Dean Godson - Himself Alone - David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism

Trimble says he learned an important lesson from these conversations – that the Government had no master plan for the future of the Province and that Blatherwick was, in fact, grateful for ideas. Far from seeking a ‘sell-out’ or ‘scuttle’ from Ulster, Trimble contends that Blatherwick was looking for some formulation that would quieten things down. 25 The two men spoke in particular about the ideas which Trimble, Craig and David McNarry had expressed in their personal capacities as UUP members in February 1980 in a paper entitled Towards the Better Government of Ulster. The document proposed a phasing of devolution which in the first stage could cover those services presently administered by the six Northern Ireland departments (Health, Education and so on), thus reserving more controversial matters for later. These reserved matters, it went on, could then be transferred within a specified period following a vote by a special or weighted majority of the members of the Northern Ireland Parliament. It added that the advantages of this procedure would be that there would be a clear incentive for all parties to work towards such a transfer. Some of these ideas were later incorporated into the ‘rolling devolution’ plans of Thatcher’s second Ulster Secretary, Jim Prior, and the ensuing 1982–6 Assembly. Although the UUP participated in the Prior Assembly, many integrationists – and, above all, Powell – saw the body as a NIO stratagem to perpetuate the semi-detached status of the Province.

Trimble may have found discussions with officials informative, but they cost him dearly in the short term. In 1982, Enoch Powell raised a grave matter in the Commons, which came to be known in unionist circles simply as ‘Sloan-Abbott’. The sequence of events was as follows: in February 1981, a young postgraduate researcher at Keele University called Geoffrey Sloan approached an upcoming NIO civil servant called Clive Abbott, for the purpose of interviewing him for his thesis. Sloan passed a record of this interview on to Harold McCusker, who in turn passed it on to James Molyneaux, who in his turn showed it to Enoch Powell. The contents of Sloan’s notes were sensational. Abbott had apparently informed him that when the Tories entered office in 1979, the NIO had to tell them that the Neave (and therefore the Molyneaux) policy of greater integration was ‘just not on’, both because such an approach would forfeit the cooperation of the Republic in security affairs and because of past secret undertakings given to the Irish Republic on the constitutional future of Northern Ireland. The message was in line with Powell’s worst fear: that civil servants were working actively to undermine the policy of the elected government of the day at the behest of a foreign power. Prior was enraged that a civil servant who could not defend himself should be named in this way. Moreover, he said, beyond the fact that these interviews took place, there was no agreeement on what Abbott had actually said. The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, had conducted an investigation. According to his findings, Abbott had not said these things: the notes contained some basic errors which, he held, no high-flying NIO civil servant could ever make (such as the misnaming of a US Congressman interested in Ulster). Above all, Prior retorted, Powell had not – as it were – ‘declared an interest’ in the matter of Sloan. For it emerged that although Sloan was, indeed, a researcher at Keele, he had once done research for McCusker and had also met Molyneaux on a number of occasions. When Powell raised the matter, he did not mention this and it thus appeared (erroneously) that Sloan had been acting as an entirely independent observer. Whatever the truth of the matter, the apparent errors in the interview notes and the question of Powell’s omission allowed the Government off the hook. 26

But there was a further twist to the tale. For according to David McKittrick’s ‘Westminster Notebook’ in the Irish Times of 3 July 1982, the document ‘has Abbott naming a prominent Official Unionist politician and saying, “he is also a personal friend, and has kept us well-informed about what is going on inside Jim Molyneaux’s party for a number of years”. The politician named says he has never, to the best of his recollection, met anyone by the name of Clive Abbott.’ That unidentified person was David Trimble. The notes were circulated widely in loyalist circles and their contents were advertised – accurately – to the author. Key passages have also subsequently been passed on to me by a prominent UUP figure. The implications of this allegation were very serious indeed and confirmed the worst suspicions of the UUP about anyone who spoke to the NIO. For, at best, he could have been seen by his fellow unionists to have been indiscreet in front of ‘the Brits’. Indeed, the most damaging claim, says Trimble, was to be described as a ‘good friend’ by a civil servant. Trimble states that since he had not met Abbott, the reference to him was obviously meant in a departmental sense, in the light of his conversations with Huckle, Leach and Blatherwick. He protested loudly to Blatherwick about the damage, but the UUP leader remembers that ‘the NIO had gone into deep defensive mode’ and would not issue a denial on his behalf. 27 Blatherwick also denies that Trimble was an informer of any kind and says that ‘as a person he’s honest to the point of brutality. A very proper person, very aware of his own position. That’s why he took Sloan-Abbott so badly.’ 28 Trimble also spoke to Molyneaux, as his local MP, to ensure that these claims were curtailed, but he remembers Molyneaux simply equivocated; Molyneaux says that he did not know what Trimble was alluding to. Even today, over two decades on, serving and retired senior civil servants are edgy about the Sloan-Abbott correspondence, refusing either to talk about it, or claiming that they cannot remember the details (or after much delay taking refuge in the Prior statement to the House in 1982). Abbott himself left the NIO a few years later for a senior position at the Home Office. Later, he held high rank in English local government and became chief executive of Cotswold District Council. He declined to talk on the record and his off-the-record comments added nothing beyond the existing public record. Sloan is now a lecturer in strategic studies and the author of an excellent tome entitled The Geopolitics of Anglo-Irish Relations in the Twentieth Century. Molyneaux strongly urged the author not to pursue the matter. Trimble, by contrast, is far more open about Sloan-Abbott than some of the other protagonists.

The accumulation of reversals contributed to Trimble’s decision not to run for the Assembly and to contemplate leaving politics altogether. ‘My first child was on the way and I was not getting anywhere personally,’ recalls Trimble. ‘Had it not been for Edgar [Graham] and the Anglo-Irish Agreement, my life would have gone in a totally different direction.’ 29 Although Graham was by now in the Assembly – he had been elected for Trimble’s old seat in South Belfast – the two men remained on friendly professional terms. Graham carried a personal protection weapon, but it was no macho indulgence on his part. The nationalist population – including many students at Queen’s – had been ‘radicalised’ during and after the Hunger Strikes. Academia and judiciary, in particular, were becoming more vulnerable: in March 1982, whilst the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Robert Lowry, was visiting Queen’s, the IRA fired four shots, wounding a professor; an RUC officer was shot in the head during an examination, though his life was saved; and Lord McDermott, Lowry’s predecessor, was injured in a bomb blast whilst visiting the then Ulster Polytechnic at Jordanstown some years earlier. 30 And although the IRA did not usually target politicians, they had broken with this unwritten half-understanding in December 1981, when the Rev. Robert Bradford, Westminster MP for the constituency was murdered along with a caretaker at a community centre in Finaghy. Brian Garrett, a leading Belfast solicitor met Trimble at the opera that night and told him the news: Trimble’s reaction was such that Garrett recalls that ‘I felt as though I had plunged a knife into him.’ 31