Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism. Dean Godson

beyond the fact that these interviews took place, there was no agreeement on what Abbott had actually said. The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, had conducted an investigation. According to his findings, Abbott had not said these things: the notes contained some basic errors which, he held, no high-flying NIO civil servant could ever make (such as the misnaming of a US Congressman interested in Ulster). Above all, Prior retorted, Powell had not – as it were – ‘declared an interest’ in the matter of Sloan. For it emerged that although Sloan was, indeed, a researcher at Keele, he had once done research for McCusker and had also met Molyneaux on a number of occasions. When Powell raised the matter, he did not mention this and it thus appeared (erroneously) that Sloan had been acting as an entirely independent observer. Whatever the truth of the matter, the apparent errors in the interview notes and the question of Powell’s omission allowed the Government off the hook.²⁶

      But there was a further twist to the tale. For according to David McKittrick’s ‘Westminster Notebook’ in the Irish Times of 3 July 1982, the document ‘has Abbott naming a prominent Official Unionist politician and saying, “he is also a personal friend, and has kept us well-informed about what is going on inside Jim Molyneaux’s party for a number of years”. The politician named says he has never, to the best of his recollection, met anyone by the name of Clive Abbott.’ That unidentified person was David Trimble. The notes were circulated widely in loyalist circles and their contents were advertised – accurately – to the author. Key passages have also subsequently been passed on to me by a prominent UUP figure. The implications of this allegation were very serious indeed and confirmed the worst suspicions of the UUP about anyone who spoke to the NIO. For, at best, he could have been seen by his fellow unionists to have been indiscreet in front of ‘the Brits’. Indeed, the most damaging claim, says Trimble, was to be described as a ‘good friend’ by a civil servant. Trimble states that since he had not met Abbott, the reference to him was obviously meant in a departmental sense, in the light of his conversations with Huckle, Leach and Blatherwick. He protested loudly to Blatherwick about the damage, but the UUP leader remembers that ‘the NIO had gone into deep defensive mode’ and would not issue a denial on his behalf.²⁷ Blatherwick also denies that Trimble was an informer of any kind and says that ‘as a person he’s honest to the point of brutality. A very proper person, very aware of his own position. That’s why he took Sloan-Abbott so badly.’²⁸ Trimble also spoke to Molyneaux, as his local MP, to ensure that these claims were curtailed, but he remembers Molyneaux simply equivocated; Molyneaux says that he did not know what Trimble was alluding to. Even today, over two decades on, serving and retired senior civil servants are edgy about the Sloan-Abbott correspondence, refusing either to talk about it, or claiming that they cannot remember the details (or after much delay taking refuge in the Prior statement to the House in 1982). Abbott himself left the NIO a few years later for a senior position at the Home Office. Later, he held high rank in English local government and became chief executive of Cotswold District Council. He declined to talk on the record and his off-the-record comments added nothing beyond the existing public record. Sloan is now a lecturer in strategic studies and the author of an excellent tome entitled The Geopolitics of Anglo-Irish Relations in the Twentieth Century. Molyneaux strongly urged the author not to pursue the matter. Trimble, by contrast, is far more open about Sloan-Abbott than some of the other protagonists.

      The accumulation of reversals contributed to Trimble’s decision not to run for the Assembly and to contemplate leaving politics altogether. ‘My first child was on the way and I was not getting anywhere personally,’ recalls Trimble. ‘Had it not been for Edgar [Graham] and the Anglo-Irish Agreement, my life would have gone in a totally different direction.’²⁹Although Graham was by now in the Assembly – he had been elected for Trimble’s old seat in South Belfast – the two men remained on friendly professional terms. Graham carried a personal protection weapon, but it was no macho indulgence on his part. The nationalist population – including many students at Queen’s – had been ‘radicalised’ during and after the Hunger Strikes. Academia and judiciary, in particular, were becoming more vulnerable: in March 1982, whilst the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Robert Lowry, was visiting Queen’s, the IRA fired four shots, wounding a professor; an RUC officer was shot in the head during an examination, though his life was saved; and Lord McDermott, Lowry’s predecessor, was injured in a bomb blast whilst visiting the then Ulster Polytechnic at Jordanstown some years earlier.³⁰ And although the IRA did not usually target politicians, they had broken with this unwritten half-understanding in December 1981, when the Rev. Robert Bradford, Westminster MP for the constituency was murdered along with a caretaker at a community centre in Finaghy. Brian Garrett, a leading Belfast solicitor met Trimble at the opera that night and told him the news: Trimble’s reaction was such that Garrett recalls that ‘I felt as though I had plunged a knife into him.’³¹

      By now, Edgar Graham had also come to the notice of the IRA. First, he was a relatively rare commodity – an intellectually talented Unionist politician. Second, in a debate at the Queen’s University student union, he had conducted a brilliant defence of the so-called ‘supergrass’ trials (to which he always referred as ‘turning Queen’s evidence’), drawing attention to their effectiveness in Italy in combating the Red Brigades. The ‘supergrass’ system was then threatening to play havoc inside the terrorist organisations on both sides. Undoing it became one of the principal short-term aims of republicans and Graham was a highly articulate and plausible obstacle. Graham’s colleague, Sylvia Hermon, who came to the debate to support him, never before witnessed such malignancy or hostility from some of the students. ‘I felt afraid for him that day and in that environment,’ she remembers. ‘But I then did not realise the significance of it.’³² There may have been other, more hidden threats as well. Trimble received a separate call after a gap of some years from Andy Tyrie to tell him that he had reason to believe a Queen’s colleague, Miriam Daly, was using her post to gather information on people at or associated with the University (that is, the activity which subsequently came to be described as ‘targeting’³³). Miriam Daly was subsequently murdered by the UFF on 26 June 1980 – and was then described on the INLA headstone as a ‘volunteer’.³⁴

      However, Graham had not only come to the attention of republicans. He had also angered the loyalist terrorists, opposing separation of prisoners in the Maze. Indeed, friends of Edgar Graham – including David Trimble – recall that at this point, he was more afraid of assassination by loyalists than by anyone else and he alluded to this threat in an Assembly debate.³⁵ Trimble told him that this threat was an attempt to intimidate rather than seriously to injure – on the grounds that no elected Unionist representative had been seriously attacked in the way, for example, that senior SDLP figures had been assaulted by republicans.³⁶ Possibly, this was because Graham knew that a leading loyalist had been warned by a prison officer that he (the prison officer) overheard a UVF prisoner suggesting that Graham might be a ‘legitimate target’ because of his policies (the implication being that if the IRA killed Graham, there would be no reciprocal strike against a nationalist). Certainly, Graham was regularly attacked in Combat – the ‘journal’ of the UVF – during this period and especially for his views on prisoner issues. ‘Does Assemblyman Graham really speak on behalf of the UUP and its elected representatives?’ it asked. ‘They will be judged by their silence!’³⁷

      A few months later, Sylvia Hermon walked into the Law Faculty building at 19 University Square to find two men she had never seen before looking at the examination timetable. She let them depart the building, but followed behind into Botanic Avenue. She ran into an RUC officer who intercepted the pair. When pressed, one of them said that he had been looking at