David Trimble understood that unionism had to change

The historian of Ulster unionism Alvin Jackson described the political legacy David Trimble inherited in 1995 when he took over the leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) as “unenviable – a party racked by division, by distrust of its perceived allies and demoralisation. Memories of the party’s travail in the early 1970s remained all too alive and resonant in the later 1990s.”

It is a reminder that the career of Trimble needs to be seen in the wider context of a decades-long battle to control the trajectory of Ulster unionism. Trimble was conscious of the ghost of UUP leader Brian Faulkner, who in the 1970s also moved from perceived hardliner to pragmatist in relation to devolved government, power-sharing and a cross-Border dimension and faced internal dissension and the hatred of Ian Paisley.

Trimble’s predecessor Jim Molyneaux, in situ from 1979 to 1995, was suspicious of both Dublin and London, loath to engage with any risks and practised what he called the “dull-dog” political style to avoid further turmoil and keep the Paisley wolf from the UUP’s door. The problem with that strategy was that, as with the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, both the British and Irish governments could go over the heads of the UUP, and the party underestimated the gap between Thatcher’s public professions of unionism and her private disdain and English nationalism.

As an integrationist, or “one nation” unionist, wanting Northern Ireland governed in the same way as Wales and Scotland, Molyneaux struggled to accept the idea that Northern Ireland needed to be treated differently. While he led a delegation over the border in 1992, recognising that some limited co-operation with Dublin might ultimately strengthen the unionist hand, and he accepted, through gritted teeth, the Downing Street Declaration, any advance on that was a step too far.

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The significance of Trimble was that he made that next step and sought a more cerebral interpretative framework for unionism. The battle between the integrationists and the devolutionists continued but the 1990s and beyond also underlined the degree of social and cultural diversity among the squabbling unionist family, captured in Feargal Cochrane’s memorable quip that “far from singing from the same hymn sheet, many do not actually believe in the same God”.

As to Trimble’s private beliefs, it is striking that, as recorded by one of his biographers, Frank Millar, “when we got into questions of his own personal faith and beliefs, it was very emotional. His eyes watered, his voice choked... it so obviously had to be dragged from him”. It is worth considering that image alongside his pathetic victory jig with Paisley on the Garavaghy Road in 1995. For all the triumphalism, Trimble was aware that the traditional reliance of the UUP on militant loyalist protest and intertwinement with the Orange Order was problematic.

Trimble chose to face was what Jackson termed “the poverty of the erratic minimalism” of the UUP as British policy evolved and nationalists grew in confidence. The UUP was being sidelined and, as Trimble acknowledged, “did not have their finger on the pulse of the British government”. The key question for Trimble was how to move out of the corner the UUP had backed itself into in trying to stress a supposed unionist purity that was damaging its very cause.

Held his nerve

Prisoner releases, decommissioning and a decentralised party structure and control were challenges for Trimble, but he was also adamant that he had to lead, and he did that and held his nerve. He was also at times condescending, arrogant and hubristic, partly because of his own prejudices and partly because of the risks he had to take, internal rows and being subjected to abuse by Paisley, who targeted him with the assertion: “The worst and most loathsome person in society is the Traitor”.

As another biographer, Dean Godson, points out, Trimble was quite upfront about being more comfortable with concepts than people, but it was the concepts (and new structures to bolster peace) that he had to focus on to bring change and he was also sometimes more understanding of republican difficulties than might be assumed.

In April 1998, after the signing of the Belfast Agreement Trimble boasted: “I have arisen from this table with the union stronger than when I sat down.” History, however, will record the ever-increasing strain on the union in recent years, and Trimble’s preferred identity of Ulster-British hardly seems robust either. But he at least demonstrated that unionism had to evolve and such evolution, for all the subsequent and current standoffs, ultimately had to be accepted by the DUP also.

His enemies within the unionist family did not derail the journey that Trimbelite unionism represented and that enabled the DUP to reposition itself, prompted the late-career reinvention of Paisley and the adaptation of unionism to new realities. More of them became, in the phrase Trimble used in his Nobel Prize speech, “politicians of the possible”.