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

and Peter Smith had gradually moved out of politics to concentrate fully on his legal career. As if to emphasise his new-found primacy Trimble set up the UUP legal affairs committee in the autumn of 1989. Its principal work was the party’s submission to Lord Colville, a law lord then conducting a review into Ulster’s anti-terrorist legislation. The document, entitled Emergency Laws Now, was written by Trimble himself and was partly based on the old Vanguard submission to the Gardiner Committee in 1974. Amongst its principal recommendations, it urged an end to ‘exclusion orders’ debarring certain Ulstermen from the British mainland – which, in Unionist eyes, treated Northern Ireland as a place apart. Trimble’s profile was further raised when he participated in a demonstration with DUP members against Charles Haughey’s visit to Belfast in 1990 as a guest of the Institute of Directors at the Europa Hotel. From the roof of neighbouring Glengall Street, they waved Union flags and shouted anti-republican slogans.⁴ Ironically Haughey was greeted by two local dignitaries, both of whom later flourished mightily under Trimble’s patronage: the head of the Institute, John Gorman, later became the senior Catholic politician in the UUP. Likewise, Reg Empey, then Lord Mayor of Belfast became one of Trimble’s closest colleagues. Both men were knighted under his leadership.⁵

      For all his hyper-activity, Trimble remained a figure of the second rank and all prospect of advancement at Queen’s now appeared denied him. Yet, suddenly, there was an opening. Harold McCusker, the UUP MP for Upper Bann, died of cancer on 14 February 1990 at the age of 50: Trimble, like many others in the UUP knew that McCusker had been ill for many years, but the cancer had appeared to be in remission. Some in the UUP, including his widow, Jennifer McCusker, even believed that his death was hastened by the shock of the AIA.⁶ Now that a vacancy had occurred, Trimble was interested. But it would not be an easy passage. After all, he did not live in the area and even if he did, he was not of the community after the fashion of McCusker – who was born and bred in Lurgan, lived in Portadown and would mix effortlessly with supporters of his beloved Glenavon FC on match days. A variety of local worthies were expected to stand, including four past mayors of Craigavon District Council and Jennifer McCusker (in so solid a Unionist seat, the victor of the selection contest would effectively be the winner of the by-election). Moreover, Trimble was scheduled to go on a long-planned Ulster Society trip to the United States which would coincide with the selection process: he feared giving that up to enter a race in which he stood no chance. Daphne Trimble, though, urged him to run: ‘He was 45 and looking at boredom for the rest of his life,’ she recalls. ‘He was fed up with Queen’s and I knew he would really love to be an MP and would always regret it if he did not do it.’⁷

      Almost a fortnight after McCusker’s death, whilst attending an Apprentice Boys of Derry Club research meeting at the Royal Hotel in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone, on 24 February, Trimble was approached by Robert Creane. Creane is a colourful figure of great energy who was the chairman of the Edenderry division of the Upper Bann Ulster Unionist Association (one of the Portadown branches). Creane remembers pulling Trimble aside and asking him three questions: had anyone asked him to run? Would he run? And, if he did, would he ever withdraw from the race? Trimble answered that no one had asked him to contest the nomination, that if asked to do so he would say yes, and that if he ran he would not withdraw. Creane was delighted, and on that basis began to organise support. Creane’s first act on behalf of his candidate was to call Victor Gordon, an ace reporter of 20 years’ standing on the Portadown Times, the leading newspaper in the constituency. Creane drove Gordon up to Trimble’s home in Lisburn, on Saturday 3 March.⁸ As Gordon recalls, ‘I did not know this man, but Creane did a real PR exercise, and spoke of Trimble’s love of Ulster.’ In the course of the interview, Trimble announced that he would run.⁹ Creane also arranged a secret meeting of twelve Upper Bann members at the Seagoe Hotel in Portadown: they concluded that Northern Ireland at this time needed something more than ‘parish pump politics’. Moreover, they felt that none of the local candidates in this manufactured seat would gain support in other parts of the seat: the three main towns of Portadown, Lurgan and Banbridge all felt a keen rivalry for one another and therefore to pick a native son could prove divisive in other parts of the parliamentary division. Trimble, the articulate lawyer from Lisburn, fitted the bill.¹⁰

