literary transcript

 

40

David Trimble

1944–2022

 

It takes a man of talent to lead people in a new direction, and over the recent years, some have hoped that David Trimble may be the man to resolve the Ulster situation.

      He was born on 15th October 1944, the son of William Trimble and his wife Ivy, and baptized William David.  He was educated at Bangor Grammar School, before taking a law degree at Queen's University in Belfast.  In 1978 he married Daphne Orr, the daughter of Gerald Orr of Warrenpoint, and they have two sons and two daughters.  Trimble currently lives in Lurgan Town.

      All of these places, Bangor, Warrenpoint, and Lurgan, are strongly Protestant, and Unionist, parts of Ulster.  This early background has defined David Trimble's emotional attachments to his own place and his own kin.

      From 1968 to 1990 he taught in the law faculty at Queen's, first as a lecturer, and then from 1977 as a Senior Lecturer.  He was called to the Northern Ireland Bar in 1969.  At this time he edited the Northern Ireland Law Reports, as well as publishing a work on Northern Ireland Housing Law (1986) - housing having a central and contentious role in the politics of Northern Ireland.  He was also co-author of Human Rights and Responsibilities in Britain and Ireland published in 1986.

      David Trimble began his political career as an extension of his profession.  For him the law was there to protect his community, and he was keen to insist on the letter of the law.  Good intentions were not enough - in life, as in law, good faith could only be shown by acts.  In pursuit of this he was a founder of the Vanguard Unionist group.

      Elected as member for South Belfast to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention of 1975-76, he was also chair of the Lagan Valley Unionist Association between 1985 and 1990.  He has been the member for the constituency of Upper Bann, the same strongly Protestant area of his youth, since 17th May 1990, after winning a by-election.  Trimble became the Ulster Unionist Party's spokesman on Constitutional Affairs in 1995.  As an outcome of the debate over the Framework documents, James Molyneaux, the leader of the Unionist Party, was forced to resign on 28th August 1995.  On 8th September 1995, in what some saw as a surprise outcome, Trimble, who had been prominent in demonstrations at Drumcree earlier that year, was elected leader instead.  In 1996 he was elected to the Northern Ireland forum, and was appointed to the Privy Council.

      As an outcome of the Good Friday Agreement, Trimble was elected First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998, though that body remained inactive until a further settlement was reached on the contentious issue of arms still remaining in the hands of terrorist groups on both sides of the community divide.

      In the autumn of 1998 he and JOHN HUME [57] shared the Nobel Prize for Peace, an award posited on the idealistic notion that the Good Friday Agreement meant peace at last in Northern Ireland.  However, though the guns were silent - for the most part - the 'troubles' were very far from over.

      As an indication of his political outlook, he was not only in favour of the introduction of the death penalty for killing a policeman, he has been resolutely anti-European in his attitudes.  Though he voted for keeping Sunday Special, he abstained on the proposition to reduce the age of sexual consent for minors to sixteen in February 1994 - a matter on which many persons of a conservative outlook were highly excited.

      This social conservatism married nicely with his strong Unionism.  But it is perhaps his legalistic mind that dominates his activities, a care of the meaning of words and the interpretation which they might bear.  Lawyers are nothing new in Irish politics, but academics as leaders are a recent phenomenon.  An Orangeman, he has from time to time made populist appearances at such contentious places as Drumcree in July 1996, a place around which much of the fears and anxieties of the Unionist community crystallised, but baiting and brawling do not seem to be his métier (as they are for Ian Paisley).  A local residents group, motivated by Sinn Féin workers, prevented Orangemen marching along a 'traditional route' through the Nationalist estate on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown.

      Once the Ulster Unionist party had been dominated by working-class Orangemen led by landed grandees and rich captains of industry.  Many of Trimble's followers, however, belong to that upper working class, lower middle class, shopkeeping class, that have always lived in fear of social and political change.  The broader middle class has, as a whole, abandoned politics to Ulster's loss but Trimble, as a former academic and a middle-class Protestant, may be able to provide the right leadership to carry the elements of the Unionist party into a new harmony with their fellow citizens.

      Whether his skills as a lawyer and speaker and his nimbleness as a politician can help him carry his party forward, past their demand to the IRA of 'No Guns.  No Government.' remains to be seen.  With wise counselling Trimble may be able to achieve the breakthrough that returned local rule to Ulster, but without the gerrymandering and Protestant domination that it involved in the past.  It will also remain to be seen if the member for Upper Bann and leader of the Northern Ireland Assembly can continue to be the actual Prime Minister of an evolving state.

      Late in 2000 David Trimble has struggled to balance the demands of his party against the needs of the Ulster people.  His legalistic mind is very different from that of previous Unionist leaders, yet his public attitude of toughness, appealing to a small section of his own community, may be what is needed to make progress towards the peace that the majority voted for.  His has been perhaps the hardest task in leadership, and his efforts should be appreciated for what they have achieved in moving on the outlook of the nineteenth century into the twenty-first century.  Against angry voices within and without his party, David Trimble maintained his course.  But as always the future could bring sudden and devastating reversals.