Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism

Frank Ormsby (ed.), The Collected Poems of John Hewitt (Belfast, 1992), p. 141

Why did Trimble arouse such hostility in nationalist Ireland and amongst mainland progressive opinion? Trimble shrugs his shoulders and says that such anger is of ‘no interest to him’, but it is worth examining the reasons for it. To his detractors, both nationalist and now loyalist, there has always been ‘something of the night about him’ (to quote Ann Widdecombe’s description of Michael Howard in his time as Home Secretary).42 Like Howard, Trimble may also have aroused liberal revulsion, precisely because many right-thinking people feel that someone of his intelligence and professional standing ought to have known better. Trimble was, therefore, potentially much more dangerous than someone such as Ian Paisley precisely because he was both hardline and a thoroughly modern man, who could not be dismissed as a throwback to the 17th-century Covenanters. He had secured the support of much of the London quality print media without compromising his principles, or playing the liberal Unionist. Thus The Times took ‘the presence on the march of the moderate Unionist MP, David Trimble’ as evidence of ‘the broad appeal which the Orange Order still exercises in the Province’.43 Then there was also the undercurrent that Trimble was engaged in sheer opportunism, of playing to the mob. Some, such as Jim Blair who observed Trimble closely in those days, believe that Trimble saw the entire issue as a magnificent opportunity to burnish his Orange credentials in preparation for a leadership bid.44 Certainly, as he readily admits, there was opportunism in his behaviour at Carleton Street once it was all over, but that does not mean that it was governed by such considerations all along.45 It was a huge risk, as is attested to by Trimble’s nervousness during the crisis (Gordon Lucy remembers that at moments, his arm went into a spasm) and he knew he would suffer the brunt of any recriminations if either they did not go down the road or else did so with large-scale casualties. Indeed, Gordon Lucy recalls that he shouted to Trimble on the Monday night, ‘this will be the making of you’, but that Trimble demurred. Trimble also said to Lucy afterwards that he feared that 1996 would be an unmitigated disaster and that the Orangemen would not ‘get away with it’ two years running.46 Drumcree was, therefore, subject to too many variables for it to be a truly satisfactory launching pad for Trimble’s leadership bid, at least when the crisis began. Rather, Trimble appears genuinely to have been swept along by his sense of duty as the local MP. It was a predicament which even internal rivals such as John Taylor understood. ‘If I’d have been the MP for the seat, what on earth would I have done?’ asks the veteran politician.47 But Trimble was also swept along by the emotion of the occasion, which was bound up with such hallowed loyalist concepts as the right to ‘walk the Queen’s highway’ – to which he heartily subscribed. During the crisis itself, he told several people that if the march went through, it would be as significant a development in the history and folklore of Orangeism as the events at Dolly’s Brae in 1849 (when, according to Protestant lore, the Catholic Ribbonmen sought to prevent Co. Down Orangemen from completing their march via their preferred route through the Mourne Mountains). As Trimble’s friend Ruth Dudley Edwards observes the historical romance of the events at Drumcree would have appealed to the theatrical streak in his personality – and it explains his request to Lucy to write his book, which was begun in August 1995.48 In so far as he was thinking in a calculated way about political effects, Trimble felt that street protest was the only way to obtain results under direct rule – a system which he once described to me in deliberately hyperbolic terms as ‘dictatorship moderated by riot’.49 ‘Old thinking’, perhaps, to use Gorbachevian terminology, but scarcely evidence of a preordained stratagem on Trimble’s part to advance his career. Indeed, for much of his career, he has drifted into situations and improvised rather than pursued a detailed, preordained game plan.50

Joel Patton, who went on to found the ‘Spirit of Drumcree’ group within the Orange Order as a vehicle for protest against what he saw as the insipidity of the leadership, says that one of the weaknesses of loyalism is that they need men on white horses: they cannot accept that Drumcree was their victory, so they alighted upon Paisley and Trimble as explanations for that success. But Patton also expresses the view which many loyalists have held since the Belfast Agreement – that the British state, and particularly elements of the British intelligence services, wanted to give Trimble such a victory in order to build up an apparently ‘hardline’ Unionist who would then have the credibility to effect an historic compromise with Irish nationalism.51 In Trimble’s eyes Patton’s views are just another example of loyalist conspiracy theories. ‘Many of these anti-Agreement Unionists decided after the Belfast Agreement of 1998 that I was a bad ’un and therefore had to have been a bad ’un all of the time,’ responds Trimble. ‘These anti-Agreement Unionists have a problem. They have to avoid the lurking doubt that I might still have good reasons as a Unionist for what I am doing post-1998. If I was a good ’un in 1995, how can I have been a bad ’un? People like simplicity and they have difficulty in coping with the complexity of political life.’52

