Читать книгу Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism - Dean Godson - Страница 7

TRIMBLE duly began his career in the NICS in September 1963, on a monthly salary of £35. He was rapidly transferred to the Land Registry – tucked away at the Royal Courts of Justice in Chichester Street, because it had originally been part of the Courts Service. The Northern Ireland Government, however, seemed most of the time to have forgotten the existence of this Dickensian backwater: a musty, overcrowded warren of rooms with high windows. It was primarily a place where paper was stored and when ancient title deeds would be brought out from the bowels of the registry, the member of staff would often find his clothing covered in dust. When a property transaction occurred, a change in the entry of ownership was required in the relevant folio; Trimble’s job was to make a draft of the new entry. But the drudgery had a purpose. Transfer to the Land Registry afforded access to the NICS’s scheme for recruiting lawyers. Under this programme, civil servants could study part-time for a law degree at Queen’s University Belfast, whilst continuing their professional tasks, and then return at a higher grade.¹

Tempting as the prospect was, Trimble asked himself whether he would be up to the task. After all, no Trimble had ever been to university. Queen’s was then the only fully-fledged university in the Province and the most solid of redbrick foundations. It had been founded as Queen’s College after the passage of the Irish Universities Act of 1845 as part of Sir Robert Peel’s reforms. Hitherto, the Ascendancy had dominated higher education, as embodied by Trinity College Dublin. But the burgeoning middle classes, Catholic and Dissenter alike, demanded something more. Three such institutions were set up. Two of them, at Cork and Galway, were intended to serve the predominantly Catholic population of the south and the west and one, in Belfast, was to serve the overwhelmingly non-conformist population of the north-east. As such, it heavily reflected the Presbyterian ethos.² Although there was still a residual sense amongst Protestants, even in Trimble’s time, that this was ‘our University’, he was initially hesitant about applying. The competition was stiff, and when the NICS scheme was pioneered in the previous year only two out of the 300 applicants had made it. But Michael Brunyate, who was still one of the greatest influences on Trimble’s life, persuaded him that he would never be happy within himself if he did not obtain a degree.³

Trimble applied, and managed to win one of two NICS places for 1964: the other went to Herb Wallace, a friend and colleague from the Land Registry who would later hold a Professorial chair and serve as Vice Chairman of the Police Authority. Wallace initially thought the pencil-thin, ginger-haired, red-faced youth was ‘a bit odd’; but they were soon to become firm friends. Again, like Trimble’s family and school contemporaries, Wallace was impressed by his knowledge and authority, especially when it came to current affairs. Trimble was already a critic of Terence O’Neill, the mildly liberal Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1963 to 1969, as much because of his unattractive and haughty manner as because of his policies. Wallace recalls that Trimble then regarded Ian Paisley, who was starting to make waves in opposition to O’Neill’s policies, as a crank.⁴ Instead, he admired the two most dynamic figures in the Provincial Government: William Craig, the Development Minister, and Brian Faulkner, the Commerce Minister. He considered them both to be ‘doers’. Trimble, who was irritated by the parochialism of the Northern Ireland news, was more stimulated by events further afield. During the General Election of 1964, he loathed Harold Wilson, identifying more with Sir Alec Douglas-Home; he was passionately interested in Rhodesian UDI and ardently backed the United States over Vietnam. He was also influenced in his opinion of the Cold War by the London-based monthly journal of culture and politics, Encounter, in which contributors often urged a tough line on the Soviets.⁵

Queen’s Law Faculty was then still very much in its ‘golden epoch’. Along with Medicine, it had always been the most prestigious of the University departments and enjoyed an intimate relationship with the Provincial Bar and Judiciary. Places were specially set aside for law students in the library, who then underwent a four-year course. The student numbers, though they had increased substantially since the 1950s, were still very small compared to today – around 40 in each year. It was also a place where Catholic and Protestant undergraduates mixed relatively easily. But what made Queen’s outstanding in this epoch was the quality of the teaching staff. They included colleagues such as William Twining, later Professor at University College London; Claire Palley, who taught Family and Roman Law and later became Principal of St Anne’s College Oxford; Lee Sheridan, later Professor of Law at University College Cardiff; and Harry Calvert, a Yorkshireman who had written what was then the definitive text on the Northern Ireland Constitution.⁶ Moreover, these academic grandees set the most demanding of standards: some years could go by when no ‘firsts’ were awarded, and even ‘2:1s’ would be dispensed sparingly enough; many would fail their first-year exams.

Yet although Trimble was only a part-timer, he flourished. Indeed, in some ways, he rather resembled the young Edward Heath, whose life only really ‘began’ after he left his small-town grammar school and went up to Oxford.⁷ Oddly, perhaps, in the light of Trimble’s dislike of the work of the Land Registry, he particularly enjoyed Property Law and its bizarre algebraic logic, which he took in the final two years: but, unlike other ‘swots’, recalls Herb Wallace, he was always very generous about sharing his copious lecture notes.⁸ So absorbing did he find the work that he began to attend less to duties in the Land Registry and in his final year took leave of absence.⁹ Queen’s, however, spotted his academic potential and in his fourth year William Twining informed him that he ought to consider taking up a teaching post – subject to his obtaining the right result. Trimble took an outstanding first in his Finals that summer and won the McKane Medal for Jurisprudence. On the basis of that achievement, he was offered an assistant lecturership in Land Law and Equity, with a starting salary of £1,100 per annum. The front page of the County Down Spectator of 5 July 1968 pictured him on the front page and claimed with pride that the local boy was the only Queen’s student to take a first for three years. But his graduation was marred by the death of his father the night before the ceremony. In his will, Billy Trimble left an estate worth £3078.

