Читать книгу Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism - Dean Godson - Страница 16

AFTER a year of set-backs, James Molyneaux finally resigned as UUP leader on 28 August 1995 – the day after his 75th birthday. Trimble says he was surprised by the timing of the departure, of which he had received no advanced warning (in contrast to Major, who was notified by Molyneaux some two weeks before).¹ Indeed, John Hunter remembers Trimble dismissing the notion of a Molyneaux resignation when he raised the subject shortly beforehand at a barbecue given at the home of Drew Nelson, a leading Co. Down Orangeman. But when the news came, Trimble rang Hunter and said, ‘well, you’ll be happy this morning, the sun is shining’. Trimble knew that Hunter was a staunch opponent of Molyneaux, but insisted he had made no definite decisions himself.² However, Daphne Trimble recalls her husband saying that if he did run, he would win.³ By contrast, the man who definitely thought that the sun was shining that morning was John Taylor. Trimble knew that the Strangford MP would seek the leadership, nor was he entirely averse to the prospect of a Taylor victory, since he was sure he would become his right-hand man.⁴ Much of the political class agreed with this analysis. Thus, Jack Allen recalls that much as John Taylor was disliked by some, the majority of the party officers thought he would win – with or without Trimble in the race.⁵ The NIO agreed: according to Sir John Wheeler, the security minister, Ancram’s senior officials wanted Taylor precisely because he was seen as a good ‘deal-maker’.⁶

Trimble soon weighed the pros and cons of running. His plus points, as he saw them, were that he was articulate, could hold his own on television, and because over the previous year he had distanced himself ‘slightly’ from the Frameworks proposals. He reckoned these points would weigh heavily with the UUP’s unique electoral college, despite the fact that he was the youngest and most junior of the UUP MPs and was without formal standing within the Loyal Orders (beyond the reputation which he had acquired at Drumcree). If the choice had been up to the populace at large, Maginnis would be the victor. He enjoyed a good reputation amongst Unionists on security issues – the ex-UDR Major had been the intended victim of at least a dozen assassination attempts – but without compromising his non-sectarian credentials (as was evidenced by his success in holding the constituency of Fermanagh-South Tyrone, with its narrow Roman Catholic majority, in successive Westminster elections). And thanks to his personable manner, he was able to communicate on southern Irish television in a way that few other Unionists could match. Indeed many Unionists believed that he was far too willing to treat with the South, as exemplified by what they saw as his excessive generosity in the Strand II ‘basket’ of the 1991–2 talks in Dublin. If it were up to the MPs, Ross was reckoned to be the likely winner; and if it were up to the councillors and the business community, Taylor seemed to be favourite. But none of these groups formed the electoral college. Because the decision would be made by the Ulster Unionist Council, an 860-strong body with representatives from all of the then seventeen constituencies and other affiliated bodies such as the Orange Order and the Young Unionists, Trimble might stand a chance. The UUC was, he then reasoned, full of people with a greater knowledge than the man in the street, but was at the same time possessed in his eyes of a detachment which the full-time MPs and councillors did not have. In so far as there was an Orange constituency – and it was wider than just the Order’s own delegates, since ordinary branch representatives might also be individual members – Trimble calculated that he had it sewn up. This, he maintains passionately, was not because of Drumcree but because of his work for the Ulster Society. His doubts were, therefore, not about his viability as a candidate, but whether he actually wanted the position itself at this juncture. He knew that it would be an uphill struggle to accomplish anything and, in any case, 1995 was scarcely the best year to become UUP leader after the debacle of the Frameworks Documents.⁷

