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

TRIMBLE’S tetchy approach in America and at home may have won him few friends; but intentionally or not, it served him well enough in his dealings with the unionist community. For every time the two Governments resiled from their positions on decommissioning, Trimble would eventually follow suit. But because he often did this with ill grace, it masked the extent of his acquiescence in the intergovernmental strategy. This was particularly true of his acceptance of the ‘Twin Track’ procedure in 1995–6. In essence, what happened was that the British accepted that Mayhew’s ‘Washington III’ demand for IRA decommissioning prior to a republican entry into talks was no longer viable: the IRA simply would not decommission. Since the purpose of British state strategy was to secure an all-inclusive settlement which stopped nationalists and unionists fighting each other and thus harming British interests, the price of upholding Washington III became too high to pay. The only question was how to wriggle off the hook of prior decommissioning without obvious humiliation and without inflaming Tory backbench sensibilities. The two Governments hit upon ‘Twin Track’ as the vehicle for accomplishing this. 1 It entailed setting up an international commission to arrange for the terms of decommissioning simultaneous with the start of preliminary all-party talks: in other words, parallel decommissioning as opposed to prior decommissioning. It enabled them to say they had not abandoned the principle, but simply altered the timing and the mechanism.

Trimble publicly signalled his willingness to go for a Twin Track procedure in an Irish Times interview on 11 November 1995. Trimble stated that despite his serious misgivings, he had never ruled out Twin Track – so long as it was linked to his assembly proposal. As Patrick Mayhew notes, if the UUP had rejected this formulation, and stuck to Washington III, the two Governments would have been in trouble, not least with the Tory backbenches; but it was Trimble’s willingness to go along with it, subject to certain conditions, which convinced Mayhew that the UUP leader was ultimately serious about doing the deal. 2 Indeed, Trimble sometimes behaved as if immediate decommissioning was a tactical device which could be downplayed and then resurrected and traded for some other, more sought-after, objective. Thus he told Andrew Hunter to keep up the pressure on decommissioning, even as he sought to dilute the concept for the sake of more valuable gains. 3 His decision not to put too many eggs into the decommissioning basket at this point was also conditioned by his inner belief that ultimately the two Governments were not that serious about it anyway. It would always be subject to broader political imperatives. And in November 1995, the most urgent of those was the forthcoming visit of President Clinton to these islands.

Drafts of a formula on the Twin Track mechanism had been shuttling back and forth across the Irish Sea throughout the autumn. Now, both Governments wanted something in place before Clinton’s arrival. They hit upon a three-man international commission, which would report on how disarmament should be achieved by the end of January 1996. It was to be chaired by George Mitchell, the half-Lebanese, half-Irish-American former US Senate Majority leader, who was mistrusted by many Unionists because of his ancestry. He would be ‘counterbalanced’ by the former Canadian Chief of the Defence Staff, John de Chastelain, a great favourite of the UUP Security spokesman, Ken Maginnis; and Harri Holkeri, a former Finnish Prime Minister. The deal was sealed at a dramatic, late-night summit on 28 November between the two heads of government in Downing Street. 4 The British were well pleased with themselves. True, the Commission further ‘internationalised’ the conflict – a concession that almost precipitated a Tory backbench revolt. But on the positive side, from the British Government’s viewpoint, the formula was remarkably similar to that of September 1995. This, of course, had initially been accepted by the Irish and was about to be announced at a summit when the Dublin – Government was bluntly informed by the republicans that to set up a disarmament body on those terms would prompt a crisis in the peace process and so the Irish duly pulled out of the summit. This time, things were different, and the ‘Rainbow coalition’ agreed to the international body. 5

