Dean Godson – Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism (страница 22)

In Lagan Valley, too, Trimble sought to burnish his credentials. In 1983 he became Vice Chairman of the constituency UUP and in 1986 sought renomination for the same post. He found himself opposed for this largely honorific job and assumed that it was a renewed attempt by elements of the local Unionist establishment to be rid of him. Suddenly, the incumbent Chairman of Lagan Valley announced he was not standing again. Since Trimble had put himself forward for Vice Chairman, it could reasonably be inferred that he was prepared to run for the top job. This he duly did and Trimble squeaked by at the AGM, with votes 55 to 53. Thus it was that Trimble became chairman of one of the largest Ulster Unionist associations. More important still, Trimble – one of Molyneaux’s main critics – was now the local party chairman of the party leader. Although Molyneaux could not but acknowledge his abilities, the two men were never natural soulmates – to say the least. In Molyneaux’s eyes, politics and policy were the prerogative of the Member of the Imperial Parliament. Ulster Unionist associations, like their Tory cousins, were supposed to be election-winning machines which collected subscriptions and raised funds, but did not bother themselves with great affairs of state. Indeed, even in times of great crisis, such as in 1985–6, the Lagan Valley Association minute books show that surprising proportions of meetings were still spent on such routine matters as fulfilling branch quotas and the payment for the use of Association facilities for jumble sales. Trimble, by contrast, was keen to ‘politicise’ Unionists and accordingly set up a monthly discussion at the Lagan Valley Management Committee meeting called the ‘Current Political Situation’. For example, the minute books for 11 January 1985 record that Trimble suggested that Lagan Valley affiliate to the National Union (of Conservative and Unionist Associations) to influence the ruling mainland party. This initiative was noted with interest by Workers’ Weekly on 2 February 1985, which stated that Trimble ‘has not been foremost amongst those anxious to bring Northern Ireland’s wretched local politics into the British mainstream. He has been a leading spokesman for the devolutionist wing of the UUP.’

There was one other contrast between the two men. Molyneaux was Deputy Grand Master of the entire Orange Order and Sovereign Commonwealth Grand Master of the Royal Black Institution, the senior branch of the Loyal Orders; whereas Trimble was an Orangeman out of a sense of duty and was rarely concerned with the plethora of meetings which office-holders in the District or County Grand Lodge had to attend. Trimble felt that the Orange Order with its rituals and procedures was institutionally not suited to combating the Kulturkampf which Irish nationalists had launched against the Ulster-British way of life: in consequence of this campaign, many outsiders regarded Unionists as the ’Afrikaners’ of the island of Ireland. Trimble’s view of this matter had been given an extra urgency by the text of the joint communiqué which followed the 19 November 1984 summit at Chequers between Mrs Thatcher and the Irish Prime Minister, Garrett Fitzgerald. At the press conference, Mrs Thatcher had famously ruled out the three recommendations of the New Ireland Forum of the Republic’s constitutional parties and the SDLP – which then became known in ‘tabloid-speak’ as her ‘out, out, out’ pronouncement. Unionists were delighted, but Trimble counselled caution. One of his reasons for caution was that in an attempt to slow down the momentum of Sinn Fein/IRA, the British and Irish Governments had agreed to give greater recognition to Irish culture in the life of Northern Ireland. Trimble could, therefore, see this emerging as the next great battle-ground.

Trimble believed that even the most balanced accounts of the island’s history did not, taken as a whole, accord equality of treatment to Unionism.⁴ Unless Unionists found an organisational vehicle to rectify this asymmetry, governmental support would go entirely to the Gaelic/Catholic/Nationalist side rather than the Orange tradition. Trimble reckoned that although the Orange Order was an entirely bona fide body, the ‘cultural commissars’ (his words) at the NIO would never dispense funds to it.⁵ In some ways, he thought the Order was too exclusive a body, for the wider unionist community of Ulster was not coterminous with Orangeism. Likewise, to insert ‘Protestant’ into the title of any new body would also be unsatisfactory, for neither was the British community of Ulster synonymous with Protestantism: some of its most loyal citizens were Catholic. He was also anxious to avoid any hint of anti-Englishness, to which so many loyalists were prone after being let down by successive British Governments. Trimble now thought that anti-Englishness only played into the hands of Irish nationalists, and served to detach them from their natural moorings in the broader, more cosmopolitan community of the British Isles. What, then, would provide the broadest basis for fighting the dilution of Ulster’s cultural identity?

‘Ulster-British’ – hyphenated – seemed the most satisfactory formulation. It implied a community capable of autonomous existence but which was also invested with wider associations in these isles as a whole. So following a seminar at the Park Avenue Hotel in Belfast on 25 April 1985, it was decided to set up ‘the Ulster Society for the Promotion of Ulster-British Heritage and Culture’. On 28 September 1985 (the 73rd anniversary of the signing of Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant) the organisation was launched formally at Brownlow House in Lurgan. Brownlow House – a mid-19th-century sandstone structure that served as world-wide headquarters of the Royal Black Institution and was also the largest Orange Hall in the world – became its home base. Trimble became the chairman, and a young activist from Fermanagh, Gordon Lucy, became general secretary. The first project focused on loyalist folk music and entailed the collecting of the words and tunes of traditional Orange songs and ballads which were in danger of being lost to posterity (surprisingly or not, Trimble’s musical tastes do not extend to loyalist bands). The second subject concerned Orange banners, with questionnaires to be sent to every lodge. Another study focused on the original UVF and 36th (Ulster) Division, which would trace and interview survivors of the carnage which that unit endured on the Somme. Nor was the international dimension neglected: the Ulster Society also sought to rekindle awareness of the contribution of Ulstermen to the American Revolution.⁶ Later, he was instrumental in securing a reprint of Cecil Davis Milligan’s Walls of Derry, the authoritative work on all aspects of the defences of the Maiden City, first published in the Londonderry Sentinel in two parts in 1948 and 1950.⁷ Trimble also reviewed books on Ulster’s contribution to the development of science and technology – including Sir Hans Sloane and Lord Kelvin – and wrote a new introduction to the third volume in the Tom Barber trilogy of novels by Forrest Reid, an early to mid-20th-century Ulster author.⁸

Maintaining the self-confidence of the Unionist community turned out to be even more necessary than Trimble had imagined when he determined to set up the Ulster Society. For on 15 November 1985, the British and Irish Governments signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which for the first time gave the Republic a formal say in the affairs of Ulster – on everything from security, public appointments, to the official use of flags and symbols.⁹ As Trimble later noted, the 1985 Agreement did not even contain any declaration – as in the 1973 Act – stating that Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, nor that it was the policy of the British Government to support the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland.¹⁰ Worse still from a Unionist viewpoint, the Republic had achieved this role in the internal affairs of the Province without rescinding its claim over Northern Ireland contained in Articles 2 and 3 of the 1937 Constitution, which was illegal under international law. In the words of the Northern Ireland Assembly’s report on the AIA – largely drafted by Trimble – ‘the agreement clearly diminishes British sovereignty in Northern Ireland by admitting a foreign government into the structure and processes of government of Northern Ireland’. The Intergovernmental conference – with its secretariat at Maryfield, on the outskirts of Belfast – was ‘a joint authority in embryo, which if allowed to develop will become the effective government of Northern Ireland’.¹¹ Trimble now believes that the British state was disappointed with the results of the AIA and pulled back from the logical drift towards joint authority. But even though today he prefers the description of ‘direct rule with the Greenest of tinges’, he still shudders at the thought of the AIA effectively placing the Irish Government inside British ministers’ private offices.