Such apparent ambivalence accounts for the initial reports that Trimble had ruled himself out of the race. Thus, The Times editorial on the day after Molyneaux’s resignation stated that ‘it is regrettable that Mr Trimble, MP for Upper Bann, seems disinclined to stand’ and on the back of that decision decided to endorse Taylor.⁸ What Trimble had actually said to the journalists was that he did not consider himself to be a runner, but added that ‘if other people are keen for me to run, then I will give it serious consideration’. In retrospect, it looks like a classic piece of political ham-acting (‘if the people want me, who am I to refuse?’). According to Gordon Lucy’s private diary of the campaign, Trimble was annoyed that the journalists, with the exception of Dick Grogan and Frank Millar in the Irish Times on 30 August and Victor Gordon of the Portadown Times, had failed to pick up on the nuances. Gordon, writing without a by-line in the local free-sheet called the Craigavon Echo on 30 August 1995 also correctly divined that Trimble had not ruled himself out of the contest. In the Portadown Times of 1 September, Gordon also reported that Trimble was ‘95%’ certain to announce his candidature. Trimble stated that since he had said he ‘might’ run, ‘my ’phone has been red hot with messages of support’. Trimble asked Lucy whether he should run, and Lucy said that of course he would support him and work for him – but that it was his decision and that he would have to live with the consequences of it. Lucy subsequently learned from Daphne Trimble that this was the wrong answer, since she wanted him to say ‘yes’.⁹

Trimble was left with the impression that his natural supporters felt let down by his apparent reluctance, and that he would damage himself if he did not run. He was also discovering that in the eyes of many delegates, John Taylor was not universally popular. According to Lucy, Trimble finally made up his mind to enter the race on 30 August. The Upper Bann MP then telephoned John Taylor and told him that he would be going forward as a candidate. Taylor replied that he would be sorry to see this happen. Taylor’s then aide, Steven King, states that Taylor did not in fact think that he could win after Trimble entered the race, and that henceforth his heart was never quite in it.¹⁰ Trimble discussed his platform with Lucy: it was not so much an appeal for more right-wing Unionism as for more proactive Unionism, for a new style at least as much as new substance. Trimble planned to announce his candidature at Belfast’s Europa Hotel on 1 September. He knew that he would have no heavyweight endorsements, neither from fellow MPs, nor party officers, nor from any constituency chairmen save his own, George Savage. As an outsider, as it it were, he was certain of one thing: he did not wish to repeat the errors of John Redwood’s failed bid for the Conservative leadership earlier in the summer. Indeed, he told Gordon Lucy and John Hunter that their presence at the launch would have the same effect upon his bid as the support of Teresa Gorman and Tony Marlow had on the challenge of the former Welsh Secretary. Instead, inspired by Nicholas Jones’ book Soundbites and Spin Doctors: How Politicians Manipulate the Media – and Vice Versa he opted for a bit of DIY choreography. He decided that he would be accompanied by four relatively unknown figures, all of whom would represent portions of the new Unionist coalition which he was assembling. They included Elaine McClure (a young woman); Lt Commander Bill Martin (whose service background symbolised the traditional backbone of the party); George Savage, his constituency chairman and a farmer (thus seeking to corral the substantial agricultural vote); and Nigel Connor of the Queen’s University Unionists (to emphasise his appeal to youth). From there, Trimble and Lucy repaired to Hunter’s house off the Upper Malone Road to plot out strategy. Two crucial steps were taken. First, an alphabetical list of all UUC delegates was obtained from Glengall Street, so that he could send out A Personal Message From David Trimble. The package made much of the complimentary remarks which Trimble received from both The Daily Telegraph and The Times: a key Trimble theme was the notion that it was crucial for Unionists to influence key decision-makers and opinion-formers in London, rather than sit there and let change envelop them. Second, Hunter and Lucy, who had assisted in Drew Nelson’s 1992 campaign in South Down, were convinced of the merits of telephone canvassing – still a new concept in Northern Ireland, at least in Unionist circles, where many traditionalists thought it not quite the done thing. But Lucy and Hunter, correctly, believed that attitudes towards use of the telephone were changing, even amongst the older generation where resentment of such intrusions tended to be greatest. Accordingly, extra telephone lines were installed in Trimble’s Lurgan office. Two young women were recruited to do the telephone canvassing as volunteers.¹¹