Why did Trimble opt to become a lecturer? He also loved Planning Law and easily had the intellectual ability to become, in due course, a well-paid silk in London (indeed, he was called to the Northern Ireland Bar in 1969 and by Gray’s Inn in 1970: two of his fellow pupils in the bar finals included Claire Palley and the late Jeffrey Foote, subsequently a leading QC and County Court Judge). Curiously, despite the small nature of society in Northern Ireland, he had few contacts at the Bar who would take him on as a pupil: his mother’s childhood friend from Londonderry, Lord Justice McVeigh, politely heard out Ivy Trimble’s representations on behalf of her son, but opened no doors for him. When eventually Trimble was called to the Bar, he was so lacking in contacts that his memorial had to be signed by a man who did not know him well, Robert Carswell, QC, subsequently Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland and a Law Lord (indeed, to this day, many practitioners of the law in Northern Ireland look down upon Trimble as not a ‘real’ lawyer). His decision to become an academic may also have had something to do with his shyness and awkwardness, which mattered less in the more arcane realms of Property Law than it would have in the more social atmosphere of the Bar Library (the Northern Ireland Bar operates a library system, inherited from the old Irish Bar, rather than Chambers). Above all, Trimble knew that any proceeds from a practice at the Bar would be some time in coming. Legal aid had been introduced in Northern Ireland only in 1966 and prior to the Troubles, the law was still a comparatively small profession. And he now had another reason to opt for financial security: he had met the local girl he wanted to marry.¹⁰

Trimble had first encountered Heather McCombe from Donaghadee at the Land Registry. She was a plump and very popular girl; they were first spotted together at the office Christmas party of 1967. His friends and colleagues thought her a surprising choice. Not only was she outgoing where he was shy, but she was not obviously bookish. Nonetheless, they were married on 13 September 1968 at Donaghadee Parish Church with Martin Mawhinney as his best man; they honeymooned in Bray, Co. Wicklow – Trimble’s first visit to the Irish Republic (‘I had no idea how deeply unfashionable it was,’ he now recalls).¹¹ On the proceeds of his work for the Supreme Court Rules Committee, he bought their first marital home at 11 Henderson Drive in Bangor. She soon became pregnant, and six months into her pregnancy went into premature labour. Trimble went to the hospital that evening, but did not appreciate fully what was happening and the medical staff told him to go home and to obtain some sleep. When he returned, twin sons had been born – but one had already died and the other was dying.¹² Trimble went into shock and according to Iain Trimble, withdrew into himself.¹³ Subsequently, Heather Trimble became one of the first women to join the Ulster Defence Regiment, otherwise known as ‘Greenfinches’.¹⁴ It became an all-consuming passion for her and, indeed, many UDR marriages broke up in this period because of the highly demanding hours.¹⁵ The combination of their social and work commitments soon put the marriage under intolerable strain. The hearing was held before the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Robert Lowry, and the decree absolute was granted before Lord Justice McGonigal in 1976.¹⁶

The unhappiness of Trimble’s domestic life contrasted sharply with the growing satisfaction which he derived from his professional duties in the Department of Property Law headed by Lee Sheridan. It was perhaps all the more remarkable because he never became part of the ‘in-set’ around Calvert and Sheridan who played bridge and squash. He has always felt an outsider, whether at Ballyholme Primary, Bangor Grammar, Queen’s, even in the Ulster Unionist Party. ‘In those years I was suffering from an inferiority complex,’ remembers Trimble. ‘Not because the people around me are English – though that’s a wee bit of it. No, it’s because the people around me are confident. I’m a bit unsure of myself. Francis Newark asked me if I played bridge. I felt uneasy about saying no, but at the same time I wasn’t going to learn it just to please him.’ Even today, he looks at himself and says: ‘It’s a curious thing: deep down inside I believe I’m very good but somehow I’m not always managing to reflect that in what I do.’¹⁷ Certainly, he was then unsophisticated. Claire Palley recalls how she and Trimble went to a French restaurant in the Strand after they completed their Bar exams: Trimble preferred the traditional British fare of steak and chips.¹⁸ The contrast with today’s Trimble – who has to order the most exotic items from the menu – could not be greater.

