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

Mitchell met with Major three times during his deliberations, with Ancram more often. Mitchell recalls that ‘the British repeatedly told me that David Trimble was in a difficult position politically, that there’s a political division in Unionism and we’ve got to help him work his way through that’. Ancram, he says, ‘told me that the elective route is very important to David Trimble and we want to see it in there’. 12 Trimble, obviously, made similar points. 13 Trimble’s position was strengthened by a poll in the Belfast Telegraph on 17 January 1996, which revealed that seven out of ten respondents in Ulster wanted a new elected body as the next step towards negotiations, including two-thirds of SDLP supporters and half of Sinn Fein’s constituency. But when Mitchell showed his report to the British Government, prior to publication, the results were not what they had hoped for. Mayhew’s secret paper, sent to his colleagues on the Cabinet’s Northern Ireland Committee on 23 January 1996, noted ’Senator Mitchell and his team were given a hard task … not surprisingly [they] have produced something of a curate’s egg. It is disappointing that they have accepted, without question, that the paramilitaries will not start decommissioning in advance of negotiations.’ Instead, it suggested decommissioning in parallel with negotiations. Mayhew had no problem whatsoever with the six Mitchell Principles of democracy and nonviolence, which he recognised would prove difficult for Sinn Fein (such as an end to punishment beatings) and the International Body’s rejection of the notion of equivalence between security force weapons and illegally held stocks. It noted that the Body ‘also recognises that an elective process, if broadly acceptable, could contribute to building confidence despite Sinn Fein and the SDLP’s public opposition to unionist proposals’. And it went on ‘we know that Sinn Fein expect the Body to pose some particularly hard (if not impossible) challenges for them. They also anticipate that the Body will not endorse Washington 3. Reporting indicates that Adams hopes that the British Government, by giving a premature negative reaction to the Body’s failure to endorse Washington 3, will relieve Sinn Fein of all responsibility for giving a positive response to the challenges posed to them by the Body’s report.’

But how would the British Government respond? Mayhew indicated there were three broad options:

‘(a) Reject the Report. This would be highly damaging. HMG would be exposed. There would be stalemate. Sinn Fein – as we know they hope – would be let off the hook: The nationalists and all their sympathisers, including the Americans, would stand together in holding HMG responsible for the continued impasse.’

‘(b) Accept the approach the Report canvasses. I do not believe that would be the right approach, without further consideration and development in consultation with all the parties. As it stands it provides too uncertain a basis for the necessary confidence. We need to test the response of the paramilitaries, and to take view of the parties including of course the UUP.

‘(c) Take a positive line in response to the Report, in no way abandoning Washington 3, but promote a modified way ahead involving an elective process, as identified by the Report albeit rather faintly, requiring broad support within the political track as the next stage.’

Mayhew continued: ‘I consider the third option offers the best way ahead. It enables us to take the initiative both in responding positively to the report and in putting forward a route to negotiations which builds on unionist ideas but will be difficult and damaging for nationalists to reject out of hand.’ As for the proposals for an assembly, Mayhew noted that ‘the attraction of some elective process is that it builds on unionists’ own idea. The DUP, UUP, and Alliance Party have all proposed some form of time-limited elected body. They have all said they would be prepared, without prior decommissioning, to sit down with Sinn Fein after an election for discussions … nationalists are opposed to such a body, but I believe their concerns could be met if:

– elections clearly gave direct access to substantive negotiations (ie without further insistence on prior decommissioning);

– those negotiations remained on the three-stranded basis agreed in 1991;

– there was a proper role, as in 1991, for the Irish Government in appropriate strands and the British Government in all strands;

– the negotiators themselves were drawn from the pool of elected representatives, avoiding unwieldy 90-member negotiations although the full body of elected representatives could be consulted at key points;

– HMG maintained its position that there could be no purely internal settlement.’

The document demonstrates several points. The first is the central importance of the UUP to the then Government’s thinking: no UUP, no process. This was a genuine article of political faith (though it was functional rather than ideological in character) which pre-dated the parliamentary arithmetic. Rather, the Government saw it as the Realpolitik of the Northern Irish political scene. The second is how even at this stage, the Government were seeking formulae which would dilute and even divest the elective route of its content as envisaged by the UUP, to make it bearable to nationalists. That, of course, was to be a hallmark of the peace process: for every advance by one side, there would be a counterbalancing measure in the next round.

Above all, does Mayhew’s paper show that the Tories ‘binned Mitchell’, as nationalists contended – thus showing their bad faith and tilting the balance in the IRA back to the ‘militarists’ as opposed to the exponents of the ‘political route’? For one thing, as was demonstrated during the trial of the Docklands bombers, plans for the resumption of full-scale IRA violence began prior to Mitchell’s appointment to the International Body, let alone before Major responded to his report. 14 But on the point of ‘binning’, the record is less clear. It was not binned in the sense of the first option canvassed by Mayhew. But nor was it accepted in toto, either. Rather, the response can be interpreted as classically Majorite fudge: make positive sounds without giving the report wholesale endorsement, and seek to play up those elements of it that most suited the Government’s needs.

When Trimble was briefed by Ancram on the Mitchell Report, he shared the Government’s disappointment: in particular, he found the principles and the reference to the elective route too weak. Trimble made it absolutely clear that if Washington III was abandoned without compensating gains, he would be ‘blown out of the water’. To this day, he believes that his warnings were responsible for the strength and tone of Major’s response to Mitchell in the Commons on 24 January 1996. 15 The strength of Major’s response may also have been partly conditioned by a rough ride meted out to Mayhew at the meeting of the backbench Northern Ireland Committee when they were briefed on the report. The Irish claim they also received a faxed copy of Major’s remarks an hour and a half before he was due to deliver his official response in the Commons. Fergus Finlay recalls that the DFA felt that it was written by ‘John Major, the Chief Whip’, looking at it from the point of view of his parliamentary majority, rather than ‘John Major, the Prime Minister’. As they saw it, the assembly idea was another ‘precondition’, meaning ‘elections first, and then we’ll see’. Indeed, there was no date set for the commencement of all-party talks. Finlay says there was a huge sense of shock that this risk had been taken with nationalist Ireland in order to keep David Trimble on board (whom the DFA believed to be far stronger than he made out). 16 Major responded much along the lines which Mayhew had outlined, but his tone was more insistent; significantly, Tony Blair, the Opposition leader, maintained the bi-partisan approach and offered unqualified support (thus upsetting Labour’s ‘Green’ wing, which often took its cue from John Hume). Trimble, who spoke third, praised Blair for his willingness to facilitate legislation on the assembly. He also tweaked Hume’s tail with an aside about the degree of sympathy for the elective route amongst SDLP supporters: this may have contributed to the Derryman’s mood and, in a rare misjudgment of the mood of the Commons, he lashed out at Major and the Conservatives. 17 For the first time in years, an Ulster Unionist leader was making the political weather, and nationalist Ireland did not like it.