The professionalism of the Trimble campaign, though scarcely sophisticated by standards elsewhere, contrasted with the relative amateurism of its rivals’ efforts. Whereas Trimble’s team would ‘cold call’ anybody, Taylor would only ring those he already knew. Taylor’s campaign suffered a further blow when he appeared on BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight programme at 10:45 p.m. on the eve of the poll on Thursday 7 September. There, he attacked Trimble for ‘prancing in the streets with Ian Paisley’. By this, Taylor was seeking to appeal to that segment of the UUP electorate which rejected Paisley’s populist style. Often, this would have been a correct appraisal of the party’s mood, but Drumcree I was a spontaneous popular eruption which, like the UWC strike of 1974, enjoyed an exceptional degree of middle-class Unionist acquiescence, if not active support. Taylor’s remarks were thus taken by many ordinary Unionists as an implicit attack on their relief over the outcome. Meanwhile, Ross’s campaign never really took off. One of his main supporters, David Brewster – a solicitor from Limavady, Co. Londonderry and the constituency party secretary – had his practice to run. He found that many who would have backed his local MP were now opting for Trimble.¹² Martin Smyth’s campaign was dogged by a lack of organisation, which made few in-roads beyond his South Belfast constituency association and some Belfast Orangemen. Smyth concedes that many of his brethren in the Loyal Orders felt that he had stood aside from the events at Drumcree, though in fact he was attending to his duties at Westminster. Maginnis made a game effort, but his perceived liberalism counted against him in the circumstances.

Lucy meanwhile was busy putting the finishing touches to the Trimble campaign. He drafted Trimble’s News Letter article which appeared on the day of the poll, Friday 8 September 1995. Significantly, Trimble approvingly quoted the definition of the consent principle offered by the leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair, ‘as meaning that the people of Northern Ireland could choose between an all-Irish state and the Union’ rather than any of the Conservative Government’s glosses. Moreover, he counselled that ‘a purely negative, unimaginative unionism that simply turned a “hard face” on the outside world is vulnerable to an appeal over its head to the wider society’. But despite such efforts, Trimble remembers that when he arrived at the Ulster Hall on the night of 8 September, he was in a very nervous state – whereas Daphne was quite calm (with customary candour, she says that she merely concealed her own worries).¹³ The packed Ulster Hall had been the scene of many of the great events in Unionist history: there, in 1886, Lord Randolph Churchill launched his campaign to save Ulster from Home Rule.¹⁴ But Trimble’s nerves were misplaced. The candidates spoke in alphabetical order, with Ken Maginnis first: the ex-UDR Major did his ‘soldier and statesman’ routine. Smyth’s address was full of Biblical allusions but the rest of it was every bit as disorganised as his campaign. Ross’s was the best delivered of the five, but in Lucy’s words was ‘a brilliant speech for leadership circa 1930’. Taylor, though, was the greatest disappointment to his supporters. His address was delivered off-the-cuff, and in the words of Denis Rogan, the then party vice chairman, was ‘the most arrogant speech of his life – and that’s saying something’;¹⁵ Steven King claims that he in fact had ‘a fit of nerves’ on the night.¹⁶ Taylor retrospectively concedes that he was not that keen to assume the leadership.¹⁷ Trimble, who was the last speaker, read his speech like a lecture, but Lucy remembers that the audience nonetheless listened.¹⁸ As Trimble recalls, ‘mine was the only political speech whereas the others were saying what great chaps they were. But I also said I would go anywhere and speak to anyone. I was signalling that I would go to Dublin and talk to Sinn Fein, though that was not stated. It was in nobody’s mind at the time, except John Dobson, who was smiling.’¹⁹

After the first round of balloting, Trimble’s appointed scrutineer, Mark Neale of Portadown, told him of the result:

Smyth – 60 (7%)

Ross – 116 (14%)

Maginnis – 117 (15%)

Taylor – 226 (28%)

Trimble – 287 (36%)

‘Oh, that’s not what If … ng wanted to happen,’ declared Trimble. ‘Well, what do I do now?’ asked the Upper Bann MP. ‘Tell your wife and start writing an acceptance speech,’ replied Neale. Trimble duly proceeded to do so – but not before he had pulled his new ‘Seige [sic] of Drumcree’ medal out of his pocket. As Neale recalls, even at this moment of maximum drama, Trimble did this less out of loyalist pride than out of a desire to point out the spelling error.²⁰ When this result was read out in the hall, Jim Wilson, the party chief executive, immediately saw the mounting astonishment on the faces of the MPs. ‘This was the UUC saying “let’s jump a generation”.’²¹ In the heat of battle, Trimble also thought back to the Upper Bann selection of 1990, when the first-round winner, Samuel Gardiner, had been overhauled by himself in the final ballot after hitting a ceiling. He feared that Taylor could still do the same to himself. But Trimble’s support was wide as well as deep, and in any case there was no way in which Ken Maginnis would ever throw his support to Taylor as George Savage had done for Trimble in 1990. After Smyth dropped out, the chairman, Jim Nicholson, read out the results of the second round:

