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

Handling the press was, appropriately enough, Trimble’s first task after his victory. He held a one-and-a-half-hour press conference at Glengall Street the following morning. Trimble immediately acceded to this idea. But, as ever, Trimble’s approach was more complex than his pronouncements suggested. For although the new UUP leader understood the importance of the media better than anyone, his personal engagement with the press was much less ‘proactive’ than his election manifesto suggested: often, it had to be laid out on a plate for him. If rung by any journalist, he would certainly give very generously and courteously of his time. But as Matthew d’Ancona observes, Trimble never went out of his way to cultivate or even to contact somone as sympathetic as himself – an approach which d’Ancona characterises as ‘light years removed from the attitude of a New Labour Cabinet minister’. 30 Charles Moore, erstwhile editor of The Daily Telegraph , and Michael Gove, assistant editor of The Times , likewise confirm that unless they contact Trimble, they would never hear from him from one year to the next; and although he is a long-time subscriber to The Spectator , Trimble never made much effort to contact successive editors. Nor did any of these mainland outlets receive many press releases from the UUP: their support for Unionism predated his arrival on the scene and subsequently owed little to Trimble’s own actions. Indeed, Trimble came to know key figures in the London print media in the early to mid-1990s largely through the agency of David Burnside, who wanted to build up Trimble as a putative deputy to John Taylor, in preparation for the post-Molyneaux era. Having come to know the London quality press, Trimble enjoys their company and values their good opinion. But to woo them would, in his world-view, have smacked too much of ‘brown-nosing’. In that sense, he started out as the most unconventional of British political leaders – and remains such to this day.

AS Trimble and his supporters celebrated their victory, members of the British-Irish Association were enjoying their post-prandials in the very different surroundings of St John’s College Cambridge. Most of those who attended this annual conference of the great and the good fully expected that the winner would be the pragmatic John Taylor or perhaps even the liberal Ken Maginnis. But when Frank Millar, now the London editor of the Irish Times , conveyed the news in the bar, there was a general sense of horror. 1 Many of the guests would have shared Marigold Johnson’s distaste for ‘that ghastly man Trimble’; now, they feared that the far right had taken over the UUP and that the victor of Drumcree would end the ‘peace process’. 2 (She would later come to change her opinion of him for the better and believed he was the best choice of leader for that time.) The British and Irish states, though, could not afford such self-indulgence. Now, they had to work with him. Yes, there was apprehension – as always occurred with any ‘changing of the guard’ in the remarkably stable Northern Ireland party system. Indeed, one minister was reported as saying that ‘I choked on my Frosties’ when he read in a Times editorial that the newly elected UUP leader was a ‘moderate’. 3 The minister in question was Michael Ancram, who now claims that he did so out of surprise rather than disgust. 4

But when all was said and done, the British state’s private audit of Trimble’s election was more finely balanced than is commonly supposed. According to John Bruton’s contemporaneous note of a conversation with the British Prime Minister on 23 September 1995, ‘Major said David Trimble was a prickly man, into detail, not grand conceptions. Don’t reject his ideas too quickly…’ Woodrow Wyatt’s diary for 17 September 1995 records the British Prime Minister as observing that ‘there was nothing to worry about because he’s a clear thinker but it shows the IRA and Sinn Fein that he’s a tough customer. He said “He’s a lawyer and a very good one and, being on the right wing of the Ulster Unionists, he’ll be able to make them agree to things which his predecessor couldn’t.”’ 5 Likewise, Major’s Assistant Political Secretary, George Bridges, who was with his chief when news of Trimble’s victory came through, says that Major was not at all displeased. 6 In so far as they were worried, the British Government’s main worry, says Patrick Mayhew, was Trimble’s weakness. 7 They believed that he had won the election without the public support of a single MP, and amongst constituency chairmen only enjoyed the backing of his own in Upper Bann. For the last thing that the NIO mandarins wanted on their hands was ‘another Faulkner’. They wanted someone who could deliver the party, and it did not matter that much to them who that person was. A secondary worry was Trimble’s volatility, for he was seen as driven more by his temperament than his intellect (considerable as they conceded it was). But on the positive side of the ledger, as they saw it, was Trimble’s ambition. No. 10 was not sure where this ambition would lead. Some thought that Trimble wanted to be a Law Officer in a Conservative Government, but Mayhew was convinced that Trimble wanted to be Prime Minister of a devolved Northern Ireland (all of which Trimble says was then untrue). 8 In this respect, Trimble was an improvement on the gentlemanly Molyneaux, who was too old for the position and who would not in any case have wanted it on grounds of integrationist principle. But there were also officials such as Peter Bell – the joint head of the Anglo-Irish Secretariat at Maryfield – who argued it was vital that the UUP be led by someone with intellectual self-confidence, rather than someone who would assume that any negotiation was bound to be disadvantageous to the Unionist cause. Elements of the system thus saw Trimble as much the most ‘modern’ of the Unionist MPs, along with Peter Robinson (on such occasions as the DUP deputy leader could escape from Dr Paisley’s shadow). 9

These calculations, though, did not necessitate any fundamental reappraisal of the grand strategy of the British state. The officials had a long-held view of where a ‘balanced’ settlement between the two traditions lay. Trimble’s election did, though, affect the state’s tactics, most obviously towards the new Unionist leader himself. The NIO immediately contacted Rod Lyne, the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary for foreign affairs: they then began a pincer movement. It was reckoned that Trimble was open to flattery by No. 10 – few would be exempt from it, especially from a minor party at Westminster – and made sure to advertise that there was an open door to him whenever he needed it. Indeed, on one morning shortly after his election, Trimble spent three hours at No. 10 talking to Lyne, who provided him with further reassurance about the British Government’s intentions towards Northern Ireland: after the Molyneaux years, when the then leader kept the key details of discussions with Government very much to himself, Trimble found that the conversation made him more comfortable about state policy. 10 This process of cultivation took place on many levels: Daphne Trimble remembers that at Major’s behest, Lyne gave the whole family a tour of No. 10, including the Cabinet Room, during the Christmas break. 11 Meanwhile, Sir John Kerr, who had just taken up his position as British ambassador to the United States, wrote to Trimble suggesting that he come to America as soon as possible to meet with senior administration officials. 12 Andrew Hunter, MP, the chairman of the Conservative backbench Northern Ireland Committee was asked twice by Mayhew for an assessment of Trimble’s personality and was then told to maximise his contact with the UUP leader. Later, his instructions became more explicit still: on 22 May 1996, Hunter noted following a meeting with Major that ‘we have a chance of winning the election if we can hang on until May next year. You can help us. Do everything you can to keep the Unionists happy.’ (Discussing the AIA, Major also told Hunter that ‘I’d like to tear it up … Margaret got it wrong … the government assured the UUP that there was nothing going on. All along Margaret was planning it.’) Trimble immediately grasped what was going on here and became defensive, thus making it very hard for Hunter to report back to Government ministers. ‘He didn’t know if I was a spy or a friend,’ says Hunter. ‘He knew that I was playing two roles and that I was partly a spy for the Government.’ Because of his status, Hunter was also regarded as being partly on ‘the team’ and frequently cleared his pronouncements with No. 10. Hunter now says that he is ‘ashamed’ to have been a conduit for so much Government ‘spin’ to the Unionists: this sense of guilt partly explains why he campaigned for a ‘No’ vote during the 1998 referendum on the Belfast Agreement. 13 It was the start of a journey which would ultimately take Hunter into the DUP.