Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism

The move had been foreshadowed earlier in the month when Trimble took Taylor with him for his first meeting with John Major at No. 10: he was determined to tie him into his policy. The reluctance to go alone to see the Prime Minister was, says Trimble, a reflection of his own weakness. As a token of his esteem, Major greeted Trimble on the doorstep of No. 10 (the meeting, which began at 10:30 a.m., ran well over time, and ensured that Trimble had to run frantically across Whitehall for his 12:00 noon appointment with Tony Blair, the leader of the Opposition, at the Commons).28 The encounter at No. 10 was dominated by one subject, which in the words of Sir John Chilcot ‘lay there at the heart of the process like a coiled snake: decommissioning’.29 Trimble remembers that Major rounded on him for letting down the Government by holding too soft a position on decommissioning. If so, it was an acute reading of Trimble’s remarks at his first press conference at Glengall Street. He demanded that both the Irish and British Governments stick to their original interpretation of paragraph 10 of the Downing Street Declaration, which demanded the establishment of a commitment to exclusively peaceful methods. In subsequent interviews, Trimble appeared to harden the UUP postion by requiring the disbandment of paramilitary groupings, as well as decommissioning. But amidst this smokescreen, Trimble was sending other signals, which would have eluded most ordinary Unionist supporters. For Trimble also hinted that this commitment could be shown in a variety of different ways. The point was underlined by the interview he gave to the Belfast Telegraph the day after his election, where it was revealed that senior Ulster Unionists (that is, himself) were considering proposals for a new assembly that could help end the deadlock over decommissioning and all-party talks.30

It was an early illustration of how carefully Trimble used language. As Dick Grogan correctly observed, ‘Mr Trimble [though] is not averse to the use of nuance when it suits, and his avowed precision is a tactical weapon carefully employed only within certain closely cordoned areas where he chooses to engage and damage his enemy … but he would not, or could not, specify or even speculate on – the nature or quantity of evidence he will require in order to be satisfied that these sweeping conditions have been met.’31 Major’s annoyance was, however, understandable. The Government had sought, through decommissioning, to supply reassurance to the nine Ulster Unionists and Conservative backbenchers that Sinn Fein/IRA would not be brought into constitutional politics without proper ‘sanitisation’. The Government had, therefore, paid a price for supplying such reassurance in the shape of ‘Washington III’ – Mayhew’s demand of 7 March 1995 that the IRA start decommissioning prior to entry into all-party talks as a confidence-building measure. That led to tensions with nationalist Ireland and to some degree with the United States. And now, here was a ‘hardline’ UUP leader quietly pulling the rug from under their feet.

In the longer run, the British Government had reason to be grateful to Trimble. For he thus afforded them the space to resile from Washington III. Not that anyone thought the Government’s stance to be immutable, if they could find a way off the hook (which may partly explain why Trimble chose to pre-empt them by implictly waiving the Washington III criterion, and in exchange cashing in other gains that he thought were of greater long-term value). Indeed, Trimble recalls that whilst he and his fellow party leaders assembled in the first-floor waiting room at the Foreign Office for his first Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph, he was approached by Blair and Paddy Ashdown: was Major really committed, they asked, to decommissioning? If so, they would support him as part of the new tri-partisan consensus. Trimble confirmed that Major was committed. Blair again stated that he was prepared to support Major on the weapons issue, but said that he thought it was the wrong issue: he preferred to fight on the consent principle. If Trimble staked everything on that, he would have the support of every democrat in the land. What again impressed Trimble was the solidity of Blair’s commitment to the consent principle. He did not have the same degree of confidence in the Tories’ adherence to it: no Unionist could do so, he long thought, after the AIA of 1985. Indeed, the attitudes which led to that debacle were, in Trimble’s view, still there. He appeared to believe that ‘imperialistic’ attitudes lurk deep in the heart of English Conservatism (vide the Frameworks Documents). By contrast, at least Labour – for all its faults such as its powerful Irish nationalist fringe – was a genuine believer in the democratic imperative.32 But Trimble’s distrust of the Conservatives in this period was not just a matter of Tory culture; it was personal as well. Unlike all of the other Unionist MPs, Major had not known Trimble when he served as Northern Ireland Office whip from 1983–5. Trimble certainly enjoyed the ritual of going to Downing Street, yet he felt that Major was such a constructed personality that he was never sure whether he was meeting the real man – nor did he ever quite understand where Major’s much-vaunted ‘Unionism’ came from.33 Trimble was also disconcerted by Major’s habit of starting off meetings by giving an apparently off-the-cuff summary of the current situation at any given moment, but which in fact he contended was a carefully calibrated way of guiding the discussion in a direction that he wanted. Andrew Hunter also recalls that much as he (Hunter) enjoyed going to No. 10, briefings from Major could often become worthless because the PM would repeat back what Hunter said at the last meeting in order to illustrate that he (Major) was basically on the same side.34

