Dean Godson – Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism (страница 31)
British ministers and officials to this day remain well pleased with their work on the Downing Street Declaration. In Michael Ancram’s words, ‘we delivered a pretty Orange document in green language’.9 According to this reading, the British Government was merely reiterating what it had already conceded – that it had ‘no selfish strategic or economic interest’ in staying in Ulster – indicating to Hume and the IRA that they were neutral rather than imperialistic in motivation, and that republicanism’s real ‘British question’ was how to deal with close to a million pro-British subjects in the north-east corner of Ireland. The British Government was now a facilitator for an agreed Ireland – again, Hume’s concept – but that was not necessarily a united Ireland. Such a polity could only come about if consent was freely and simultaneously given by the people of Ireland, north and south. Partition was secure in that Ulster folk would determine whether there would be Irish unity and not the Irish people as a whole, as the republicans wanted. Moroever, the British would simply seek to uphold those democratic wishes, be they for unity or the status quo and, crucially, would neither seek to persuade nor to coerce Ulster into any new arrangements. Unionists were told that it was significant that it was the Fianna Fail Government of Ireland – traditionally the ‘Greener’ of the Republic’s two main parties – which acknowledged a united Ireland needed the consent of the majority in Ulster. Both Governments added that all could participate fully in the democratic process if a commitment to exclusively peaceful methods was established. In his subsequent explanation of the DSD in the Dail, the Irish Foreign Minister, Dick Spring, defined a ‘permanent’ abandonment of violence as including ‘the handing up of arms…’. British ministers also made such demands – a point which annoyed Adams greatly in early 1994 when he told the
To someone like Trimble, the language of the Declaration ought to have made for very uncomfortable reading. First of all, there was the very fact of the statement itself: a foreign government with an illegal territorial claim was once again pronouncing upon the future of Northern Ireland. Second, it spoke of the ‘people’ of Ireland – whereas Trimble, who subscribed to the B&ICO’s ‘Two Nations’ theory, believed the Ulster-British to be a breed apart. Third, though it acknowledged the right of the majority in Northern Ireland to determine its constitutional future, it repeatedly posited the idea that any changes in that status would inevitably be in the direction of Irish unity, rather than towards still closer relations with Britain. But for all his doubts (which in part centred around the fact that because Molyneaux went alone to Downing Street, he could be outmanoeuvred) Trimble was reluctant publicly to denounce the document in which his leader had such a hand. To have done so, Trimble says, would have pushed him into the Paisleyite camp and would forfeit him such limited access as he then enjoyed.10 Any fears which the NIO may have harboured that he would be the source of right-wing opposition to the DSD were thus never realised. ‘If we are suspending judgment today on this statement today, it is in the hope that it will lead to a way out of the cul-de-sac in which the people of Ulster have been condemned for the last eight years,’ he observed in the Commons on the day of the signing of the DSD. Instead, he focused upon the so-called ‘democratic deficit’ in Northern Ireland – partly a reference to the system of legislating for the Province via Orders in Council rather than properly debated and scrutinised Bills.11
With hindsight, Trimble feels that Molyneaux did a fairly good job in removing the ‘Greener’ elements within the Hume – Adams conception.12It was an early indication that Trimble, unlike Robert McCartney, did not regard the peace process as a fraud designed to deliver a united Ireland by stealth; rather, it was something which, if the terms were right, was worth studying and could yield fruit. In Trimble’s eyes, that fruit was the tantalising prospect of no more impositions from above, such as the abolition of Stormont by Westminster in 1972, or the AIA of 1985. This, he hoped, would be a settlement which Unionists would be able to shape for themselves rather than being left to wait ‘like a dog’, in Harold McCusker’s famous phrase, outside the conference chamber as the future of the Province was carved up.13 Paisley swiftly detected Trimble’s modulated position, describing him in a speech to the annual dinner of the Tandragee, Co. Armagh, branch of the DUP in early 1994 as ‘plasticine man’ over the DSD: Trimble was ‘being made to look up, look down, look left and look right in whatever way he was punched by events’.14
The Provisionals, for their part, never endorsed the DSD – if only because they could never then accept that Northern Ireland was the relevant unit within which the consent principle should be exercised – but it nonetheless contained enticing amounts of ‘Green’ language. This was emphasised by both Reynolds and Hume, thus enabling it to become an important building block in the construction of the first IRA ceasefire of 31 August 1994 – although Adams may have gambled that the ‘precondition’ about decommissioning would be waived more swiftly than was actually the case. Whilst republicans debated the DSD’s contents and requested ‘clarification’ from the British Government (in an attempt to draw them into public negotiations before a ceasefire had been called), Trimble urged that they not be allowed to dictate the pace of progress. Hume had told the British and Irish Governments that there would peace within days of the DSD, but it had not been forthcoming. ‘The government have held the carrot,’ Trimble observed. ‘Now it is time for the stick. Militarily they should clobber the Provos.’ He became the pre-eminent advocate in the Commons of the idea of the then Chief Constable of the RUC, Sir Hugh Annesley, to allow wiretap evidence to be used in court (partly, he argued, because such evidence could sometimes assist in the defence of the accused).15 From his knowledge of European law, Trimble also urged that the Italian-style, mafia-busting investigating magistrates be brought in to deal with the IRA.16 He named a number of alleged provisional IRA godfathers.
