In the eyes of the civil servants, there were sound, time-honoured reasons of Whitehall practice about this: the Frameworks were, they insist, a quite different kind of document from the DSD. First, Frameworks was a negotiating document, not a definitive statement of principle. It was a starting point, and therefore to prenegotiate it with any one party, especially one which almost held a balance of power in the Commons, would expose the British to accusations of adopting an uneven approach. Such pious formalism contrasted with rumours emanating from Dublin. Most worrying from a Unionist perspective were the claims made by the former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds (whose Fianna Fail-led Government had fallen in November 1994 following a scandal and had been replaced by a coalition led by the more instinctively anti-republican Fine Gael leader, John Bruton) that all-Ireland bodies with executive powers had been agreed between the British and Irish Governments. This, of course, would have been a reprise of the Council of Ireland which had proven so offensive to Unionists during the abortive Sunningdale experiment of 1973–4 – or worse. Trimble was also receiving his own warnings from his old Vanguard colleague on the UUP liaison committee with the NIO, Reg Empey. These indicated, he believed, that NIO civil servants had ‘run amok’.27 Molyneaux tried to engage Major in a ‘control’ exercise, but by the time Major was prepared to show him a draft it was too late. Indeed, Molyneaux remembers that when Major invited him into the Cabinet room to look at the draft version, the Prime Minister said he would leave him sitting at the Cabinet table whilst he went upstairs – and the UUP leader should ring the bell when he was finished. Major pushed the explosive paper across to the septuagenarian Ulsterman; the Ulsterman promptly shoved it back in the direction from whence it came. Molyneaux pointed out that he could not influence its basic direction and that by looking at it on Privy Council terms he would thus become acquiescent in its provisions.28
Such concerns soon ceased to be the preserve of the Unionist political classes and became dramatically clear to the Unionist population and to the world at large. In January 1995, David Burnside was shown a draft copy of the Frameworks Documents. Before he placed it in the press, Burnside went to see Molyneaux. ‘I have seen them and it is terrible and disastrous.’ ‘What do I do?’ asked Molyneaux, taken aback. ‘Go and see Robert Cranborne,’ said Burnside, referring to the most ardent Unionist in the Cabinet. ‘I don’t want to compromise his position in the Cabinet.’ Burnside flared up: ‘For Christ’s sake, this is the Unionist cause we’re talking about here.’ Burnside also told Trimble of its contents, though the latter never saw the document and thus was unable to evaluate any later changes that were made when the final paper was actually published.29 The extracts were then shown to a Times leader writer, Matthew d’Ancona, a prominent Trimble fan in the London print media. It turned out to be one of the greatest journalistic coups of recent years. No. 10 and the NIO were enraged: the ‘spin’ was that d’Ancona had endangered the ‘peace process’, although ultimately it had the opposite effect. The Times front page pronounced that the Frameworks brought ‘the prospect of a united Ireland closer than it had been at any time since partition in 1920…today’s disclosures will alarm many Unionists who were promised by Mr Major last week that the draft would contain “no proposals” for joint authority’.30 It posited extensive all-Ireland bodies with executive powers. Although it was pointed out that some of the proposals in this draft had already been excised in the intergovernmental negotiations, the damage was nonetheless done. Major’s pep talk to the Conservative backbenches and to the nation rallied the party and mainland opinion; but in Unionist circles, Trimble recalls, Molyneaux was once again seen to have been overly trusting of a British Prime Minister.31 No. 10 felt that the leaks were less about the substance of the proposals than about the internal power struggle within the UUP. Realising that his flank had been exposed and that he had been unable to pull off the same success as over the Downing Street Declaration, Molyneaux asked Major to see three members of his own party in the Prime Minister’s room in the Commons behind the Speaker’s chair. The three included Trimble – potentially his most dangerous internal party critic – and two close allies, William Ross and Rev. Martin Smyth. Trimble took the lead, employing his lawyerly skills to assault the leaked paper. Nothing that Major said in any way reassured the Ulstermen.32 Trimble had already appeared to distance himself from the Tories: the Government noted that along with John Taylor, he abstained in the tight Commons vote on fisheries policy on 18 January 1995. With the exception of Ken Maginnis, the other UUP MPs voted for the then Government.33
Major had to persist, even though he knew that the Frameworks Documents were still-born: to have abandoned them, he felt, would definitively have proven to nationalist Ireland that the British Government was in hock to the Unionists. Instead, he opted to shave down the most controversial parts – much to the irritation of the Irish – in the hope that elements of the Frameworks would prove to be a basis for negotiation at a later date. When the Documents were published in Belfast on 22 February 1995, Unionists were not mollified. Mitchel McLaughlin of Sinn Fein seemed happy enough, telling a conference at the University of North London that ‘John Major, by the very act of publishing the Frameworks Documents in the teeth of opposition from right-wing Conservatives and the Unionist leaderships has demonstrated that his government is not totally hostage to the mathematics of Westminster’.34 The Strand I proposals posited a 90-member assembly, elected by PR, serving four- or five-year terms, with all-party committees overseeing the work of the Northern Ireland departments; their activity would be scrutinised by a three-man elected panel (Hume had envisaged a six-man panel, with EU and British and Irish Government representatives: this was his way of circumventing Northern Ireland’s in-built Unionist majority, but it was negotiated away by the British, not least because they feared that it would inflame neuralgic Eurosceptic sensibilities on the backbenches and in the Cabinet: ministers were mindful of the problems that might arise if the causes of Euroscepticism and Unionism became bound up with each other). Strand II, on the North-South dimension, reiterated many of the principles of the December 1993 Joint Declaration and stated that such bodies were to exercise ‘on a democratically accountable basis delegated executive, harmonising and consultative functions’. The designated topics for harmonisation would include agriculture and fisheries; industrial development; consumer affairs; transport, energy, trade, health, social welfare, education and economic policy. The remit of the body should be dynamic, enabling progressive extension by agreement of its functions to new areas. Its role should be developed to keep pace with the growth of harmonisation and with greater integration between the two economies. Furthermore, the Irish Government pledged to make changes to its Constitution which would fully reflect the principle of consent and which would show that no territorial claim of right contrary to the will of Northern Ireland’s majority be asserted.35