What is certain, both during Drumcree 1995 and 1996, is that the British politicians, including the Prime Minister, were taken by surprise.53The point is confirmed by Sir Robin Butler, the then Cabinet Secretary, who recalls that ‘there were problems with marches the whole time and to us, it seemed as though all the protagonists were like a child crying wolf’. According to Butler, Major’s attitude was to ask whether ‘it was reasonable that the loyalists be so insistent about marching down this piece of road’.54 Indeed, after the second ‘Siege’ of Drumcree, Mayhew told Paul Bew that ‘no one told me what would happen’. By this, Mayhew did not mean that he was totally ignorant of the fact that some sort of trouble was brewing, simply that it was possible that many of those Unionists who were telling him that such crises would occur may have had a vested interest in hyping them up to secure the result they wanted (such as Trimble himself). Some of those within the NIO who were meant to provide advice on what would actually happen may not have done so with sufficient vigour: when he subsquently raised Mayhew’s concerns with a senior civil servant, Bew was told by the official that it was not his role to provide this sort of ‘tribal advice’. As the official saw it, the best traditions of the British mandarinate were those of impartiality. Bew also derived the impression that after the AIA it became perceived career death amongst some officials to state the ‘Unionist line’; and in any case, everyone had seen the Protestants faced down before, as in 1985–6, and may simply have assumed it would happen again.55 Peter Bell, then British joint secretary of the Anglo-Irish Secretariat, recalls that at this point, Drumcree was seen as a public order issue. It was therefore primarily a problem for the RUC and the Army (from which the Government could and arguably should stand back) rather than as an issue of the first political magnitude. This perhaps reflected an enduring lack of empathy for Unionist concerns on the part of many NIO officials from outside the Province and a reluctance on the part of some local civil servants to speak out lest they be thought of as ‘sectarian’.56 Speaking to loyalists on 12 July 1996, Trimble offered his own interpretation why the state was blind-sided during successive years’ disturbances. He said this was because the leading intelligence operatives had all perished in the RAF Chinook crash on the Mull of Kintyre in August 1994. Had they lived, Trimble opined, it is unlikely that they would have failed to see the loyalist protests coming.57 Again, this is pure speculation – and in any case, grievous as the losses were, men such as John Deverell (the senior MI5 officer in Northern Ireland) would have been retired by the time of Drumcree 1995. As with the disaster over the Frameworks Documents, the likeliest explanation is that the state as a whole was so focused on republican intentions during the first IRA ceasefire that they became tone deaf to sensibilities on the loyalist side. If so, Trimble was again the unexpected beneficiary of a Government cock-up – although he denies that Drumcree had much to do with his subsequent election as leader. Justly or unjustly, though, it was the benchmark by which much of the world, and his own community, judged his subsequent performance.

ELEVEN Now I am the Ruler of the UUP!

AFTER a year of set-backs, James Molyneaux finally resigned as UUP leader on 28 August 1995 – the day after his 75th birthday. Trimble says he was surprised by the timing of the departure, of which he had received no advanced warning (in contrast to Major, who was notified by Molyneaux some two weeks before).1 Indeed, John Hunter remembers Trimble dismissing the notion of a Molyneaux resignation when he raised the subject shortly beforehand at a barbecue given at the home of Drew Nelson, a leading Co. Down Orangeman. But when the news came, Trimble rang Hunter and said, ‘well, you’ll be happy this morning, the sun is shining’. Trimble knew that Hunter was a staunch opponent of Molyneaux, but insisted he had made no definite decisions himself.2 However, Daphne Trimble recalls her husband saying that if he did run, he would win.3 By contrast, the man who definitely thought that the sun was shining that morning was John Taylor. Trimble knew that the Strangford MP would seek the leadership, nor was he entirely averse to the prospect of a Taylor victory, since he was sure he would become his right-hand man.4 Much of the political class agreed with this analysis. Thus, Jack Allen recalls that much as John Taylor was disliked by some, the majority of the party officers thought he would win – with or without Trimble in the race.5 The NIO agreed: according to Sir John Wheeler, the security minister, Ancram’s senior officials wanted Taylor precisely because he was seen as a good ‘deal-maker’.6

