David Adams: Mr Jeffrey Donaldson has said that a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Party's 900-strong ruling council arranged for June 16th will "represent a defining moment" for his party. It could well prove to be a defining moment for us all if, as is quite possible, it sounds a final death knell to the Good Friday agreement.
The Ulster Unionist Council will convene at the request of anti-agreement unionists to formulate a response to the recent joint declaration from the two governments, which laid out plans for addressing a number of areas of contention. These include decommissioning and demilitarisation, policing and justice, the equality agenda, on-the-run paramilitaries and sanctions for parties that contravene the Good Friday agreement.
Fraught affairs at the best of times, and the ante has been raised considerably for the June 16th meeting by Mr Donaldson threatening to resign if his party colleagues do not back his position of unequivocal rejection of the joint declaration.
If the UUC fails to endorse his stance and he carries through with his threat, Donaldson will undoubtedly take a substantial number of people with him. In those circumstances the Ulster Unionist Party will split down the middle, further destabilising an already deeply divided, disillusioned and insecure unionist community.
If, on the other hand, the anti-agreement faction is successful it is difficult to imagine how Mr Trimble can continue as party leader, given that he and his pro-agreement allies are set on deferring any official response to the declaration until after the republican movement further clarifies its position.
By threatening to quit if he doesn't get his way and, as he himself puts it, "not willing to accept any fudge", Mr Donaldson is, in everything but name, challenging for Mr Trimble's position as party leader. It seems that the comparatively minor skirmishing of the past few years between pro- and anti-agreement unionists is about to reach its zenith and, whatever the outcome, it hardly bodes well for the future of the Good Friday agreement.
Genuine unionist concerns regarding the possible disbandment of the three home-based battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment have recently been cited as reason for rejecting the joint declaration. This ignores the fact that Mr Donaldson and his allies had already made crystal clear their position on the declaration long before this issue saw the light of day.
And, even if that were not the case, it now seems highly likely that the British government will move to defuse that situation over the course of the next few days by delivering the required assurances on the future of the RIR.
It is difficult, therefore, to avoid the conclusion that the anti-agreement faction has deliberately engineered this showdown, regardless of the collateral damage it will cause to both party and electorate, because they now believe themselves to be in a strong enough position to depose Mr Trimble. The calling of a June 16th council meeting makes absolutely no tactical sense otherwise.
Anti-agreement unionists are bound to realise that by forcing a decision on the declaration at this juncture - one that doesn't yet have to be taken - they run the risk of dissipating all of the pressure that has recently been brought to bear on the republican movement. Rejecting the declaration would simply make the republican position academic. Mr Michael McGimpsey has aptly described this as akin to "unionism shooting itself in both feet".
But that doesn't seem to matter to anti-agreement unionists as it would appear that they now consider republicans as merely the opposition - with Trimble and his pro-agreement allies viewed as the real enemy.
If they do succeed in ousting Trimble, a reversal of party policy regarding the agreement will naturally flow from their ascendancy. But would a new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party pursuing an anti-agreement agenda find it any easier to unite the party than David Trimble has? I doubt it; in those circumstances we would have little more than a reversal of the present position.
How different things seemed only a few weeks back when, with Assembly elections still on the horizon, a virtual chorus of voices waxing lyrical about the absolute necessity for unionist unity regaled us from right across the unionist spectrum.
The fact that unionism itself, in common with republicanism, is the unifying factor that binds together otherwise disparate political ideologies and beliefs is immaterial. Calls for a united front always go down well with the unionist electorate.
But now, with no longer any prospect of elections in the near future, there is no immediate need to continue playing to the gallery. For another while at least, the pretence can end and the unedifying public spectacle of the Ulster Unionist Party tearing itself apart will continue.