Trimble knew of the possibility of a backbench Tory revolt, and that if he had chosen to stick to Washington III he could have forced the Government to reject Mitchell. But he feared that if he did so, he would lose the battle for public opinion in England and would only have the support of The Daily Telegraph (in fact, decommissioning, unlike Orange parades, was one of the areas where English opinion was sympathetic to the Unionists’ position, as polls subsequently showed). But he also knew that he could not sound too positive a note about Mitchell in the first instance. This was typical of his modus operandi : tactical, rhetorical escalations to mask a line of strategic retreat. He described the communiqué as ‘shameful’ and a ‘fudge’, and observed that ‘we have had all this rushing about and a press conference at 11 p.m. last night, all that so that John Major could meet Bill Clinton and say “what a good boy I am, I’ve done what you told me”.’ As Jeffrey Donaldson observes, this was classic Trimble: he was bargaining that many Unionists would listen to the volume, rather than the content of what he said. 6 But as the day progressed, Trimble moderated his tones and did not rule out an alternative to decommissioning, if the international body came up with something acceptable.

Trimble’s changing tone might have had something to do with his imminent encounter with the US President. Trimble was a particular target of Clinton’s attention on this visit – again, on the principle, that if you treat him ‘like a statesman’, he will become one. ‘And he did grow in confidence and stature, within his own community and beyond,’ recalls Anthony Lake. 7 Like all presidential visits, it was organised on the principle of ‘taking care’ of the mythological Chicago alderman. This required photographic acknowledgement of the stature of the individual local worthy, who poses in time-honoured fashion with the Commander-in-Chief. Blair Hall and the White House advance men ensured that Trimble had a substantial measure of private time alone with the US head of state. They also took care to ensure that the form of presidential favour would be especially impressive to Trimble’s community. They therefore arranged for the ultimate accolade: Trimble would take the short ride from the Whitla Hall at Queen’s University to the Europa Hotel with Clinton in the presidential limousine. This was no easy thing to organise, since the limousine is the inner part of the presidential cocoon. But the Americans were determined that Trimble be seen entering and leaving the car. In time, the strategy became more elaborate still. Administration officials concluded that even Trimble’s rudeness could be turned to good effect. He had to be seen to beat his breast and to win over the US Government to his position (exemplified by his extollation of Unionist work in North America in his address to the 1996 UUP party conference). 8

Trimble was well satisfied with Clinton’s visit to Belfast, which on this occasion he found very even-handed; he particularly liked Clinton’s address at the neutral venue of Mackie’s plant on Springfield Road, where the President told the paramilitaries that ‘you are the past, your day is over’ (it was not, of course, to be: whilst Clinton was there, the IRA was making preparations to end the ceasefire). 9 That night, the two men took their short drive together back to Clinton’s hotel. ‘He was tired, I was tired,’ Trimble recalls. ‘But he referred to the books I had given him in Washington. He had read them, and especially liked Ronnie Hanna’s’ (on American servicemen in Ulster during the Second World War). Clinton asked Trimble what he saw as the final outcome: the Unionist leader dwelled very much on Strand III of the Talks, outlining his vision for a Community of the British Isles. Trimble was thrilled with the meeting, and spoke about it to colleagues for some days afterwards. But contrary to what some believe, Clinton applied no direct pressure whatsoever on Trimble, either then or in the subsequent negotiations. 10 Clinton would never say, for example, ‘don’t make decommissioning a precondition to all-party talks’. It was a more subtle process than that. Rather, Clinton would call Trimble and say something along the lines of ‘now what can I do for you at this stage in the process?’ or ‘how can we help?’ Often, the mere fact of a call from the President was pressure enough to maintain the momentum of the process. Clinton’s involvement was thus not a case of rape, but of seduction. Trimble undoubtedly gave the Americans a greater understanding of his position, but this ‘influence’ over American policy was bought at a price: the Americans now had a purchase upon the party leader’s calculations which they had never enjoyed before. Indeed, Jeffrey Donaldson recalls that Trimble’s fear of forfeiting unionist ’gains’ made in America was an important factor in his decision to remain in the talks after Sinn Fein’s admission on easier terms in 1997. 11