As throughout his life, Trimble gained self-confidence – and thus respect – by mastering his subject. His Chancery-type of mind, in contradistinction to the kind of horsedealing required at the criminal Bar, was perfectly suited to his dry-as-dust subjects. Students would often sense self-doubt in a lecturer, but Trimble kept order by asking questions which he knew nobody could answer. And when he himself then gave the response he would be able to cite the relevant case from his phenomenal memory and without referring to the textbook. Later, in judging moots, he would search on the Lexis Nexis database to check if there were any unreported decisions so he could pull the students up short; he hates nothing more than to be wrong-footed. Some, such as Alex Attwood – who became a prominent SDLP politician – thought him colourless; but as Attwood concedes, Trimble’s subjects were not necessarily those which would inspire someone imbued with great reforming or radical zeal.¹⁹ Others, such as Alban Maginness, who subsequently became the first SDLP Lord Mayor of Belfast, enjoyed his lectures.²⁰ This was because he invested his subject with such enthusiasm, and would bound about his room waving his arms around. Another plus point for many students, recalls Judith Eve – later Dean of the Law School – was that Trimble was young and local.²¹ In 1971, he was promoted to Lecturer and in 1973 he was elected Assistant Dean of the Faculty, with responsibility for admissions. This appointment was a tribute to the impartiality with which he conducted his duties. Trimble later became a controversial figure in the University, but in this period his outside political activities were relatively low profile and in any case he was always assiduous in keeping his views out of the classroom (though that was easier when teaching subjects such as Property and Equity, rather than the thornier area of constitutional law). Few, if any, in this period thought twice that he conveyed the ’wrong image’ – least of all to have him go round schools of all kinds and denominations to extol the virtues of law as a career.

The effects of his term as Dean for admissions were significant. Only about 10 per cent of 500–600 hopefuls were accepted in this period. But according to Claire Palley, who regularly returned to Belfast, the percentage of Roman Catholic entrants rose markedly.²² Of course, this had little to do with Trimble, and owed far more to broader sociological circumstances. But this supposed ‘bigot’ did nothing to retard these developments and was renowned for meticulously sifting every application (only mature students did interviews). Indeed, so assiduous was he in discharging his responsibilities to students that when one of them was interned for alleged Republican sympathies, Trimble went down to Long Kesh to give him one-to-one tutorials; even at the height of the Troubles, he also regularly went to nationalist west Belfast to the Ballymurphy Welfare Rights Centre as part of a university scheme to help the underprivileged, taking the bus up the Falls to the Whiterock Road. And despite the subsequent growth of a highly litigious ‘grievance culture’, no one can remember any accusations of sectarian remarks, still less of discrimination; he was never subjected to a Fair Employment Commission case of any kind. This is why he was so vexed when Alex Attwood accused him of being distant towards nationalist students: Trimble would have been impartially cold towards all.²³ ‘There was a level of reserve there, undoubtedly,’ remembers Alban Maginness. ‘It was fitting enough for a lecturer in the Law Faculty. He didn’t engage in simulated informality in a classroom context.’²⁴ Nor, notes Claire Palley, a one-time colleague, was he any sort of misogynist – and he shared none of the condescending attitudes of some Ulster males towards female colleagues.²⁵ The truth is that he is an old-fashioned meritocrat, who deplores the excesses of discrimination and anti-discrimination alike.

Trimble may have been the only member of the Orange Order on the Law Faculty staff, but that did not preclude good relationships with those colleagues who most certainly did not share his views (others were, of course, unionists with a lower case ‘u’, in the sense that they believed in the maintenance of the constitutional status quo, but were not Loyalists in the way that Trimble was). Thus, he enjoyed a good, bantering relationship with Kevin Boyle, a left-wing Catholic from Newry. Indeed, when his first marriage was breaking up, Trimble would even turn to Boyle for advice.²⁶ Trimble’s best-known academic work, Northern Ireland Housing Law: The Public and Private Rented Sectors (SLS:1986), was written with Tom Hadden, a liberal Protestant, who also did not share his views.²⁷

Trimble and Hadden had also clashed at faculty meetings over the Fair Employment Agency’s attempt to review recruitment practices at Queen’s, when Trimble was one of the few with either the courage or the intellect to challenge the assumptions of that body.²⁸ Moreover, whereas Trimble was a ‘black letter lawyer’, Hadden was very much more in the jurisprudential tradition. But for the purposes of this project, their complementary skills worked very well. Trimble was teaching housing law in the context of his property courses – such as how to sue landlords – and Hadden was covering the same terrain in the context of social policy. Trimble wrote three chapters, including those dealing with planning issues relating to clearance and development and technical landlord-tenant matters in the private sector (Northern Ireland’s housing then differed from that of the rest of the United Kingdom in having a substantial rented sector). It was an authoritative consolidation of this amalgam of the old Stormont legislation with the Orders in Council which came in with the introduction of direct rule from Westminster in 1972; and it vindicated the expectations of the publishers, SLS (run from the Queen’s Law Faculty), that it would be of use to practitioners, and sold its entire print run.²⁹ So impartial was Trimble in the conduct of his duties that when eventually he did become involved in Ulster Vanguard, many of his colleagues were surprised: the first that David Moore knew of any political commitments on his part was when he saw Trimble on television during the 1973 Assembly elections.³⁰ Events soon ensured that it would not turn out to be an image that he would sustain for long.