The failure to establish a truly trusting relationship with Major was all the more surprising because Trimble – like all UUP leaders – would seek to cultivate a ‘special relationship’ with the Prime Minister of the day. The purpose of this gambit was to circumvent the NIO officials and ministers, whom Unionists alleged were in hock to Dublin’s agenda. To some extent this was a delusion (or convenient fig-leaf). Coordination between No. 10 and the NIO was very close and Mayhew and Major enjoyed an excellent personal rapport. Driving a wedge between No. 10 and the NIO became all the more of an imperative for Unionists because the personal relations between Trimble on the one side and Mayhew and Ancram on the other were so bad. Again, in the first instance, this may seem peculiar. Mayhew had been widely criticised by nationalists for the decision not to prosecute on the basis of the findings of the Stalker-Sampson inquiry on the RUC’s alleged ‘shoot to kill’ policy when he served as Attorney General and was also a known sceptic of the way in which the AIA of 1985 had been secretly negotiated.35 Ancram was a Catholic Scotsman who now sat for an English seat and who frequently touted his Unionist credentials. But whatever credentials either man had enjoyed beforehand, they counted for little with Unionists once in office. For despite his track record, Mayhew says he had made little time as a Law Officer to come to know the Unionist MPs; rather, he made it his particular business to look after the Northern Ireland judiciary.36 Even his admirers thought, in some ways, this quintessentially viceregal figure was oddly un-political (in contrast, Trimble notes, to the highly political Ancram). ‘Paddy was a patrician who saw politics primarily as declarations from above,’ says Andrew Hunter, who observed the relationship from close up for some years. ‘He never understood the subtleties and innuendoes of pavement politics.’37

But Mayhew’s difficulties were more personal still. His height (six-foot-five), bearing, voice and family background all counted against him in the eyes of hardline Unionists. Daphne Trimble recalls that ‘David was famously public in criticising Mayhew’s “grand” accent – which really is something the poor man couldn’t help. Maybe it was inexperience in dealing with secretaries of state – not that he liked Mowlam, either.’38 Andrew Hunter ascribes the deteriorating relationship in part to the petit bourgeois academic lawyer’s sense of social and professional inferiority to an eminent silk and scion of the southern Ascendancy (though Trimble says that what he really objected to was Mayhew’s exaggerated patrician manner).39 Mayhew’s forebears had come to Co. Cork in the 13th century but as he himself observes, ‘families like mine had very few connections with Protestants in the north. Living in the south, Anglo-Irish families tended to think of northern Protestants as denizens of the wild woods; and one of the things I was so grateful for as Secretary of State was coming to know them.’40 Andrew Hunter, though, feels that Mayhew had little sympathy for Unionists.41 Sir John Wheeler, who served as Security Minister from 1993–97, also says that ‘Mayhew never understood Unionists or the Loyal Orders. Even though he was the first Secretary of State to visit an Orange Lodge [at Comber, Co. Down, in 1995], I don’t think that he had that instinctive understanding of how they feared their position within the United Kingdom was being eroded. It took me a little while to understand it but when I did, it enabled me to deal with them.’42 There was, notes Michael Ancram, a further reason for the mutual antipathy: ‘David Trimble was very good at being very, very rude – to both of us. Paddy would sit there afterwards and ask me why did I take it whenever David accused us of being liars or whatever. It was mutual hatred. David’s nostrils would flare, his eyes would go very wide and his cheeks very red. Partly, it was histrionics, but partly it was genuine. David was a new type of Unionist who was far more mistrustful of the Conservatives.’43 Trimble preferred Ancram on a personal basis: ‘He was good company and one could even trade insults with him in jocular fashion,’ says Trimble. Moreover, he felt that Ancram (the heir to the Marquess of Lothian) had fewer airs and graces than his boss. That said, Trimble never took Ancram’s ‘Unionism’ terribly seriously either and he was intensely suspicious of his key officials in the Political Development Directorate of the NIO – principally Quentin Thomas and Jonathan Stephens.44