Ross – 91 (11%)

Maginnis – 110 (13.5%)

Taylor – 255 (31.5%)

Trimble – 353 (44%)

Trimble now knew for sure that he would become the 12th Unionist leader since the formation of the UUC in 1905, and felt utterly flat inside. There was thus an inevitability about the final result as far as the cognoscenti were concerned – as Trimble’s rivals sat with arms folded and legs crossed. Ross could not break out from his core of supporters from the farming community west of the Bann, dropped out. So, too, did Maginnis: he could see that not only did Trimble do well outside of the greater Belfast area generally, but that he had made substantial inroads amongst some of his own constituents in Fermanagh, notably in the Newtownbutler, Rosslea and Lisnaskea areas close to the border. After the third ballot, Nicholson announced the result of the run-off:

Taylor – 333 (42%)

Trimble – 466 (58%)

Trimble remembers one big blur; whilst Daphne Trimble says that ‘on one level I went into shock. Nothing would ever be the same again. Part of David didn’t want it at all; a part of him wants a quiet life – to sit at home and listen to music and to go to the opera. But at least as far as the house was concerned, his election didn’t make much difference since he doesn’t do the normal things that husbands do like the gardening. When we married he at least made an effort and we definitely had shelves put up.’²²

How had he done it? After all, here was a man who just a few years earlier could not even win a council by-election in ultra-safe Lisburn. Moreover, this bookish academic had now been elected as the leader of one of the least intellectual political forces in the United Kingdom; indeed, he was the first university graduate since the foundation of Northern Ireland to lead the UUP, for many of his patrician predecessors had served in the forces but never attended a university (Carson was a graduate, but effectively handed over the leadership to Craig upon the foundation of the state; and Faulkner matriculated at Queen’s in the autumn of 1939, but never graduated).²³ Nor did he seek to make himself congenial to his colleagues – indeed, in some ways the very opposite. ‘Drumcree’ was an obvious answer, and is certainly the explanation for his victory most favoured by senior colleagues. Likewise, Caroline Nimmons, who did much of the telephone canvassing of the delegates, says that Drumcree was referred to positively more often than any other issue.²⁴ Others, such as Jim Wilson, are not so sure: they think that it may have cost him as much as it gained him, and Trimble certainly said as much in his first interview with the Portadown Times after his victory.²⁵ Gordon Lucy, one of Trimble’s closest aides in the contest, attributes his victory to a wider range of causes, though he does not doubt Drumcree’s importance. He notes that Trimble had built up a profile well before that. Such sentiments were expressed to Ruth Dudley Edwards during her visit that summer to Aughnacloy, Co. Tyrone for ‘Black Saturday’ (the last Saturday in August, when the Royal Black Preceptory hold their most important procession). Clogher Valley Blackmen told her that Molyneaux’s successor should be higher profile and more combative. ‘We’ve been too stiff-necked and proud to explain ourselves,’ said one. ‘We’ve got to change.’²⁶ They also wanted someone who would resist the pan-nationalist juggernaut and not be taken in by the British Government (hence Trimble’s pledge never to go into No. 10 alone). Finally, the hated media had made John Taylor the favourite. ‘There may have been an element of pig-headedness in voting for Trimble,’ noted one UUC member. ‘Delegates wanted to buck the trend.’ In a group as ‘thran’ as the Ulster Unionist grassroots, that cannot be discounted. Indeed, it was an utterly paradoxical victory: here was Trimble, an untelegenic figure with crooked teeth (who stormed out of studios and distrusted the local media hugely), running as the improbable herald of almost Mandelsonian modernisation. Yes, he was articulate, but his TV performances were often larded with obscure references to the arcana of the talks process – and were scarcely populistic either in content or delivery. Thus, a vote for Trimble was, paradoxically, a vote both for change and for cussed defiance of Ulster’s many enemies.

