Dean Godson – Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism (страница 17)
Trimble derived some crucial lessons from this episode. The first was that Craig should have done more to consult the average member of the Convention about the evolution of his thinking and the contacts with the SDLP. The sense of shock when these dealings emerged, says Trimble, did much to weaken Craig’s position when the deal went awry and they panicked.40 Trimble, who was part of Craig’s inner circle, initially went to the opposite extreme in dealing with his Assembly party after the Belfast Agreement of 1998. According to Trimble, the collapse of Craig’s initiative was one of the great political disasters to have befallen the Province during the Troubles. Had that opportunity been taken, he says, there would have been political stability in the second half of the 1970s, and an end to terrorism soon thereafter. There would have been no Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 – giving the Republic a say in the governance of Ulster for the first time – and none of the present political developments. And it amused him greatly when the DUP launched their
Yet in the short term, Trimble was to suffer even more acute, personal discomfiture as a result of the Voluntary Coalition debacle. In the last debate of the Convention, on 3 March 1976 – just before its dissolution – Trimble wound up for Vanguard. His concluding remarks were directed at his UUUC colleagues, and especially at Paisley: ‘In 1972, he [Paisley] was not prepared to exert himself to defend Stormont and in 1976 he does not seem to be prepared to exert himself to restore it …’ opined Trimble. ‘In the debate of the last few days I have been reminded of an old Russian proverb that I came across in the pages of
Trimble was not, however, ready for Paisley’s response. ‘There is a story going round Queen’s University that a well-known member of Vanguard and a lecturer in law at Queen’s University, was toying with his personal side-arm in a young lady’s home’ retorted the DUP leader. ‘After seemingly unloading it he pulled the trigger and surprise, surprise, it went off and a bullet embedded itself in a wall behind the girl, missing her head by a mere inch. Our man from Vanguard very quickly filled in the bullet hole with Polyfilla. One wonders how good Polyfilla is for holes in the head. Mr Chairman, that might be an apocryphal story, but tonight the hon. Gentleman was certainly toying with a situation with which he was not prepared to come clean out into the open.’44 The attack was a clear reference to Trimble. There was uproar and shouts of ‘withdraw!’ from Convention members; Trimble tried to make Paisley give way, but the DUP leader declined. John Kennedy, one of the clerks to the Convention, recalls that ‘it was the most chilling, lowest, moment I have ever witnessed at Stormont. The blood literally drained from David Trimble’s face. Even the nimble-witted Lowry was lost for words.’45
Not for nothing is Ian Paisley reputed to have the best contacts of anyone in the Province – and, to this day, David Trimble does not know how the DUP leader discovered about this episode.46 Paisley still declines to say who his source was.47 Indeed, a large number of people – mostly, but not exclusively anti-Agreement unionists – have asked me whether I know of ‘Trimble’s attempt to kill his first wife’ or of an attempt of kill an ex-girlfriend. One senior Ulster Unionist even suggested to me that because of this supposed attempt to murder his then consort, Trimble was exposed to blackmail by MI5 – resulting in a vulnerability to British state pressure which led him, ultimately, to sign the Belfast Agreement (there are echoes here of the allegations made by some Irish republicans against Michael Collins, to the effect that he only signed the 1921 treaty because London ‘had something’ on him).48 The reality then was rather more prosaic. Far from being an illustration of Trimble’s temper in the course of a domestic dispute it was, rather, an illustration of his technical incompetence. Trimble was at the Belfast home of his girlfriend and wife-to-be, Daphne Orr, in Surrey Street off the Lisburn Road. He was clearing his personal protection weapon – a nine-millimetre automatic – and had removed the magazine. He thought he had cleared the chamber and squeezed the trigger to clear the spring. To his horror, ‘there was a round up the spout which fired into a wall. Even now, I find it it a bit of a shock to recall it.’49 Daphne Trimble recalls that her reaction after the bullet hit the wall was ‘quite unprintable’ – and adds, reasonably enough, that if she believed that he was trying to kill her, she would have terminated the relationship. The RUC was never called, nor did David and Daphne Trimble ever tell anyone about it: Daphne, who was in the public gallery when Paisley revealed this information, was in a state of shock. The episode contributed to Trimble’s decision to give up the weapon in 1978, a decision made all the easier by the fact that he thought then he was leaving public life following the break-up of Vanguard.50
Daphne and David Trimble had first met at Queen’s in 1972, where he had taught her Land Law in her second year and then advanced Property Law in her third year for her honours classes. She had been born in 1953 at Warrenpoint, Co. Down, a small port by the border with the Republic. She was the second of four Orr sisters, the last two being twins.51 Her older sister, Geraldine, married a Newry Catholic, Connla Magennis – whose uncle, Frank Aiken, was an IRA Chief of Staff in the 1920s who later became Fianna Fail Foreign Minister (Trimble never met Aiken, and Daphne only met him once at her sister’s wedding).52 Daphne’s mother came from Scotland and her father owned Fred C. Orr, a well-known jeweller in Newry, the nearest large town. Newry was, she recalls, a tinderbox in the early years of the Troubles, and Protestant businesses were regularly burned out: she remembers that when the next shop was set alight, the arsonists were burned to a crisp. Like so many border Protestants, they came under huge pressure in this largely nationalist area, but the family remained resolutely non-sectarian. None of her family ever joined any of the Loyal Orders, though her father was a Freemason. Her parents were in the New Ulster Movement, the precursor of the Alliance party, but she freely admits that had she not married Trimble she would never have become a political animal.53
Initially, she had only liked him as a lecturer and felt comfortable enough to ask him for advice on an apprenticeship, for she had few contacts in the legal profession in Belfast. He directed her to his old friend from the Land Registry and personal lawyer, Sam Beattie, of F.J. Orr & Co. (no relation). It was only in the summer of 1975, after she had graduated, that they started going out with each other: the courtship was first struck up at a staff-student cricket match. Later, he took her to the bar at Stormont and taught her about classical music, especially Wagner. They were married on 31 August 1978 at Warrenpoint Methodist Church: as at his first wedding, ten years earlier, Trimble was married to the strains of the bridal march from Wagner’s