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

Why had Thatcher done it? Many were astonished, especially after Anglo-Irish relations suffered during the pro-Argentinian tilt of the Haughey Government during the Falklands War of 1982. 15 First, she felt that ‘something must be done’ over the rising tide of violence and the growth in Sinn Fein’s electoral support after the Hunger Strikes of 1981: the SDLP needed to show that constitutional politics could deliver something and the AIA would comprehensively demonstrate that capacity (though Fitzgerald admits that he continued to emphasise the degree of the republican threat during the negotiations, even after the Sinn Fein challenge had begun to wane during the May 1985 local government elections). 16 Second, she was told that it would yield all sorts of new security cooperation: a top-ranking Gardai agent in the IRA, Sean O’Callaghan, had recently supplied the information which aborted the attempted assassination of the Prince and Princess of Wales at a Duran Duran concert. She may, therefore, have believed that signing the deal would open the door to more such successes. 17 Third, her old friend, Ronald Reagan exerted some pressure: according to an authoritative biography of Tip O’Neill, the Irish-American Speaker of the US House of Representatives, the White House mollified O’Neill’s anger over Administration policy in Central America by ‘delivering’ something to the Massachusetts Democrat on Ulster. 18 Moreover, by associating the Irish with decision-making on Ulster, the Government hoped to minimise the international costs of this engagement. And fourth, as Trimble believes, she may well have been fed up with the UUP leadership for turning down every government initiative after she did not automatically proceed with their favoured proposals in the 1979 election manifesto. 19

Trimble actually heard about the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement during his sabbatical year whilst on holiday in the Costa del Sol. Daphne Trimble recalls them turning to one another and saying, ‘This will mean civil war.’ 20 Like so many Unionists, Trimble erroneously thought the British state was on the verge of a complete scuttle from Northern Ireland. ‘After the AIA, it was perfectly obvious that normal constituency activity was useless and the MPs had completely failed,’ he recalls. 21 The effects of all of this were swift and dramatic: between 100,000 and 200,000 Unionists assembled to protest at Belfast City Hall on 23 November. 22 But how would the initial surge of protest be sustained? As in the early 1970s, Unionists felt themselves to be in a bind. If they played by the rules, no one would take any notice. Yet if they resorted to large-scale violence, they feared that the rest of the United Kingdom would be disgusted and would accordingly resolve – in Peter Robinson’s memorable phrase – to keep Ulster on the ‘window ledge of the Union’. 23 Trimble, therefore, had three reasons for immersing himself in the gathering storm of protests. If someone such as himself did so (known to the NIO as a moderate of sorts after the voluntary coalition episode of 1975–6) then it would send a powerful signal to the system about the depth of feeling within the Unionist camp. The second reason was that if the protests were not to damage the Unionist cause, it was vital that there be some guiding form of political intelligence behind them. The third reason owed much to his responsibility as constituency chairman: he says he wanted to protect Molyneaux’s back from the more extreme elements. 24

Nonetheless, Trimble was not a figure of the first rank and was probably more peripheral than he had been in 1974–6 – as is illustrated by the fact that he registered only just in the consciousness of senior servants of the British state. Sir Robert Armstrong, for instance, recalls ‘a shadowy figure, but little more than that’. 25 Trimble’s chosen vehicle for protesting the accord was the Ulster Clubs: originally created before the AIA to oppose the re-routing of traditional loyalist parades, they had since then recanalised their energies to oppose the Agreement. Above all, they felt that neither the mainstream politicians nor the Orange Order were doing enough. Trimble became the founding chairman of the Lisburn branch, whose inaugural meeting was held at the town’s main Orange hall. But Trimble was depressed by the combination of loose fighting talk about taking on the British Army and a lack of a coherent strategy to deal with the crisis. Indeed, he took it as a measure of how bad things were that the deputy supreme commander of the UDA, John McMichael, was the most sensible person at many of these meetings. McMichael, also from Lisburn, was the political brains behind the UDA, and the two men had a healthy mutal respect. 26 John Oliver remembered that ‘McMichael thought the world of David’ and over the next few years took to heart many of Trimble’s strictures about the legitimate parameters of protest. 27 This contact proved important to Trimble, for without McMichael’s help, he would have been unable to keep a grip on the wilder elements. But Trimble also used his own skills to chair the meetings of the Ulster Clubs. Nelson McCausland, later a Belfast city councillor, remembers Trimble’s technique for dealing with the grassroots: ‘What struck me was how people were talking a load of nonsense. David-Trimble would then summarise their ramblings in a very articulate way, “I think what you’re really saying is…” and the person would be gratified that he had hit upon some new insight.’ 28 Trimble would also do all the talking at meetings of the Province-wide executive of the Ulster Clubs, where his colleagues again seemed to him to be equally clueless. He directed them to the strategy of the Militant Tendency. ‘I said to them, “if you’re aligned to mainstream organisations, but oppose their strategy as a ginger group, one thing you can do is to set up a newspaper to influence the wider debate”.’ So it was that Ulster Defiant , the Clubs’ newspaper, was born. 29