One minister who kept a close eye on Thomas’s activities was Viscount Cranborne, leader of the House of Lords. To Cranborne, Thomas embodied ‘the habits of decades of imperial decline. This habit brought about the cast of mind of British officialdom of assuming that the most expedient way of tackling any difficulty is finding the most elegant path of retreat – and most emphatically so in Northern Ireland. Considerations of improving or advancing the interests of your own loyal people are now totally alien to the British official mind, and I suspect have been since the 1920s. As a result, I think they saw David Trimble as yet another little colonial problem to be managed.’45 Probably no senior Tory has enjoyed so dark a reputation in nationalist Ireland since F.E. Smith, who was loathed for his part in the Home Rule crisis of 1912.46 Cranborne’s Unionist credentials derived partly from the record of his forebears, but also from his own career: when he retired from the Commons, aged 40, in 1987 he cited his disgust with the Anglo-Irish Agreement as one of the reasons. And now, it was alleged, he was placing obstacles in the way of the ‘peace process’. He was credited with so much influence that one senior Irish official describes him as having been ‘effectively Prime Minister in respect of the affairs of Northern Ireland’.47

Yet was Cranborne’s reputation justified? And what was his relationship to Trimble? Certainly, Major came to depend on him not merely to manage the peers but also to run his re-election bid after he resigned the Conservative leadership in June 1995. More significantly, Cranborne had asked for, and was rewarded with membership of the Cabinet’s Northern Ireland Committee. This body met monthly (or more often, when necessary) in the Cabinet Room. It also included Major, Mayhew, Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine, Ancram, Wheeler, Alistair Goodlad (the Chief Whip). Following Redwood’s leadership challenge that June, the balance on that body had marginally tilted away from the Major – Mayhew line because of the resignation of Douglas Hurd. Hurd was a key figure in formulating the Anglo-Irish Agreement and his replacement, Malcolm Rifkind, did not share his enthusiasm for the subject. Mayhew would start the meetings, with Ancram presenting the political picture and Wheeler the intelligence briefing. Cranborne scarcely dominated these gatherings: he would sit at the end of the table in the Cabinet Room so that he could see everybody and would not look pushy. In any case, he notes, these were not occasions for great passionate arguments – confrontation was distinctly ‘non-U’ – and much was left unsaid.48‘Robert’s importance was that he knew and was trusted by all Unionists,’ says Mayhew. ‘After we had a row with the Unionists over the Scott Report [in February 1996, the Ulster Unionists voted against the Government over the inquiry into the arms for Iraq scandal] things were very bad between us. I’m not good at the Realpolitik of reconciliation. But Robert is different. He was very understanding of Trimble.’49 Yet curiously, Trimble and Cranborne were not personally close. Indeed, Cranborne observes that Trimble would rarely come to see him in this period. Rather, it was Cranborne who sought out Trimble. Cranborne feels that Trimble always saw him out of politeness and says that he has never met a politician who plays his cards closer to his chest than Trimble (the UUP leader retorts, ‘What cards do I have?’). Trimble trusted Cranborne as a genuine Unionist, though he feared at times that Cranborne might not always be in the loop or else might be used as a channel for spin.50 It said much about the British state’s successful alienation of Unionist affections that even this relationship was characterised at times by a degree of wariness.

