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

The Trimble household could not, in the old Ulster phrase, be described as especially ‘good living’ – in the sense that alcohol, smoking and theatregoing were obviously indulged. Likewise, profane music and books were allowed on Sundays. 29 But certain traditional practices and forms were nonetheless observed. The family worshipped at Trinity Second Presbyterian Congregation of Bangor, whose minister John T. Carson had written several volumes, including a school story entitled Presbyterian and Proud Of It and God’s River In Spate , a study of the 1859 religious awakening known as the Year of Grace; in 1966, he was called to the Moderatorial Chair of the General Assembly. Carson was in the forefront of the moderate evangelicalism of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in the post-war era and Trimble was an enthusiastic congregant from his teenaged years through to his mid-twenties. Between the ages of eleven and fourteen, Trimble spent part of several Christmas holidays at the interdenominational Belfast Bible College and attended morning and evening services every Sunday and at midweek, as well as special services: according to Iain Trimble, he was undoubtedly the most observant member of the family. 30 He was also ‘headhunted’ for a variety of tasks by the kirk authorities, of whom the most influential was Michael Brunyate, an Englishman who worked as an engineer at Harland and Wolff. Trinity wanted to attract more holidaymakers to its services and to that end, the young Trimble assisted Brunyate in rigging up the sound system to blare out hymns on Main Street: because of copyright problems, they had to pre-record their own devotional music. 31 But this was not just a pastime for an awkward, bookish teenager: Trimble recalls that he was a genuine ‘fundamentalist’, asserting the literal truth of the Bible. Moreover, he was a ‘creationist’ – in the sense of believing it to be an accurate description of the order in which God created the world, though he always entertained doubts about the precise six-day timespan (he remains doubtful about Darwinian evolutionary theory to this day, but on intellectual rather than theological grounds). He would continue to be an ardent church-goer until the late sixties – though he declines to say why he stopped, on the grounds that it would be ‘too complex’ to explain. 32 Notwithstanding his often excellent memory, he would make a reluctant, even poor witness for the likes of Anthony Clare.

Perhaps because of the uneasy relationship with his parents, and his lack of coordination, Trimble was thrown back on his own resources at an early age. This self-sufficiency took both intellectual and emotional forms. Certainly, books were the safest refuge of all from family and contemporaries alike. His siblings recall him poring endlessly over war adventure stories: his brother Iain recalls that young David would read by candlelight after his parents switched off the lights at 9:00 p.m. 33 Later, he moved on to Winston Churchill’s The Unknown War , about the eastern front during the First World War, and delighted in mastering the geography and history of the obscure countries described in that volume. Yet for many years, Trimble’s knowledge of the outside world was largely derived from books. Despite his curiosity, he never holidayed overseas – apart from a couple of school-trips to Austria and Germany – until he married Daphne Orr in 1978. His parents could afford only cycling holidays in the Mourne Mountains or the Trossachs, where the entire family would stay in youth hostels. 34

Such mastery of detail may have been entirely theoretical, but it served Trimble well in his own home. He established his pre-eminence in the house as much through a natural ability with words and his excellent memory, as through physical force. ‘You could never argue with David because he always retained any information,’ recalls Iain Trimble, who left home at fifteen to join the RAF as an apprentice photographer. ‘He would always know more than you did. Which was quite frustrating. But it had the effect on me that if David said something, I’d believe it.’ Whether the issue at hand was the Munich air disaster of 1958, the Floyd Patterson – Ingemar Johansson fight, or Elvis Presley, the young Trimble acquired an encyclopaedic mastery of the details. 35 Trimble is often called an intellectual snob, but this is not quite right: he could more accurately be described as a knowledge snob, whatever the subject. Even today, notes Daphne Trimble, ‘he can be quite happy spending the evening at home reading, without exchanging a word with anybody in the family’. 36

Such traits and interests set Trimble apart from his contemporaries at an early age – first at the Central Primary, then at Ballyholme Primary. In consequence, Trimble’s mother entertained hopes that he might attend Campbell College (one of Northern Ireland’s leading independent schools). Such aspirations were short-lived – especially after his father pointed out that they could not afford travel costs, let alone the fees. But he passed the 11-plus – the only one of the three Trimble children to do so – and in the autumn of 1956 he began at Bangor Grammar. Located within 100 yards of home, at College Avenue, it was an all-boys school of 350–400 pupils. Following his successful interview in June of that year, the headmaster, Randall Clarke – a former housemaster at Campbell College – wrote at the time that the young Trimble was possessed of good speech and manners. In appearance, he was neat and red-headed. He added that he was ‘over-studious and over-conscientious. Nice child. Highly intelligent. Precocious.’ He wondered: ‘Has he been pushed too much?’ 37

The remark may have said something about the Trimble household, but it also said something about the prevailing ethos of Bangor Grammar: Jim Driscoll, who came to Bangor Grammar from Ballymena Academy in 1952 to teach Classics, found that ‘to a certain extent, it reflected the tone of a holiday town’. 38 This, of course, is precisely what it was. Bangor, known in the 19th century as ‘the Brighton of the North’, was a quiet seaside resort of faded grandeur; some of the older people then had never even been to Belfast. True, Bangor Abbey, founded in 558 by St Comgall, had been one the centres of learning in medieval Europe – which explains why the spot is one of only four places in Ireland referred to in the late twelfth-century Mappa Mundi. 39 By the 1950s any such academic distinction was mostly a thing of the past and university entrants, let alone Oxbridge awards, were then comparatively rare. But such qualifications were not really needed: higher education was the exception rather than the norm and, as Jim Driscoll recalls, most school-leavers had little difficulty in finding jobs. 40 Its proudest achievements were in sports and to this day, two of the most celebrated Old Bangorians are still Dick Milliken, the former British Lion, and Terry Neill, the football player and manager. Nor does the school appear to make much of its other famous politicians: one was H.M. Pollock, the first Finance Minister of Northern Ireland, and the other was Brian Faulkner, who attended Bangor Grammar briefly before completing his education at St Columba’s in Dublin. Faulkner was the last Unionist politician who attempted an ‘historic compromise’ with Irish nationalism in 1973–4, and destroyed himself politically in the process. 41

Bangor and its Grammar School were also socially ambitious – as was implied by the school song, Floreat Bangoria , adopted in conscious imitation of the Eton motto Floreat Etona. Indeed, class, rather than religious sectarianism, was the sharp dividing line in this overwhelmingly Protestant town. Although the Catholic Church was on the periphery of town (the three Presbyterian and two Church of Ireland houses of worship were conspicuously in the centre) there was no such thing as a ‘ghetto’. Indeed, a few Catholics were to be found amongst both staff and pupils of Bangor Grammar and the two ‘communities’ socialised quite freely. Nor did Ivy Trimble have any objection to her sons associating with Catholic boys, provided they came from the ‘right’ sort of background, such as Terry Higgins and his brother Malachy (now Mr Justice Higgins); another Catholic friend was Derek Davis, later a BBC Northern Ireland and RTE presenter. Ivy Trimble’s prejudices were not untypical of the time, and David Montgomery recalls that his mother shared the same attitude to contact with Catholics. 42 If most of Trimble’s friends were Protestants, it was simply because they formed the bulk of the population – but, recalls Terry Higgins, that applied equally to Catholic boys such as himself. 43