Dean Godson - 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