THIRTEEN Something funny happened on the way to the Forum election

TRIMBLE’S first major speech after assuming the Unionist leadership was to address a reception on the 90th anniversary of the foundation of the UUC. Gordon Lucy was summoned to help and assumed that it would be an historical tour d’horizon concerning Unionism past, present and future. He was not merely to be disappointed, but shocked when Trimble informed him that he was thinking of ‘bringing in the Provisionals from the cold’; shortly thereafter, John Hunter was told much the same. Hunter listened and says that he took this to be simply a throw-away remark. Trimble says that he did not quite say this: he was just trying to urge his party ‘not to display the usual stock hostility to [republicans] and all their works’. Whatever the actual content or significance of the remark, Trimble’s line of thinking ultimately led to a series of breaches between both men and the UUP leader.1 Trimble’s chosen first step for accomplishing the task of weaning the republicans off violence was an elected forum. On the night of the address, at the Balmoral conference centre in south Belfast, Trimble reiterated his public position on decommissioning. Then, he added: ‘It could be that both these matters could be resolved in the one way. Sinn Fein could obtain a democratic mandate and show a commitment to the democratic process if there were elections, say, to a new Assembly. By standing, taking their seats and contributing to the debate they could show whether they are committed to the democratic process and the principle of consent. In such elections it would be very interesting to see what support Sinn Fein actually has. If they took their seats we would recognise their position and could debate with them across the floor and thus talk to them at a time when they have not fulfilled all the requirements of the Declaration and thus be unable to move into formal inter-party talks. An Assembly could bridge that gap until they do meet the requirements of the [Downing Street] Declaration.’2 The address was classic Trimble and it pointed up the complexity of Trimble’s actions. For although he disclaimed any intention to recreate Stormont, Trimble saw merit in facilitating dialogue with Sinn Fein in an inherently partitionist body. If they did so, all well and good; but, if not, then their refusal to accept Northern Ireland as the relevant political unit (and thus the consent principle) would be apparent to all. It would stop the obsessive concentration on decommissioning. But Trimble also thought that such a forum could provide a training ground for the younger Unionist cadres whose aspirations were stymied by the current political arrangements. Local government was so powerless as to offer little to any rising stars; and members of the ageing parliamentary party at Westminster showed scant inclination to retire.3

Trimble recalls that the speech caused excitement in No. 10: Downing Street was looking for flexibility and his speech afforded them the necessary space to ‘get off the prior decommissioning hook’. But the reaction elsewhere was less favourable. William Ross, who was listening with his wife Christine, was shocked. ‘Did he say what I think he said?’ she inquired. ‘And where does this leave us?’ ‘In one bloody awful hole,’ replied the East Londonderry MP with customary candour.4 From the other side of the divide, the SDLP – which would be critical to the success of any such venture – was scathing. Thus, Mark Durkan mocked the illogicality of Trimble’s willingness to engage with Sinn Fein in an assembly but refusal to hold all-party talks without decommissioning.5 Many felt that the reason for SDLP hostility to the Trimble plan was that the party feared it would do badly in any contest with Sinn Fein, which had been legitimated by the ‘peace process’ and which was a much younger and more dynamic party. Significantly, though, the plan was not dismissed out of hand by the Taoiseach, John Bruton.6 The emerging relationship between Trimble and the Irish state would be critical to the UUP leader’s willingness to engage in the talks and ultimately to sign the Belfast Agreement. It was to be a tortuous and sometimes tempestuous process – on both sides – and its beginnings were inauspicious. Fergus Finlay, Dick Spring’s adviser, recalls that when Trimble was elected leader, the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin (known as ‘DFA’) feared that the relationships forged with liberal Unionists in the early 1990s – with figures such as Ken Maginnis and the McGimpsey brothers – counted for nothing. It was assumed that those whom the Irish knew best would now be marginalised. Moreover, states Finlay, ‘he was a total stranger to us. All we knew was stuff we didn’t like, which everyone knew, like Drumcree. But no one had ever had lunch with him, or really encountered him on a prolonged basis.’7 Finlay was not entirely correct: Sean O hUiginn, the head of the Anglo-Irish Affairs division at the DFA had first met Trimble almost 20 years before in the post-Vanguard period. O hUiginn had huge reservations about the conduct of Trimble at Drumcree, but also found in his election intriguing parallels with the rise of Daniel O’Connell, the leading campaigner for Catholic emancipation of the early 19th century. O hUiginn noticed that as with O’Connell, Unionists laid huge stress on how ‘articulate’ Trimble was: the classic response of a grouping which feels itself to be voiceless (the analogy held up in another way, too, since both men could be very splenetic!).8

