DEAN GODSON
HIMSELF ALONE
DAVID TRIMBLE
AND THE ORDEAL OF UNIONISM
For my mother above all
but not forgetting Paul, Greta, John, Evelyn, Charlie and Gill
I am Ulster, my people an abrupt people
Who like the spiky consonants in speech
And think the soft ones cissy; who dig
The k and t in orchestra, detect sin
In sinfonia, get a kick out of
Tin cans, fricatives, fornication, staccato talk,
Anything that gives or takes attack,
Like Micks, Tagues, tinkers’ gets, Vatican.
An angular people, brusque and Protestant,
For whom the word is still the fighting word,
Who bristle into reticence at the sound
Of the round gift of the gab in Southern mouths.
Mine were not born with silver spoons in gob,
Nor would they thank you for the gift of tongues;
The dry riposte, the bitter repartee’s
The Northman’s bite and portion, his deep sup
Is silence; though, still within his shell,
He holds the old sea-roar and surge
Of rhetoric and Holy Writ.
W. R. Rodgers; from ‘Epilogue’ in Poems,
Michael Longley (Oldcastle,
Co. Meath, 1993), pp. 106–7
‘Whatever an Ulsterman may be, he is certainly never charming, and of that fact, no one is more fully aware than the Ulsterman himself.’
F. Frankfort Moore, The Truth about Ulster
(London, 1914), p. 102
‘I’ve changed, you know.’
David Trimble to his old friend, Professor Herb Wallace,
after signing the Belfast Agreement
‘What do you want for your people?’
‘To be left alone.’
Exchange between Sean Farren, a senior nationalist politician, and David Trimble at Duisburg, in the late 1980s
CONTENTS
5. The changing of the Vanguard
11. Now I am the Ruler of the UUP!
12. The Establishment takes stock
13. Something funny happened on the way to the Forum election
16. ‘Putting manners on the Brits’
18. The Siege of Drumcree (II)
20. The unlikeliest Blair babe
22. When Irish eyes are smiling