Читать книгу Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism - Dean Godson - Страница 20

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

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.