The reaction in portions of the Irish media would doubtless have vindicated the UUC grassroots in their choice – if, that is, any of them read southern newspapers. Dick Grogan, then Northern Editor of the Irish Times, stated that ‘he clearly regards compromise as a surrender, and that bodes ill for all-party talks … His quick temper and truculent manner will indeed bring a drastic change of image to the party leadership and align it more closely to the manner of political conduct favoured by the DUP.’²⁷ But Trimble’s allies in the media were delighted. Ruth Dudley Edwards, writing an open letter to Trimble in the Dublin Sunday Independent on 17 September 1995, advised him to ‘learn from your enemies: Sinn Fein has much to teach you. First, its leaders have had the humility and good sense to learn painstakingly how to present themselves. We may laugh at their Armani suits, we may sneer about their use of image consultants but the fact remains that they leaped straight from enforced media silence to a mastery of the media. So please do what every other political party does and have your spokesmen take basic courses in television technique. And persuade them that it is not un-Protestant to smile or demonstrate that sense of humour they exhibit in private … one last tip: if the UUP is intent on modernising itself, isn’t it time it invested in an answering machine for your Glengall Street headquarters?’: one such device was soon acquired, and Trimble himself bought a mobile telephone. Significantly, she counselled Trimble against forming a pan-unionist front with the DUP, and urged him to surround himself not with ‘hardline friends’ but with liberals such as Ken Maginnis and Reg Empey; this, of course, is exactly what happened and may well be what Trimble wanted to happen all along anyhow (though it remains open to question how much influence she exerted towards that end). The Daily Telegraph also stated that despite his uncompromising line on decommissioning, ‘it would be wrong to conclude that his election necessarily represents a setback for the peace process … a strong Unionist voice is badly needed to redress the imbalance that has been allowed to develop within the peace process’.²⁸ But it was not only instinctive Unionists who were pleased: Andrew Marr in his Independent column correctly predicted that despite the images of Drumcree, ‘the great Crustacean is shedding its shell. David Trimble’s election as leader of the UUP is only the first stage in what is likely to be a dramatic reshaping of Unionist politics … he is something rather new, a modernising but utterly committed Ulster Unionist. To bien pensant opinion that probably sounds about as likely as finding a vegetarian head hunter or a druid with a PhD. But it is real and fascinating and of great importance … I think he will be difficult, and sharp, and unfamiliar, and it is clear that these are exceptionally dangerous and sensitive times. But it seems a little odd to go on for years about stupid Unionists and then panic when you get a clever one. That’s part of the lesson of the past twelve months. This man has a conscience and a fast mind. And for the time being he is the future of Northern Ireland.’ Unsurprisingly, Marr was in regular contact in this period with No. 10, the NIO – and with Trimble’s friend, Ruth Dudley Edwards.²⁹

Handling the press was, appropriately enough, Trimble’s first task after his victory. He held a one-and-a-half-hour press conference at Glengall Street the following morning. Trimble immediately acceded to this idea. But, as ever, Trimble’s approach was more complex than his pronouncements suggested. For although the new UUP leader understood the importance of the media better than anyone, his personal engagement with the press was much less ‘proactive’ than his election manifesto suggested: often, it had to be laid out on a plate for him. If rung by any journalist, he would certainly give very generously and courteously of his time. But as Matthew d’Ancona observes, Trimble never went out of his way to cultivate or even to contact somone as sympathetic as himself – an approach which d’Ancona characterises as ‘light years removed from the attitude of a New Labour Cabinet minister’.³⁰ Charles Moore, erstwhile editor of The Daily Telegraph, and Michael Gove, assistant editor of The Times, likewise confirm that unless they contact Trimble, they would never hear from him from one year to the next; and although he is a long-time subscriber to The Spectator, Trimble never made much effort to contact successive editors. Nor did any of these mainland outlets receive many press releases from the UUP: their support for Unionism predated his arrival on the scene and subsequently owed little to Trimble’s own actions. Indeed, Trimble came to know key figures in the London print media in the early to mid-1990s largely through the agency of David Burnside, who wanted to build up Trimble as a putative deputy to John Taylor, in preparation for the post-Molyneaux era. Having come to know the London quality press, Trimble enjoys their company and values their good opinion. But to woo them would, in his world-view, have smacked too much of ‘brown-nosing’. In that sense, he started out as the most unconventional of British political leaders – and remains such to this day.