Nobility wheeled on to lend weight to debate

Where are Jeffrey, Willie and Willie? We know of the vehement opposition of Messrs Donaldson, Thompson and Ross to the decommissioning/devolution deal - so why aren't they pitching harder on television and radio?

Mr Donaldson and Mr Thompson, Ulster Unionist MPs opposed to the Belfast Agreement, told UTV's political reporter, Ken Reid, on the main teatime news that the No campaign was steaming along nicely.

But there was little sign of them elsewhere on the airwaves, unlike David Trimble who was all over radio and television yesterday - even after the barracking he and Peter Mandelson suffered in Portadown on Tuesday night.

There was plenty of footage on BBC and UTV of the unseemly Portadown scenes. But it just seemed to make Mr Trimble and Mr Mandelson all the more eager to be in front of the cameras again.

The nearer it gets to the Ulster Unionist Council poll on Saturday, the nastier and more tense it gets. And now the aristocracy is being rolled out to make its arguments.

We learned second-hand on BBC, UTV, and Downtown Radio that former UUP leader Lord Molyneaux has added his signature to a letter to the 860 council members urging rejection. This follows a video graphically showing the effects of IRA violence, which was sent to the members. Lord Molyneaux is a respected grandee of the party - it's not the done thing to go bald-headed for such a unionist eminence. So David Trimble and his pro-Belfast Agreement colleagues seethed but remained mainly silent.

"This is not the only letter being sent," was as truculent as Mr Trimble could safely manage on BBC's Evening Extra radio programme.

Sir Fred Catherwood may not rank as high on the nobility scale, but for the Yes side he provided some useful counter-balance to Lord Molyneaux. In Britain "most people hoped that the North of Ireland would disappear into the Atlantic Ocean," he said on BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme.

The UUC should accept this package. "Ulster is on the edge of dissolution if this does not happen," Sir Fred told presenter David Dunseith. This triggered the inevitable call telling this "ignorant Englishman" to "mind his own business".

David Dunseith was happy to inform the complainant that Sir Fred, a former Tory MEP, was an "Ulster man" whose family was settled in the North for generations and had large business interests here.

Three provincial paper editors, Paul Flowers of the Spectator in Bangor, David Armstrong of the Portadown Times and Denzil McDaniel of the Impartial Reporter in Enniskillen, went on Talkback to speak of the prevailing UUP opinion in their areas.

Local papers, naturally, tend to reflect local opinion, and it was interesting that only one of the editors, Denzil McDaniel, was prepared fully to endorse David Trimble and the deal.

"Go for it," was the Impartial's view. Paul said the Spectator would be taking a "down-the-middle" course. Buy the Portadown Times tomorrow to find out, effectively was the line from David, obviously a man with marketing as well as editorial skills.