Trimble soon weighed the pros and cons of running. His plus points, as he saw them, were that he was articulate, could hold his own on television, and because over the previous year he had distanced himself ‘slightly’ from the Frameworks proposals. He reckoned these points would weigh heavily with the UUP’s unique electoral college, despite the fact that he was the youngest and most junior of the UUP MPs and was without formal standing within the Loyal Orders (beyond the reputation which he had acquired at Drumcree). If the choice had been up to the populace at large, Maginnis would be the victor. He enjoyed a good reputation amongst Unionists on security issues – the ex-UDR Major had been the intended victim of at least a dozen assassination attempts – but without compromising his non-sectarian credentials (as was evidenced by his success in holding the constituency of Fermanagh-South Tyrone, with its narrow Roman Catholic majority, in successive Westminster elections). And thanks to his personable manner, he was able to communicate on southern Irish television in a way that few other Unionists could match. Indeed many Unionists believed that he was far too willing to treat with the South, as exemplified by what they saw as his excessive generosity in the Strand II ‘basket’ of the 1991–2 talks in Dublin. If it were up to the MPs, Ross was reckoned to be the likely winner; and if it were up to the councillors and the business community, Taylor seemed to be favourite. But none of these groups formed the electoral college. Because the decision would be made by the Ulster Unionist Council, an 860-strong body with representatives from all of the then seventeen constituencies and other affiliated bodies such as the Orange Order and the Young Unionists, Trimble might stand a chance. The UUC was, he then reasoned, full of people with a greater knowledge than the man in the street, but was at the same time possessed in his eyes of a detachment which the full-time MPs and councillors did not have. In so far as there was an Orange constituency – and it was wider than just the Order’s own delegates, since ordinary branch representatives might also be individual members – Trimble calculated that he had it sewn up. This, he maintains passionately, was not because of Drumcree but because of his work for the Ulster Society. His doubts were, therefore, not about his viability as a candidate, but whether he actually wanted the position itself at this juncture. He knew that it would be an uphill struggle to accomplish anything and, in any case, 1995 was scarcely the best year to become UUP leader after the debacle of the Frameworks Documents.7

Such apparent ambivalence accounts for the initial reports that Trimble had ruled himself out of the race. Thus, The Times editorial on the day after Molyneaux’s resignation stated that ‘it is regrettable that Mr Trimble, MP for Upper Bann, seems disinclined to stand’ and on the back of that decision decided to endorse Taylor.8 What Trimble had actually said to the journalists was that he did not consider himself to be a runner, but added that ‘if other people are keen for me to run, then I will give it serious consideration’. In retrospect, it looks like a classic piece of political ham-acting (‘if the people want me, who am I to refuse?’). According to Gordon Lucy’s private diary of the campaign, Trimble was annoyed that the journalists, with the exception of Dick Grogan and Frank Millar in the Irish Times on 30 August and Victor Gordon of the Portadown Times, had failed to pick up on the nuances. Gordon, writing without a by-line in the local free-sheet called the Craigavon Echo on 30 August 1995 also correctly divined that Trimble had not ruled himself out of the contest. In the Portadown Times of 1 September, Gordon also reported that Trimble was ‘95%’ certain to announce his candidature. Trimble stated that since he had said he ‘might’ run, ‘my ’phone has been red hot with messages of support’. Trimble asked Lucy whether he should run, and Lucy said that of course he would support him and work for him – but that it was his decision and that he would have to live with the consequences of it. Lucy subsequently learned from Daphne Trimble that this was the wrong answer, since she wanted him to say ‘yes’.9