Trimble still saw the Republic as a political, if not a cultural enemy.9In the early 1970s, he thought that ‘the Republic was very close to waging proxy war against us. The role of the Irish Government in creating the Provisional IRA was the turning of blind eyes. Things changed under [the government of Liam] Cosgrave in 1974–5 and as far as the Irish public was concerned. Northern Ireland had gone off the boil and they were anxious to have things settled. The Irish state was then wholly sectarian. Changes had started with Vatican II but they were taking a long time to work their way through Irish society. Only in the last decade – partly under the influence of the divorce referendum, and the exposure of the paedophile priests – has social life ceased to be controlled by the [Catholic] Church. And then, of course, there was the embattled, declining southern Protestant community. I remember attending one Apprentice Boys of Derry function in the late 1980s at Raphoe, Co. Donegal, and them telling me “don’t end up in the same hole as us”.’10 Subsequently, though, in his UUP annual conference speech at Portrush, Co. Antrim, on 21 October 1995, Trimble approvingly quoted John Whyte as stating that the Republic was not merely a poorer society, but also a more unequal one on account of its retrograde housing and education policies.11 In fact, much of Trimble’s analysis of the southern economy and society was already out of date. He tended to underrate the rise of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ as a source of self-confidence to nationalists on both sides of the border, making the price which they would ask for any deal all the higher.

Such was the baggage which Trimble carried on his first visit to Dublin as leader of the UUP. There was still a degree of reticence on the Unionist side about accepting this kind of invitation. Molyneaux had gone to Dublin Castle in 1992 as part of the Strand II segment of multilateral talks, but had not gone to bilaterals with the Irish at Government Buildings, where the Taoiseach’s office is located. Indeed, not since Terence O’Neill’s meetings with the then Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, at the Mansion House in 1965, and with his successor, Jack Lynch, at Iveagh House in January 1968, had a UUP chief gone south for this sort of exchange. Again, Trimble’s purpose in so doing was to kill such taboos once and for all.12 He wanted to do so at this particular point when he was under relatively little pressure, rather than be forced to abandon this stance under duress during a crisis in the talks. But Trimble also wanted to make another point. He wanted to be seen to be meeting first with the Taoiseach rather than Dick Spring, whose department had day-to-day responsibility for Northern Ireland. Such a meeting also contained the implicit message that Trimble was the potential Prime Minister-in-waiting of Northern Ireland, the two men dealing as equals.

After breakfasting at John Taylor’s house near Armagh, the Unionist team crossed the border. Their first task was to launch a book at the Mansion House written by two Unionist policy analysts, Esmond Birnie and Paddy Roche, entitled An Economics Lessson for Irish Nationalists and Republicans, which charged that a united Ireland made no economic sense and that the Republic in any case could not afford reintegration of the national territory. Under the gaze of Daniel O’Connell – whose portrait hangs in the Mansion House – Trimble signed the visitors’ book and wrote his address as ‘Lisburn, Co. Antrim, UK’. At the reception, afterwards, which was attended by de Rossa and the new leader of Fianna Fail, Bertie Ahern, Trimble signed copies of the book. The reception had another significance in the longer run. For it was at this event that Trimble first met Eoghan Harris, the Sunday Times columnist, former Workers’ Party political strategist, and scriptwriter for the television series Sharpe. Harris describes himself as ‘a sort of Andrew Neil without the charm, a sort of Peter Mandelson without a party’, and had guided both de Rossa and Mary Robinson to their respective triumphs in the European election of 1989 and the presidential election of 1990.13 Harris was spotted in close conversation with the UUP leader, causing one journalist to remark, ‘he’s probably looking for an advice contract. They must be the only political party who he hasn’t advised.’ ‘Who said he hasn’t?’ responded another. The reporter’s hunch was prophetic.14

The encounter with Bruton was in and of itself relatively unmemorable. Trimble stated his belief that all-party talks could not possibly begin by the end of 1995 because of Sinn Fein/IRA’s intransigent stance on the weapons issue. Bruton found Trimble to be not particularly au fait with the nuances of southern politics, but he noted that the UUP leader was prepared to take the chance of finding out more.15 A new channel of communication was established and regular meetings would be held in future. The media reaction was mostly positive: The Times of London speculated that Gerry Adams had met his match.16 Mary Holland of the Irish Times was impressed by Trimble’s boldness and reckoned that because of Drumcree he now had a stock of political capital to persuade his own community that the structures of government in Northern Ireland would never again be based upon majoritarian principles.17