Rival camps adopt conflicting tactics in battle to win `narrow ground' of UUC waverers

Confidence on the No side, concern from Yes supporters - that was the report from the battlefront in Ulster Unionism last night…

Confidence on the No side, concern from Yes supporters - that was the report from the battlefront in Ulster Unionism last night. But one cannot necessarily take these messages at face value. It suits Trimble supporters to discourage complacency while the No people have had the battlefield all to themselves up to now.

The Trimble fightback has been going well but the question is whether it is too late. His initial hesitancy about the Hillsborough deal and his focus on squeezing the Downing Street lemon until the pips squeaked may yet cost him dear.

Dispatch from the No lines: "We are very encouraged. All the canvassing skills we gained on those US-based political leadership courses spawned by the peace process are serving us well. "The middle ground is narrowing all the time, and we estimate there are only 15 to 20 per cent undecided at this stage. It is all systems go for that small, narrow ground [ironically The Narrow Ground is one of the historian A.T.Q. Stewart's more celebrated books, about the age-old hatreds of Ulster]. "We have 400 delegates in the bag already out of a total 871. The `nice' people who support Trimble are the ones most likely to stay away on Saturday - the yah-boo politics at the last UUC meeting was not to their liking. We are busy going through our canvassing lists but we are concerned that a rabbit may be pulled out of the hat for Trimble before the weekend. The Yes people have more waverers than we do, although these are likely to back Trimble in the end."

At the Yes camp headquarters in Stormont (the RAF used Stormont as a base during the second World War, now the Trimble side has an operations room for the less tangible task of securing victory on Saturday) a Trimble activist reported that things were "quiet and under control".

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They were well-pleased with the showing by their brilliant if erratic leader on UTV's Insight on Monday night, where they reckoned Trimble and the plain-speaking Fermanagh unionist, Mr Bertie Kerr, beat Mr Jeffrey Donaldson and young rising star Mr Peter King on points. But they would say that, wouldn't they. The view more generally was that Trimble was at ease and took no major "hits".

The Yes people were preparing to send out some literature to UUC delegates who have been getting only one side of the argument through their letterboxes so far. A Trimble activist said no less than nine separate pieces urging him to vote No had arrived through the front door. Seven of the nine appeals were anonymous and there were many cuttings from the newspapers: "They are quoting Eoghan Harris but you couldn't ask for a more pro-agreement, pro-Trimble person than Eoghan Harris." The Yes people will be more sparing with their propaganda: "We won't be bombarding them."

Nationalists and republicans meanwhile are watching anxiously. The SDLP, strongly assertive last week, was comparatively muted. Sinn Fein had journalists' heads spinning with a bewildering mix of on-the-record and off-the-record comments. Yesterday Mr Gerry Adams put his head above the parapet with a strong hint to London not to push the republican movement too far. For his pains, he was dubbed a "spoilt child" by the PUP's David Ervine. Today, Mitchel McLaughlin will be in London telling it like it is to the Daily Express editorial board and the low-key Tory spokesman on Northern Ireland, Mr Andrew Mackay. The SDLP's Mr Alex Attwood will also meet Mr Mackay.

Mr John Taylor was reported to be in "the Far East somewhere". He had been in Taiwan but close associates in the party were unsure if he were now in Singapore or Japan. He was with the Rev Martin Smyth on a parliamentary delegation, and the point was made that they cancelled each other out. But this was only the case if Mr Taylor remained a "Yes".

Taylor said he would resign as deputy leader of the UUP at Westminster if he decided to oppose the Hillsborough package at the weekend. Taylor's remarks were played down by Sir Reg Empey at a hastily-arranged news conference in Stormont: "He is making his contribution in his fashion and in his style." Behind the scenes, however, normally sanguine Yes people were turning the air blue with their views on Taylor's seemingly interminable ambiguities.

Taunted by the Yes people that they had no alternative, the No camp was producing its own proposals for devolved government. There was an increasingly hardline tone from this quarter on the title for the police. "RUC" must be the working name, we will not be bought off with subtitles, was the cry of a prominent No campaigner. Whatever emerges must pass "the side of the Landrover test".

The No people feel the issue of the RUC name could be their killer-blow: "It goes absolutely to the heart of the Britishness of this place."