Trimble’s first serious outing on the hustings was, however, disastrous: during the abortive Loyalist strike of February 1973 which Vanguard had supported, a fireman had been killed by Protestant hoodlums. Trimble received a bitter reception in many quarters – ‘it was guilt by association’ he recalls – and came bottom out of eighteen candidates.38 Vanguard took 10.5% of first preference votes for seven seats. Faulkner’s group, with 24 seats, was nominally the largest. In conjunction with other pro-White Paper elements (including the SDLP, Alliance and Northern Ireland Labour parties) the group held 52 seats to 26 for the broad loyalist coalition. The reality, though, was more complex. Some of those who were officially within the Faulknerite camp in fact opposed his policy. The real picture was, therefore, 21 for Faulkner to 27 against him: enough to push policies through with the help of the SDLP and others, but crucially depriving him of a majority and therefore legitimacy within the Unionist community.39
Despite Trimble’s terrible showing, the campaign was not a waste of time. While on the hustings, he met Craig for the first time. Trimble felt an immediate sense of personal as well as ideological kinship: he always was able to anticipate what Craig was thinking. ‘Craig had a penchant for surrounding himself with bright young men,’ says Trimble. ‘David Burnside, Reg Empey and myself have lasted the course. There was a sense with Craig of open-mindedness not associated with the “good old boy” network of Glengall Street. Unlike the others, if he discovered talent he would use it.’40 Many of these Young Unionists had been locked out of Glengall Street – in Empey’s case literally – after the split with Faulkner. Craig also cultivated another young hardline politician, John Taylor, who in the previous year had survived an assassination attempt by the Official IRA; but Taylor never made the leap. Trimble first met Taylor in Bangor in 1973 and liked him instinctively. ‘He was a person who was entitled to respect. After coming within an inch of losing his life, he was still involved and not in any way intimidated.’41
Some felt that Trimble could be a little bit of a ‘boffin’ – but they also deferred to him on that basis. Isobel McCulloch, who was Craig’s secretary, remembers that when Trimble referred to some legal concept by its Latin name, one of the less well-read figures in Vanguard piped up: ‘Say that again, David – this time in English!’42 The whole room, including Trimble, broke up laughing. But for the most part, observes Craig, ‘he fitted in very comfortably. He became accustomed to talking with people. Events brought him out of his shell.’ Craig found Trimble an ideal sounding board for fleshing out his existing ideas: this is significant since many suppose that Craig only extolled the Aland Islands – a semi-autonomous part of Sweden – as a potential model for Ulster because of Trimble’s research. In fact, it was Craig who introduced Trimble to many of these concepts, as Trimble readily acknowledges.43 Trimble was also introduced to the darker side of Loyalism in this period – including Andy Tyrie, the then Supreme Commander of the UDA. Tyrie found that Trimble was quite unlike any of the traditional Unionists of the ‘fur coat brigade’. Not only was he ‘great in committees, great working with people, but he had a quality I would have loved to have had – he was a good listener. Above all, he stayed with the people. Harry West [the Ulster Unionist leader] had no use for us once the crisis that had brought us together was over. David, though, always was available – even when he did not approve of what we were doing. He would say “look, this type of violence is totally counter-productive from your point of view”.’ Tyrie noted with appreciation that unlike most middle-class people, Trimble was prepared to fight, though he claims that he never asked him to join up. ‘I would certainly have been very glad of him,’ Tyrie adds.44 Some time later, Tyrie invited Trimble to attend meetings of the UDA’s Inner Council – an offer which Trimble declined, though he said he would be happy enough to draft papers. He refused because he believed that his talents lay in the realm of politics. When asked if he would have joined up to give the UDA political direction, Trimble replies, ‘wasn’t that what Vanguard was [already] doing?’45 Whatever Vanguard’s relationship to the UDA, there is no doubt that Tyrie trusted Trimble utterly at a political level. But did their closeness to each other make Trimble vulnerable to British state pressure years down the road? Trimble is unequivocal on the subject. ‘There never was an effort by anybody – whether British or anyone else – to make capital out of my associations of the early 1970s. Which is surprising.’46
IN THE autumn of 1973, Trimble became the chairman of the constituency council of North Down Vanguard and was elected Publications Officer at the entire party’s annual general meeting.1 Many in Vanguard – including Trimble – were celebrating the success of the brand-new party in the Assembly elections, but Craig counselled caution. Hardline Unionists had, in fact, suffered a political defeat. Much as Unionists disliked his compromises, Faulkner was still in business. Now that the Assembly was up and running, the stage would be set for the establishment of the second pillar of the new political order as envisaged by the 1973 White Paper for Northern Ireland – a power-sharing executive (the third being the ‘Irish dimension’). The creation of this executive was announced on 22 November 1973, although the wrangling over its composition and size was reminiscent of the disagreements which bedevilled the same exercise some 25 years later. Eventually, it was agreed that Unionists would hold six of the eleven seats, with four for the largely nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party and one for the Alliance. Faulkner became Chief Executive and Gerry Fitt, the leader of the SDLP, became Deputy Chief Executive. Although there was a bi-partisan welcome for this development in Great Britain, loyalists were enraged and vowed to destroy it.
The third and final pillar of the new institutions of government was to be the Council of Ireland. This was a reincarnation of the Council of Ireland provided for in the 1920 Act: it was originally intended that powers gradually be transferred to this body as a prelude to re-unification, albeit under the Crown. It fell into abeyance not because of Unionist intransigence, but because Dublin never nominated any representatives to it (a refusal which suited the Unionists well enough). There was, however, one key difference between the 1920 and 1973–4 settlements: the 1920 Government of Ireland Act notionally envisaged growing harmonisation, through the agency of the Council, between two devolved areas of the United Kingdom. As things turned out, only Northern Ireland accepted the 1920 settlement, whilst the southern part of the island gradually went its own way.2 As Unionists saw it, such a formulation was more disadvantageous in the very different circumstances of the 1970s. For the 1973 Council of Ireland would have combined representatives of a devolved region of the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) with the representatives of a fully fledged sovereign entity that had severed residual links (namely the Republic of Ireland). Only once this Council had been established would full-scale direct rule be scrapped. However, the security powers would remain a matter for Westminster for the time being.
The British Government hoped that the emerging package would be sufficiently attractive to mollify most Unionists. Under its provisions, the Unionists secured the return of a devolved local parliament,