable: after party officers’ meetings on Friday afternoons at Glengall Street, he would not be found drinking Ken Maginnis’ beloved Rioja with members of the team. Subsequently, Molyneaux was annoyed by Trimble’s habit of playing with his personal computer whenever the discussion became boring.3

Trimble could still be wonderfully inept with larger audiences as well. When John Taylor announced his retirement from the European Parliament in 1988, Trimble was one of four candidates who sought to replace him. His main rival was Jim Nicholson – a Co. Armagh farmer who had lost the Westminster seat of Newry and Armagh in the 1986 set of by-elections (caused by the resignation of all Unionist members in protest at the AIA). Nicholson already enjoyed a substantial sympathy vote for making this sacrifice. On the night, Trimble made a brilliant speech. The only problem was that he failed to mention agriculture once – something of an omission, remembers John Taylor, since the Common Agricultural Policy then comprised more than half of the EU budget and the room at the Europa Hotel was full of farmers! Moreover, under questioning, Trimble (who speaks passable French and German) modestly downplayed his genuine foreign language skills; whilst Nicholson, an arguably less cosmopolitan figure, did just the opposite. Nicholson won with 52% on the first ballot.

But even this defeat, reckons Trimble, helped raise his profile in the party. Moreover, it was a party in which there were fewer articulate lawyers than before: Edgar Graham was dead; Robert McCartney was no longer in the party; and Peter Smith had gradually moved out of politics to concentrate fully on his legal career. As if to emphasise his new-found primacy Trimble set up the UUP legal affairs committee in the autumn of 1989. Its principal work was the party’s submission to Lord Colville, a law lord then conducting a review into Ulster’s anti-terrorist legislation. The document, entitled Emergency Laws Now, was written by Trimble himself and was partly based on the old Vanguard submission to the Gardiner Committee in 1974. Amongst its principal recommendations, it urged an end to ‘exclusion orders’ debarring certain Ulstermen from the British mainland – which, in Unionist eyes, treated Northern Ireland as a place apart. Trimble’s profile was further raised when he participated in a demonstration with DUP members against Charles Haughey’s visit to Belfast in 1990 as a guest of the Institute of Directors at the Europa Hotel. From the roof of neighbouring Glengall Street, they waved Union flags and shouted anti-republican slogans.4 Ironically Haughey was greeted by two local dignitaries, both of whom later flourished mightily under Trimble’s patronage: the head of the Institute, John Gorman, later became the senior Catholic politician in the UUP. Likewise, Reg Empey, then Lord Mayor of Belfast became one of Trimble’s closest colleagues. Both men were knighted under his leadership.5

For all his hyper-activity, Trimble remained a figure of the second rank and all prospect of advancement at Queen’s now appeared denied him. Yet, suddenly, there was an opening. Harold McCusker, the UUP MP for Upper Bann, died of cancer on 14 February 1990 at the age of 50: Trimble, like many others in the UUP knew that McCusker had been ill for many years, but the cancer had appeared to be in remission. Some in the UUP, including his widow, Jennifer McCusker, even believed that his death was hastened by the shock of the AIA.6 Now that a vacancy had occurred, Trimble was interested. But it would not be an easy passage. After all, he did not live in the area and even if he did, he was not of the community after the fashion of McCusker – who was born and bred in Lurgan, lived in Portadown and would mix effortlessly with supporters of his beloved Glenavon FC on match days. A variety of local worthies were expected to stand, including four past mayors of Craigavon District Council and Jennifer McCusker (in so solid a Unionist seat, the victor of the selection contest would effectively be the winner of the by-election). Moreover, Trimble was scheduled to go on a long-planned Ulster Society trip to the United States which would coincide with the selection process: he feared giving that up to enter a race in which he stood no chance. Daphne Trimble, though, urged him to run: ‘He was 45 and looking at boredom for the rest of his life,’ she recalls. ‘He was fed up with Queen’s and I knew he would really love to be an MP and would always regret it if he did not do it.’7

Almost a fortnight after McCusker’s death, whilst attending an Apprentice Boys of Derry Club research meeting at the Royal Hotel in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone, on 24 February, Trimble was approached by Robert Creane. Creane is a colourful figure of great energy who was the chairman of the Edenderry division of the Upper Bann Ulster Unionist Association (one of the Portadown branches). Creane remembers pulling Trimble aside and asking him three questions: had anyone asked him to run? Would he run? And, if he did, would he ever withdraw from the race? Trimble answered that no one had asked him to contest the nomination, that if asked to do so he would say yes, and that if he ran he would not withdraw. Creane was delighted, and on that basis began to organise support. Creane’s first act on behalf of his candidate was to call Victor Gordon, an ace reporter of 20 years’ standing on the Portadown Times, the leading newspaper in the constituency. Creane drove Gordon up to Trimble’s home in Lisburn, on Saturday 3 March.8 As Gordon recalls, ‘I did not know this man, but Creane did a real PR exercise, and spoke of Trimble’s love of Ulster.’ In the course of the interview, Trimble announced that he would run.9 Creane also arranged a secret meeting of twelve Upper Bann members at the Seagoe Hotel in Portadown: they concluded that Northern Ireland at this time needed something more than ‘parish pump politics’. Moreover, they felt that none of the local candidates in this manufactured seat would gain support in other parts of the seat: the three main towns of Portadown, Lurgan and Banbridge all felt a keen rivalry for one another and therefore to pick a native son could prove divisive in other parts of the parliamentary division. Trimble, the articulate lawyer from Lisburn, fitted the bill.10