      In conjunction with Gary Kennedy – a local schoolmaster who had become interested in politics after the massacre in 1976 of ten Protestant workmen near his home town of Bessbrook in south Armagh – Creane organised a series of ‘get to know you’ meetings to introduce Trimble to the members of the 20 branches in Upper Bann. Trimble also produced a highly professional Letter to the Unionists of Upper Bann. ‘I know we have an irrefutable case,’ he wrote, ‘but I also know that in Westminster and elsewhere there is still much work to be done to persuade others of the justice of our cause and to repudiate the slanders of our enemies.’ It made much of his work for the Ulster Society, based at Brownlow House in Lurgan, and referred to his activities on behalf of Vanguard during the UWC strike (there were still old Vanguardists in the seat, and one of William Craig’s legal practices had been in Lurgan). It also referred to his convictions for minor public order offences whilst chairman of the Lisburn branch of the Ulster Clubs.

      First, he had to overcome formidable local opposition. Jennifer McCusker had run the constituency office for her husband. But having nursed her husband through his final illness, she soon made it clear elective office was not for her. Samuel Gardiner then rapidly emerged as the favourite. His credentials were indisputable: a councillor from Lurgan, a three-time mayor of Craigavon District Council, the then chairman of the the Upper Bann Association, Assistant Sovereign Grand Master of the Royal Black Institution (also headquartered at Brownlow House), and High Sheriff of Co. Armagh. Also running was Arnold Hatch of Portadown, another former mayor of Craigavon DC; Jim McCammick of Portadown, another former three-time mayor and past president of the local chamber of commerce; George Savage, also a former mayor and prominent beef and dairy farmer from Donacloney, whose support base was in the rural areas which used to comprise the old Iveagh seat at Stormont; Councillor Samuel Walker of Gilford, Co. Down; and Jack Allen, a senior figure from the UUP establishment.¹¹ Although Allen was in fact from Londonderry, he had run at the behest of Mrs McCusker and of his old friend Ken Maginnis.¹² William Ward of Lisburn also ran.

      The selection meeting was held in front of 250 delegates at Brownlow House on 19 April 1990. The atmosphere, recalls Gary Kennedy, was very tense. The candidates went on in alphabetical order: several of them, including Trimble, wound up their pitch with the stock Protestant quotation from Martin Luther, ‘here I stand, I can do no other’.¹³ But Trimble’s speech was much more than the usual ‘you know what I’ve done, now choose me’ routine of some of the local eminences. He made much of the fact that the Upper Bann by-election would be the first seat contested by the newly formed Northern Ireland Conservatives. The race would thus receive national media attention and Unionists would need a capable media spokesman to articulate why they rejected the governing party. ‘We wanted somebody to elucidate our feelings in a reasoned way,’ remembers Gary Kennedy. ‘We couldn’t any longer afford guys thinking “I wish I had said that” halfway home in the plane. We needed someone who could think on their feet – and we didn’t have a Unionist MP who was a lawyer. We all believed that things were going to be all right because of the perception that Molyneaux was having cups of tea with members of the Royal family.’¹⁴ After the first round of voting, Gardiner had 91 votes; Trimble 68; Savage 37; Hatch, 18; Allen 13; McCammick 12; Ward 11; and Walker 5. Trimble then knew he was in with an excellent chance, because he felt that Gardiner had hit a ceiling and that whilst his Lurgan-based support was ‘deep’, it was not very ‘wide’. Ironically, for someone who excites such passions, Trimble was everyone’s second choice. In the second round, Gardiner