When he was elected leader of the Ulster Unionist Party a year ago, Mr David Trimble was projected overnight, and unexpectedly, into one of the most influential and sensitive jobs in Irish politics. He was not one of the better known figures outside the North, and the picture of him that most people had freshly in their memories was of his triumphal swagger a few weeks before with the Rev Ian Paisley in the aftermath of the confrontation between Orangemen and local people at Drumcree.
That dalliance with the leader of the DUP is a thing of the past political differences and electoral rivalry between the two parties have seen to that. But the image which probably had more than anything else to do with his election as leader is the one that dogs him most with people outside the UUP. That is perhaps inevitable since Mr Trimble is a complex man, as Frank Miller's interview with him published today illustrates very clearly. And behind the bluster and the dogmatism, the subjective logic and the blinkered good will, there lies a mind capable of grappling with the political problems demanding solution but still regrettably limited by a rigid belief in form and the traditional positions of Orangeism.
That, of course, is most clearly evident in his defence of the obdurate insistence of members of the order on marching through an area where they knew they would be opposed. This was the stuff of the 1840s and Dolly's Brae, one of a spate of incidents in the 19th century that were responsible for the order being banned. One of Mr Trimble's predecessors was jailed for defying that ban and built his political career on the wave of support that followed his release. More than a century later, even Mr Trimble must see the irony and the tragedy of history repeating itself endlessly to the advantage of no one.
What has changed is that in the interim the regular antics of Orangeism became ingrained in the ethos of the devolved government between 1920 and 1972, and what was no more than an occasion for coat trailing and institutionalised provocation was endowed with the attributes of state culture. Mr Trimble's standpoint in regard to Drumcree reflects this state of mind, unchanged since the prorogation of Stormont. He regrets what happened, but only because the agents of the state did not move in time to preserve the prerogatives of Orangeism. It is perhaps fair to say that tradition has cast him in a role which leaves him with very few options for effecting immediate change, even if he wanted to.
A more daring leader would accept that the underlying violence in the North that militates against political development finds an exact balance between the extremists in the Orange Order, with their links to the loyalist paramilitaries, and the gunmen of the IRA. Condemning one requires condemning the other; each feeds on the other, and both came away happy from the fields of Drumcree. Belittling the local fears aroused by the Orange demand to march is part of the stock in trade of unionist justification, yet any knowledge of history shows that nothing has been more destabilising of unionist interests than the hatreds kept alive by certain of the Orange lodges.
There is no alternative to political dialogue and compromise on forms of government that recognises the wishes of the majority and the need for its consent to any constitutional change. That process, to which Mr Trimble is equally committed, is the only course that offers an end to the cycle of violence.