In conjunction with Gary Kennedy – a local schoolmaster who had become interested in politics after the massacre in 1976 of ten Protestant workmen near his home town of Bessbrook in south Armagh – Creane organised a series of ‘get to know you’ meetings to introduce Trimble to the members of the 20 branches in Upper Bann. Trimble also produced a highly professional Letter to the Unionists of Upper Bann. ‘I know we have an irrefutable case,’ he wrote, ‘but I also know that in Westminster and elsewhere there is still much work to be done to persuade others of the justice of our cause and to repudiate the slanders of our enemies.’ It made much of his work for the Ulster Society, based at Brownlow House in Lurgan, and referred to his activities on behalf of Vanguard during the UWC strike (there were still old Vanguardists in the seat, and one of William Craig’s legal practices had been in Lurgan). It also referred to his convictions for minor public order offences whilst chairman of the Lisburn branch of the Ulster Clubs.

First, he had to overcome formidable local opposition. Jennifer McCusker had run the constituency office for her husband. But having nursed her husband through his final illness, she soon made it clear elective office was not for her. Samuel Gardiner then rapidly emerged as the favourite. His credentials were indisputable: a councillor from Lurgan, a three-time mayor of Craigavon District Council, the then chairman of the the Upper Bann Association, Assistant Sovereign Grand Master of the Royal Black Institution (also headquartered at Brownlow House), and High Sheriff of Co. Armagh. Also running was Arnold Hatch of Portadown, another former mayor of Craigavon DC; Jim McCammick of Portadown, another former three-time mayor and past president of the local chamber of commerce; George Savage, also a former mayor and prominent beef and dairy farmer from Donacloney, whose support base was in the rural areas which used to comprise the old Iveagh seat at Stormont; Councillor Samuel Walker of Gilford, Co. Down; and Jack Allen, a senior figure from the UUP establishment.11 Although Allen was in fact from Londonderry, he had run at the behest of Mrs McCusker and of his old friend Ken Maginnis.12 William Ward of Lisburn also ran.

The selection meeting was held in front of 250 delegates at Brownlow House on 19 April 1990. The atmosphere, recalls Gary Kennedy, was very tense. The candidates went on in alphabetical order: several of them, including Trimble, wound up their pitch with the stock Protestant quotation from Martin Luther, ‘here I stand, I can do no other’.13 But Trimble’s speech was much more than the usual ‘you know what I’ve done, now choose me’ routine of some of the local eminences. He made much of the fact that the Upper Bann by-election would be the first seat contested by the newly formed Northern Ireland Conservatives. The race would thus receive national media attention and Unionists would need a capable media spokesman to articulate why they rejected the governing party. ‘We wanted somebody to elucidate our feelings in a reasoned way,’ remembers Gary Kennedy. ‘We couldn’t any longer afford guys thinking “I wish I had said that” halfway home in the plane. We needed someone who could think on their feet – and we didn’t have a Unionist MP who was a lawyer. We all believed that things were going to be all right because of the perception that Molyneaux was having cups of tea with members of the Royal family.’14 After the first round of voting, Gardiner had 91 votes; Trimble 68; Savage 37; Hatch, 18; Allen 13; McCammick 12; Ward 11; and Walker 5. Trimble then knew he was in with an excellent chance, because he felt that Gardiner had hit a ceiling and that whilst his Lurgan-based support was ‘deep’, it was not very ‘wide’. Ironically, for someone who excites such passions, Trimble was everyone’s second choice. In the second round, Gardiner was ahead but his vote had increased to just 93, whereas Trimble’s had risen to 89. Allen, Hatch and Savage went down to 6, 8 and 33 votes respectively, with McCammick still on 12. In the third and final ballot, the other candidates pulled out: George Savage was seen walking down the rows of his supporters, telling them to swing behind Trimble. He now reckons that only three of his initial 37 did not switch to Trimble. The final result was 136–114 in favour of Trimble. His lack of a local track record, far from proving to be a hindrance, turned out to be one of his greatest assets.15

Although Upper Bann was a solidly Ulster Unionist seat, Trimble was every bit as nervous as any other first-time candidate entering into a strange area. This hybrid seat, which straddled the northern portions of Co. Armagh and western Down, was organised around 20 fiercely independent branches: it comprised the town of Portadown, known as the ‘hub of the north’, which had a 70–30% Protestant – Catholic population, and which included some of the staunchest loyalists anywhere. It cherishes the memory of the first leader of organised Ulster Unionism, Col. Edward Saunderson (the MP for North Armagh at Westminster), who observed of the second Home Rule Bill in 1893, that ‘Home Rule may pass this House but it will never pass the bridge at Portadown’; his presence endures to this day in the form of a statue outside St Mark’s Church in Market Street.16 Beside the local bridge, in the Pleasure Garden is a plaque to the memory of the local Protestants drowned in the River Bann by their Catholic neighbours, during the 1641 uprising.17 Even today, the ardour of local loyalism can in part be ascribed to the fact that many of the residents are descendants of refugees from the border counties of the Republic and the more southerly parts of Co. Armagh – which are increasingly ‘no-go’ areas for Protestants. In this climate of increasing residential segregation, the non-sectarian, trade-union based traditions of the old Northern Ireland Labour party (which used to be quite strong amongst the light industrial workers of Portadown) had inevitably waned. Lurgan, just five miles away from Portadown, was perhaps the most evenly and bitterly divided town in Ulster, with a 50–50 sectarian split. Banbridge in Co. Down was two-thirds Protestant at the time of Trimble’s selection and tended to think of itself as a cut above the Co. Armagh portions of the seat.