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

Trimble duly sought to make the best he could of his unexpectedly bad hand in the run-up to the elections, which were to be held on 30 May 1996. As ever, he set a cracking pace. Elaine McClure of the Ulster Society recalls that Trimble was perhaps ‘the only Unionist leader with the guts to canvass the main street of Newry [an overwhelmingly nationalist town]. There was always an excuse for not doing the town, such as the top part of Hill Street. But he took his red, white and blue bus there, and it was a huge psychological boost to those remaining Unionists.’ 39 But Trimble’s aim was also to reach out to those members of the Catholic community who were not so staunchly nationalistic. The encouragement which Trimble gave to the candidature of John Gorman typified this approach. Gorman was a third-generation Catholic Unionist: his maternal grandfather, Dr Patrick O’Brien, had been a close friend of the moderate southern Irish Unionist, the Earl of Midleton, at the start of the century. Gorman’s father, a native of Co. Tipperary, had served as a major in the Royal Horse Artillery Irish Guards in the First World War and was thereafter the last Adjutant of the the Royal Irish Constabulary. He moved north – as loyal Catholics and Protestants from the south did after Partition – and served as County Inspector of the new Royal Ulster Constabulary for Londonderry and Fermanagh. Later, he became deputy head of the RUC mission in Greece during the Civil War in the Hellenes in the mid to late 1940s. Gorman himself fought in the Second Battalion, the Irish Guards, in the Second World War, winning a Military Cross in Normandy; the Intelligence Officer of the Battalion was Captain Terence O’Neill, later the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1963–9. After the war, Gorman joined the RUC, becoming District Inspector for Ballymoney, Co. Antrim. Gorman and Trimble came to know each other when Gorman subsequently headed the Housing Executive, and Trimble was the foremost authority in the Province on housing law. Gorman, who would have become actively involved in Unionist politics much sooner than he did but for the Orange link, was precisely the kind of man whom Trimble admired. For he embodied the diversity of traditions and allegiances that had been obscured by 30 years of Troubles. Trimble further addressed this topic in his speech at the 1996 UUP conference in Ballymena, Co. Antrim, when he extolled the Catholic Unionist tradition as personified by Sir Denis Henry, who was present at the creation of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, represented South Londonderry at Westminster, and was subsequently appointed as the first Lord Chief Justice of the newly created Province of Northern Ireland. 40 Forge an enduring settlement, believed Trimble, and such allegiances could reassert themselves. Trimble later recommended that Gorman become the chairman of the elected Forum, and he received a knighthood in 1998. 41

Gorman was not the only Catholic whom Trimble sought to recruit to be a flag-bearer for the Unionist cause. He endorsed the appointment of Patricia Campbell, the daughter of an RUC constable, as organiser of the Unionist Information Office in London. This was set up in 1996 under the aegis of David Burnside, which held twice-yearly receptions and occasional briefings for journalists. Under Burnside’s tutelage, she edited a magazine, The Unionist , brimming with anodyne articles. These were accompanied by pictures of kittens and puppies frolicking with each other, bearing such italicised captions as Reconciliation is possible and a cover photograph of a cherubic sleeping new-born in swaddling clothes headlined Let’s keep The Peace For Their Tomorrow . 42 It prompted some mirth in journalistic circles that so ruthless an operator as Burnside (affectionately known in the PR trade as ‘the kneecapper’) should produce such sentimental copy; a more serious point was that none of these treacly images did anything to increase any real understanding of the Unionist cause. Even when Unionists finally grasped the importance of PR, they could only rise to the challenge by coming up with images that erased their distinctive message almost completely. Nonetheless, Campbell’s appointment – like that of Gorman – incarnated a mood of change that seemed to abound in certain Unionist circles during this period. Indeed, keen as Trimble was for more women candidates, only seven were actually selected for the Forum elections (out of a total of 78) – of whom only one was successful. 43 Selecting standard bearers remained a local affair, where Trimble’s personal preferences counted for little. ‘New Unionism’ was for much of the time a glimmer in his eye, rather than a reality.

Trimble was especially exercised during the campaign by the remarks of the Tanaiste’s special adviser, Fergus Finlay, on Channel 4’s Dispatches programme. Finlay stated that talks without Sinn Fein were ‘not worth a penny candle’. 44 Bruton was also furious, because he believed the remark took the heat off the Provisionals. 45 Why, he wondered, should the IRA call a new and this time more credible ceasefire if they knew that the process could not go on without them? The only way in which republicans would do so was if they feared that there was a possibility that a settlement could be achieved by the constitutional parties alone. Finlay concedes that the remark enabled Unionists to say that his boss was surrounded by fellow travellers of the Provisionals. From an Irish prespective, Finlay’s remarks had ‘reactionary consequences’, as the Soviets used to call them. Finlay remembers Sean O hUiginn’s regretful remark: ‘True diplomats learn early in their careers that the truth is sometimes best served by silence,’ opined the head of Anglo-Irish affairs. As far as O hUiginn was concerned, the problem with Finlay’s remark lay with its overly stark presentation, and not its substance. 46 The Provisionals could now sit pretty and wait for the two Governments to come to them. The British were doing this anyhow, as exemplified by Major’s Irish Times article of 16 May 1996, in which he further diluted the Tories’ demands on when decommissioning would have to be carried out. But keen as Major was to obtain a renewed IRA ceasefire, he could never move quickly enough for the Provisionals.

Trimble, though, was also in trouble. The novel electoral system, just as he had predicted, would ‘shred’ the Unionist vote: a poster appeared in the closing days of the campaign depicting a splintered Union flag, with the words ‘Division and Weakness, Or Unity and Strength’. Such fracturing also occurred in his own party: at the UUP manifesto launch at Belfast’s Laganside, the late John Oliver recalled Martin Smyth looking round at the large numbers of outsiders whom Trimble had brought in and remarking: ‘You’d have thought this was the Ulster Society campaign, not the UUP campaign.’ 47 Smyth’s observation pointed up the deep unease about Trimble within the UUP, which long predated the Belfast Agreement: namely, that as a latecomer to the party, he was not really one of the UUP tribe. For his part, Trimble also found the party organisation at the grassroots to be in worse condition than he imagined. His fears were vindicated. In the 30 May elections, on a 64.5% turnout, the UUP remained the largest single party, with 24.2% of the vote, winning 30 seats; the DUP won 18.8% and 24 seats; the SDLP won 21.4% and 21 seats; Sinn Fein won 15.5% and 17 seats. Two points were significant: first, despite the IRA’s return to violence, Sinn Fein turned in their best performance ever, garnering 116,377 votes. Trimble was in no doubt as to the reason for the republicans’ success. In a lengthy interview with the editor of the Dublin Sunday Independent , Aengus Fanning, Trimble observed that many SDLP voters had crossed over to Sinn Fein under the illusion that it would be a vote for Adams’ peace strategy and against republican militarists. These nationalists had succumbed to this logic because ‘the boundary lines between Sinn Fein and the SDLP’, he believed, ’had been blurred by the Hume-Adams pact’. 48