Trimble’s interpretation of the IRA’s decision to call its first ceasefire is fairly orthodox. ‘The RUC were slowly winning the war of attrition,’ he now recalls. ‘The security forces were gradually getting on top of them and consequently for republicans in the early 1990s the picture is of a long haul where they were becoming less effective and their campaign could just peter out. So Sinn Fein’s involvement in the peace process is partly about cashing in the armed struggle for a political process whilst it still has some value; but it also has something to do with the rising tide of loyalist violence after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which was starting to hurt Sinn Fein as well.’17 Whether or not Trimble’s interpretation of the IRA’s rationale for its first ceasefire was correct, there can be no doubt that unionism as a whole was thoroughly unprepared for the new phase of struggle and the challenges posed by the ‘peace process’. It was especially hard for them to endure the adulation which was heaped on the heads of the Sinn Fein leadership as they sought to portray themselves as ‘normal’ politicians. This included visas to enter America, subsequent trips to the White House, and an end to the Republic’s and Britain’s broadcasting bans. Sharp-suited articulate republicans were all over the airwaves; whilst Unionists such as Paisley, remarked Trimble, would protest ineptly at the injustice of the process and be thrown out of the Commons chamber or No. 10. Trimble, though, was not himself immune to such expressions of rage: he stormed out of a Channel 4 studio in the following year, when he found himself unexpectedly appearing on a remote link-up with Martin McGuinness. ‘We do not share platforms or programmes with Sinn Fein/IRA,’ he thundered.18 Years later, even when he had become a much more experienced television performer, Trimble could still explode – exemplified by his anger when he felt himself provoked by the presenter Noel Thompson on BBC Northern Ireland’s
Again, Unionists asked themselves: had the British Government done a deal at their expense to secure a ceasefire? Trimble himself soon concluded that whilst there was no secret deal between the British and the IRA, there was possibly a deal between Adams, Hume and Reynolds. This would be the so-called ‘pan-nationalist front’ so feared by Unionists. At this period, the Unionists greatly feared this would carry all before it. As they saw it, the republican movement would trade violent methods for the adoption of at least some of its aims by the constitutional parties. Thus, he believed, Hume and Reynolds were more inclined to regard the IRA ceasefire as ‘permanent’ than either the UUP or the British Government, even though the IRA refused to employ the ‘p’ word and hoped that such an impression of reasonableness would force the British into making concessions. If such concessions were not forthcoming, the British would then be blamed by nationalists for ‘foot-dragging’ and for adding ‘preconditions’ to Sinn Fein’s entry into the political process – so validating the fears of IRA ‘hardliners’ that they had been tricked into abandoning armed struggle. Having represented the abandonment of violence as ‘permanent’, the thwarted IRA could then go back to Irish nationalists, and proclaim that they had acted flexibly but that British bad faith made it imperative for them to return to armed struggle. But the ‘upside’ of the British Government’s caution was that Unionists were gradually bound into the ‘process’: Trimble says that he noted in 1994 that in contrast to the ceasefire of 1972 – when the young Gerry Adams was released from internment to negotiate with William Whitelaw at Cheyne Walk within 48 hours of the guns falling silent – this time there was a much longer ‘quarantine’ period before talks could begin. Indeed, when Trimble was asked whether he agreed with John Taylor and the Rev. Martin Smyth, MP, that Sinn Fein would eventually be involved in talks, Trimble replied: ‘Personally, I would put a very big reservation against that … for myself, that’s a matter which I don’t expect to be doing.’ In other words, Trimble rejected this option on contingent rather than principled grounds. Later, at the Young Unionists’ conference at Fivemile-town, Co. Tyrone, Trimble urged the creation of an assembly in which Sinn Fein could take part – thus sidestepping the difficulties which would occur if they sought to gain access to all-party talks too quickly. Trimble was thus publicly raising the question of diluting preconditions for their entry into the political process, in exchange for a local elected body in which Unionists would, of course, enjoy a clear majority.20 It appears to be the first time that he raised the topic on a public platform in Northern Ireland – though he had, in fact, already made a similar suggestion in an article in