Trimble was left with the impression that his natural supporters felt let down by his apparent reluctance, and that he would damage himself if he did not run. He was also discovering that in the eyes of many delegates, John Taylor was not universally popular. According to Lucy, Trimble finally made up his mind to enter the race on 30 August. The Upper Bann MP then telephoned John Taylor and told him that he would be going forward as a candidate. Taylor replied that he would be sorry to see this happen. Taylor’s then aide, Steven King, states that Taylor did not in fact think that he could win after Trimble entered the race, and that henceforth his heart was never quite in it.10 Trimble discussed his platform with Lucy: it was not so much an appeal for more right-wing Unionism as for more proactive Unionism, for a new style at least as much as new substance. Trimble planned to announce his candidature at Belfast’s Europa Hotel on 1 September. He knew that he would have no heavyweight endorsements, neither from fellow MPs, nor party officers, nor from any constituency chairmen save his own, George Savage. As an outsider, as it it were, he was certain of one thing: he did not wish to repeat the errors of John Redwood’s failed bid for the Conservative leadership earlier in the summer. Indeed, he told Gordon Lucy and John Hunter that their presence at the launch would have the same effect upon his bid as the support of Teresa Gorman and Tony Marlow had on the challenge of the former Welsh Secretary. Instead, inspired by Nicholas Jones’ book Soundbites and Spin Doctors: How Politicians Manipulate the Media – and Vice Versa he opted for a bit of DIY choreography. He decided that he would be accompanied by four relatively unknown figures, all of whom would represent portions of the new Unionist coalition which he was assembling. They included Elaine McClure (a young woman); Lt Commander Bill Martin (whose service background symbolised the traditional backbone of the party); George Savage, his constituency chairman and a farmer (thus seeking to corral the substantial agricultural vote); and Nigel Connor of the Queen’s University Unionists (to emphasise his appeal to youth). From there, Trimble and Lucy repaired to Hunter’s house off the Upper Malone Road to plot out strategy. Two crucial steps were taken. First, an alphabetical list of all UUC delegates was obtained from Glengall Street, so that he could send out A Personal Message From David Trimble. The package made much of the complimentary remarks which Trimble received from both The Daily Telegraph and The Times: a key Trimble theme was the notion that it was crucial for Unionists to influence key decision-makers and opinion-formers in London, rather than sit there and let change envelop them. Second, Hunter and Lucy, who had assisted in Drew Nelson’s 1992 campaign in South Down, were convinced of the merits of telephone canvassing – still a new concept in Northern Ireland, at least in Unionist circles, where many traditionalists thought it not quite the done thing. But Lucy and Hunter, correctly, believed that attitudes towards use of the telephone were changing, even amongst the older generation where resentment of such intrusions tended to be greatest. Accordingly, extra telephone lines were installed in Trimble’s Lurgan office. Two young women were recruited to do the telephone canvassing as volunteers.11

The professionalism of the Trimble campaign, though scarcely sophisticated by standards elsewhere, contrasted with the relative amateurism of its rivals’ efforts. Whereas Trimble’s team would ‘cold call’ anybody, Taylor would only ring those he already knew. Taylor’s campaign suffered a further blow when he appeared on BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight programme at 10:45 p.m. on the eve of the poll on Thursday 7 September. There, he attacked Trimble for ‘prancing in the streets with Ian Paisley’. By this, Taylor was seeking to appeal to that segment of the UUP electorate which rejected Paisley’s populist style. Often, this would have been a correct appraisal of the party’s mood, but Drumcree I was a spontaneous popular eruption which, like the UWC strike of 1974, enjoyed an exceptional degree of middle-class Unionist acquiescence, if not active support. Taylor’s remarks were thus taken by many ordinary Unionists as an implicit attack on their relief over the outcome. Meanwhile, Ross’s campaign never really took off. One of his main supporters, David Brewster – a solicitor from Limavady, Co. Londonderry and the constituency party secretary – had his practice to run. He found that many who would have backed his local MP were now opting for Trimble.12 Martin Smyth’s campaign was dogged by a lack of organisation, which made few in-roads beyond his South Belfast constituency association and some Belfast Orangemen. Smyth concedes that many of his brethren in the Loyal Orders felt that he had stood aside from the events at Drumcree, though in fact he was attending to his duties at Westminster. Maginnis made a game effort, but his perceived liberalism counted against him in the circumstances.

