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

Washington was not so sure whether Trimble was quite so biddable as McCartney feared. Nancy Soderberg says that the US administration knew little about Trimble, apart from what had been observed on the television screens at Drumcree earlier in the year. 27 But for all their doubts, the Clinton administration had to make the effort to see whether the new UUP leader would become ‘engaged’. 28 Trimble did so with gusto. For unlike so many of the older generation of Unionist politicians, Trimble carried no anti-American baggage, either culturally or politically – although he disliked the activities of many Irish-Americans and of Nancy Soderberg in particular. Prior to serving as senior staff director for European affairs on the President’s National Security Council with specific responsibility for Ireland, Soderberg worked for Senator Edward Kennedy. For this, and above all for her role in helping Gerry Adams obtain a visa over British Government objections in 1994, she became a hate figure amongst Unionists, earning the soubriquet of ‘Nancy Sodabread’. Moreover, she forged a close working relationship with Jean Kennedy Smith, the American ambassador in Dublin and a sister of Senator Kennedy, who had out-gunned her counterpart in London, Raymond Seitz, over the Adams visa. But Soderberg and her colleagues also understood that it took ‘two sides to tango’. Having ‘engaged’ with Adams, they would now have to work much harder with Unionists to convince them that they, too, had a stake of sorts in the ‘process’ and that the United States was not utterly hostile to the interests of the Ulster-British population. They were keen to emphasise their desire to promote a peaceful settlement and did not care that much about the precise terms of the deal. As Nancy Soderberg observes, ‘the truth is we were knocking on the unionist door for some time and Trimble was the first one to answer’. 29

Trimble was indeed the first Ulster Unionist leader of recent times to answer the call on a sustained basis, but the links went further back than Soderberg’s remarks suggested. Terence O’Neill as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland sought to make much of Ulster-Scots heritage in his dealings with both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and his Christmas card of December 1964 showed him meeting with LBJ at the White House: on St Patrick’s Day of that year, O’Neill had presented the Commander-in-Chief with a book on the Scotch-Irish and banqueting cloths (which delighted the Linen Guild back at home). 30 Charles Reynolds, an Ulsterman living in America, also organised information campaigns on behalf of the pro-Union population following the outbreak of the Troubles, the highlight of which was a highly effective tour by Brian Faulkner in June and July of 1972. 31 And efforts were made at various points in the 1980s by David Burnside, Frank Millar and Harold McCusker. Likewise, Peter Robinson, Gregory Campbell and others undertook activities on behalf of the DUP. 32 However, during the long tenure of James Molyneaux, such activities were not given a notably high priority by the UUP. Towards the very end of Molyneaux’s long tenure in office, arrangements were put in place for a UUP North American bureau with offices donated by Tony Culley-Foster, a Washington businessman who grew up in Londonderry. One of his employees, the Scottish-born Anne Smith of McLean, Virginia, was seconded to work for it, officially for one day a week. 33

Nancy Soderberg acknowledges that the UUP North American bureau did provide some kind of reference point which had not previously existed, and other Administration officials have been courteous enough about Smith’s contribution. 34 Nonetheless, Smith was neither from Northern Ireland nor could she be described as a ‘heavy-hitting’ Washington lobbyist type who ‘packed a punch inside the Beltway’. Trimble stuck doggedly by her and refused to entertain any suggestions to have Smith removed. Moreover, this outfit had nothing like the resources of Sinn Fein’s North American organisation. It has remained determinedly low-key in the years since then: David Burnside says that he had secured a pledge of $250,000–$300,000 for a full-time professional lobbyist, but the offer was rejected. 35 According to Trimble, Burnside offered a lobbying firm to raise money. But the idea was partly rejected by the UUP officer team on the grounds that it would be embarrassing if the North American office spent more money per annum than Glengall Street. More important, says Trimble, was the point that the money could have come from conservative American sources who wanted it to be used for partisan, anti-Clinton purposes. This was something he was not prepared to countenance, despite the fact that the US Administration was close to a low ebb at this point following the Republicans’ takeover of Congress in the 1994 mid-term elections. 36

Trimble’s election also coincided with a change in key personnel amongst British and American officialdom in 1995, notably the appointment of Sir John Kerr as British ambassador to Washington, and that of Blair Hall as Political Counsellor at the US Embassy in London. Both men earned Trimble’s admiration and trust, in a way that Soderberg never did: she realised that Unionists had to be brought in, but carried so much baggage by this point that she was unable to do it herself. Kerr and Hall were thus crucial to the task of facilitating the Unionists’ admission into the international mainstream. Kerr was a Glaswegian Protestant married to a Catholic of Irish descent: Trimble certainly felt that as a native of the west of Scotland, he had a greater instinctive feel for the problems of Ulster than a more conventional ‘Oxbridge type’. Kerr arrived in Washington on the heels of Sir Robin Renwick’s devastating rebuff over the Adams visa. The British Embassy was enormously defensive towards Capitol Hill and the media. Kerr determined to reverse this through a variety of measures. In March 1996, Kerr broke with tradition by hosting his own St Patrick’s Day party in the Lutyens embassy residence; Dermot Gallagher, the then Irish ambassador retorted that he would throw a St George’s Day drinks party to even the score. But there was a serious message behind Kerr’s move. Its essence was that Irishness was not the sole preserve of Irish nationalists or of the Irish state. 37

America need not necessarily have been stony ground for Unionism. As a News Letter editorial of 9 November 1995, ‘Selling Ulster’, put it: ‘the Unionist message has never been fully explained on the other side of the Atlantic and this has undoubtedly been to the detriment of a majority population who enjoy a kin relationship with up to 25 million of US citizens, descended from the quarter of a million Ulster-Scots Presbyterians who emigrated to the American frontier 200/250 years ago. Of the 40 million Americans who would claim to have Irish blood in their veins, an estimated 56 per cent come of Ulster Protestant stock. Whilst the knowledge of the political nuances in Northern Ireland may be extremely limited, this section would be broadly susceptible to the unionist argument and the importance of effectively dealing with terrorism conducted by a tiny unrepresentative group of people.’ Trimble wholeheartedly agreed with these sentiments. Indeed, according to the American website Political Graveyard , no fewer than seven Trimbles have been elected to the US Senate and Congress since the inception of the Republic – mostly from Kentucky and from neighbouring Ohio (the most recently elected Trimble had, ironically, served in the US House of Representatives as a Democrat from Arkansas from 1945 to 1967). There was even a Trimble County in Kentucky, named for Robert Trimble, who became an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court and an intimate of the great John Marshall, Chief Justice. His forebears had orginally come from Co. Armagh in the 1740s. And General Isaac Trimble of Virginia – a descendant of a Trimble who emigrated from Co. Antrim in the early 18th century – had led two brigades of Pender’s division during Pickett’s charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. He was captured by Union forces after the lower third of his leg was amputated near the battlefield. 38