To demonstrate that the AIA had no support in the majority population, the fifteen UUP, DUP and independent Unionist MPs resigned to create a massive Province-wide by-election: the SDLP put up candidates in only four of the most marginal constituencies. On 24 January 1986, the Unionists secured an overwhelming 418,230 votes and held all of their seats bar Newry-Armagh. This took the gloss off the victory. Indeed, the rise in the SDLP vote at the expense of Sinn Fein allowed the Government to claim that its strategy of strengthening constitutional nationalism was working. The collapse in the pro-Agreement (but loosely unionist with a lower case ‘u’) Alliance party vote showed the virtual unanimity within the Unionist family against the diktat. Gradually, all of Ulster-British society mobilised. Eighteen councils with Unionist majorities, including Lisburn, adjourned; rates protests followed; and southern Irish goods were boycotted (Trimble thought this last form of protest to be silly, but went along with it in the spirit of the times). The culmination of this phase of struggle was the Loyalist ‘Day of Action’, held on 3 March, whose purpose was to bring the whole of Northern Ireland to a standstill. Lisburn, of course, was to do its bit and set up a municipal coordinating committee comprised of representatives of the UUP, DUP, Loyal Orders, Ulster Clubs and farmers’ bodies. After a series of road blocks, to shut off the town, they would then adjourn for a mass rally at Smithfield Square in the town centre.

It was, though, an organisational nightmare. Trimble knew that street protests had to be managed. And the only people who could exert sufficient influence to prevent things spiralling out of control were the paramilitaries themselves. When tempers frayed, such crowd scenes could easily degenerate into full blown riots. Trimble participated in an ad-hoc action committee of 20 that included McMichael, whose purpose was to discusss the arrangements for the event. They decided on peaceful pickets of all the main arteries leading in and out of town. Trimble went around the traders in Bow Street, asking for their support: only one of them, he recalls, gave a dusty response. On the day itself, he positioned himself on the Hillsborough Road. During the course of the protest, some UDA men began to thump a bus which had been stopped. Trimble tried to stop them and they told him in no uncertain terms where to go. He rang McMichael, who duly told them to cease, and was always grateful to the UDA leader for sticking by what they had agreed. 30 Later in the day, Trimble presided at the mass rally in Smithfield Square, packed with families and farm vehicles. The Ulster Star – a local newspaper – reported on 7 March 1986 that he saluted the work of the coordinating committee. ‘Mr Lawson Patterson and Mr Eddie Blair were thanked for arranging the tractor cavalcade and there was praise for the representatives of the Loyal Orders and Mr John McMichael, of the UDA.’ But there was an uglier side to some of the subsequent protests as well. Lisburn RUC men who were put in the front line of policing the demonstrations were burned out of their homes and Seamus Close of the local Alliance party claimed it was significant that these had come on the heels of ‘sinister and intimidatory’ comments by UDA spokesmen. 31 Indeed, later that year, the Housing Executive reported 114 instances of intimidation against Roman Catholic families in the greater Lisburn area. ‘It was a very unhappy time,’ recalls Trimble. But he was determined not to allow that element to spoil the legitimate demonstrations of others. 32 In May 1986, on the occasion of the intergovernmental conference, Trimble and his fellow loyalists took over the rates office, urging householders and businessmen to withhold payments for as long as possible. He hoped that if enough people did so, the temporary shortfall would cost the Treasury £100 million in interest payments. When he eventually paid up, he did so with a giant, blown-up four foot by ten hardboard cheque for £616.16 drawn on his own and Daphne Trimble’s personal account: he had derived the idea from A.P. Herbert, who once wrote a cheque on the side of a cow. When Peter Barry, the Irish Foreign Minister, visited Northern Ireland on 17 June 1986, Trimble and others chained themselves to the railings at Hillsborough Castle; he arrived at work on the next day to find a photograph of the stunt displayed on the front page of the News Letter : it certainly annoyed his supporters at Queen’s such as Herb Wallace, who at the time was ‘managing’ his campaign to be elected Dean of the Law Faculty. In the eyes of the university authorities, it may well have confirmed their impression that Trimble was someone unsuitable for preferment. 33 Indeed, Trimble received two convictions for minor public order offences, such as parading without a permit in Lisburn with his own branch of the Apprentice Boys of Derry.