Lucy meanwhile was busy putting the finishing touches to the Trimble campaign. He drafted Trimble’s News Letter article which appeared on the day of the poll, Friday 8 September 1995. Significantly, Trimble approvingly quoted the definition of the consent principle offered by the leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair, ‘as meaning that the people of Northern Ireland could choose between an all-Irish state and the Union’ rather than any of the Conservative Government’s glosses. Moreover, he counselled that ‘a purely negative, unimaginative unionism that simply turned a “hard face” on the outside world is vulnerable to an appeal over its head to the wider society’. But despite such efforts, Trimble remembers that when he arrived at the Ulster Hall on the night of 8 September, he was in a very nervous state – whereas Daphne was quite calm (with customary candour, she says that she merely concealed her own worries).13 The packed Ulster Hall had been the scene of many of the great events in Unionist history: there, in 1886, Lord Randolph Churchill launched his campaign to save Ulster from Home Rule.14 But Trimble’s nerves were misplaced. The candidates spoke in alphabetical order, with Ken Maginnis first: the ex-UDR Major did his ‘soldier and statesman’ routine. Smyth’s address was full of Biblical allusions but the rest of it was every bit as disorganised as his campaign. Ross’s was the best delivered of the five, but in Lucy’s words was ‘a brilliant speech for leadership circa 1930’. Taylor, though, was the greatest disappointment to his supporters. His address was delivered off-the-cuff, and in the words of Denis Rogan, the then party vice chairman, was ‘the most arrogant speech of his life – and that’s saying something’;15 Steven King claims that he in fact had ‘a fit of nerves’ on the night.16 Taylor retrospectively concedes that he was not that keen to assume the leadership.17 Trimble, who was the last speaker, read his speech like a lecture, but Lucy remembers that the audience nonetheless listened.18 As Trimble recalls, ‘mine was the only political speech whereas the others were saying what great chaps they were. But I also said I would go anywhere and speak to anyone. I was signalling that I would go to Dublin and talk to Sinn Fein, though that was not stated. It was in nobody’s mind at the time, except John Dobson, who was smiling.’19

After the first round of balloting, Trimble’s appointed scrutineer, Mark Neale of Portadown, told him of the result:

Smyth – 60 (7%)

Ross – 116 (14%)

Maginnis – 117 (15%)

Taylor – 226 (28%)

Trimble – 287 (36%)

‘Oh, that’s not what If … ng wanted to happen,’ declared Trimble. ‘Well, what do I do now?’ asked the Upper Bann MP. ‘Tell your wife and start writing an acceptance speech,’ replied Neale. Trimble duly proceeded to do so – but not before he had pulled his new ‘Seige [sic] of Drumcree’ medal out of his pocket. As Neale recalls, even at this moment of maximum drama, Trimble did this less out of loyalist pride than out of a desire to point out the spelling error.20 When this result was read out in the hall, Jim Wilson, the party chief executive, immediately saw the mounting astonishment on the faces of the MPs. ‘This was the UUC saying “let’s jump a generation”.’21 In the heat of battle, Trimble also thought back to the Upper Bann selection of 1990, when the first-round winner, Samuel Gardiner, had been overhauled by himself in the final ballot after hitting a ceiling. He feared that Taylor could still do the same to himself. But Trimble’s support was wide as well as deep, and in any case there was no way in which Ken Maginnis would ever throw his support to Taylor as George Savage had done for Trimble in 1990. After Smyth dropped out, the chairman, Jim Nicholson, read out the results of the second round:

Ross – 91 (11%)

Maginnis – 110 (13.5%)

Taylor – 255 (31.5%)

Trimble – 353 (44%)

Trimble now knew for sure that he would become the 12th Unionist leader since the formation of the UUC in 1905, and felt utterly flat inside. There was thus an inevitability about the final result as far as the cognoscenti were concerned – as Trimble’s rivals sat with arms folded and legs crossed. Ross could not break out from his core of supporters from the farming community west of the Bann, dropped out. So, too, did Maginnis: he could see that not only did Trimble do well outside of the greater Belfast area generally, but that he had made substantial inroads amongst some of his own constituents in Fermanagh, notably in the Newtownbutler, Rosslea and Lisnaskea areas close to the border. After the third ballot, Nicholson announced the result of the run-off:

Taylor – 333 (42%)