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

attack on their relief over the outcome. Meanwhile, Ross’s campaign never really took off. One of his main supporters, David Brewster – a solicitor from Limavady, Co. Londonderry and the constituency party secretary – had his practice to run. He found that many who would have backed his local MP were now opting for Trimble.¹² Martin Smyth’s campaign was dogged by a lack of organisation, which made few in-roads beyond his South Belfast constituency association and some Belfast Orangemen. Smyth concedes that many of his brethren in the Loyal Orders felt that he had stood aside from the events at Drumcree, though in fact he was attending to his duties at Westminster. Maginnis made a game effort, but his perceived liberalism counted against him in the circumstances.

      Lucy meanwhile was busy putting the finishing touches to the Trimble campaign. He drafted Trimble’s News Letter article which appeared on the day of the poll, Friday 8 September 1995. Significantly, Trimble approvingly quoted the definition of the consent principle offered by the leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair, ‘as meaning that the people of Northern Ireland could choose between an all-Irish state and the Union’ rather than any of the Conservative Government’s glosses. Moreover, he counselled that ‘a purely negative, unimaginative unionism that simply turned a “hard face” on the outside world is vulnerable to an appeal over its head to the wider society’. But despite such efforts, Trimble remembers that when he arrived at the Ulster Hall on the night of 8 September, he was in a very nervous state – whereas Daphne was quite calm (with customary candour, she says that she merely concealed her own worries).¹³ The packed Ulster Hall had been the scene of many of the great events in Unionist history: there, in 1886, Lord Randolph Churchill launched his campaign to save Ulster from Home Rule.¹⁴ But Trimble’s nerves were misplaced. The candidates spoke in alphabetical order, with Ken Maginnis first: the ex-UDR Major did his ‘soldier and statesman’ routine. Smyth’s address was full of Biblical allusions but the rest of it was every bit as disorganised as his campaign. Ross’s was the best delivered of the five, but in Lucy’s words was ‘a brilliant speech for leadership circa 1930’. Taylor, though, was the greatest disappointment to his supporters. His address was delivered off-the-cuff, and in the words of Denis Rogan, the then party vice chairman, was ‘the most arrogant speech of his life – and that’s saying something’;¹⁵ Steven King claims that he in fact had ‘a fit of nerves’ on the night.¹⁶ Taylor retrospectively concedes that he was not that keen to assume the leadership.¹⁷ Trimble, who was the last speaker, read his speech like a lecture, but Lucy remembers that the audience nonetheless listened.¹⁸ As Trimble recalls, ‘mine was the only political speech whereas the others were saying what great chaps they were. But I also said I would go anywhere and speak to anyone. I was signalling that I would go to Dublin and talk to Sinn Fein, though that was not stated. It was in nobody’s mind at the time, except John Dobson, who was smiling.’¹⁹

      After the first round of balloting, Trimble’s appointed scrutineer, Mark Neale of Portadown, told him of the result:

      Smyth – 60 (7%)

      Ross – 116 (14%)

      Maginnis – 117 (15%)

      Taylor – 226 (28%)

      Trimble – 287 (36%)

      ‘Oh, that’s not what If … ng wanted to happen,’ declared Trimble. ‘Well, what do I do now?’ asked the Upper Bann MP. ‘Tell your wife and start writing an acceptance speech,’ replied Neale. Trimble duly proceeded to do so – but not before he had pulled his new ‘Seige [sic] of Drumcree’ medal out of his pocket. As Neale recalls, even at this moment of maximum drama, Trimble did this less out of loyalist pride than out of a desire to point out the spelling error.²⁰ When this result was read out in the hall, Jim Wilson, the party chief executive, immediately saw the mounting astonishment on the faces of the MPs. ‘This was the UUC saying “let’s jump a generation”.’²¹ In the heat of battle, Trimble also thought back to the Upper Bann selection of 1990, when the first-round winner, Samuel Gardiner, had been overhauled by himself in the final ballot after hitting a ceiling. He feared that Taylor could still do the same to himself. But Trimble’s support was wide as well as deep, and in any case there was no way in which Ken Maginnis would ever throw his support to Taylor as George Savage had done for Trimble in 1990. After Smyth dropped out, the chairman, Jim Nicholson, read out the results of the second round:

      Ross – 91 (11%)

      Maginnis – 110 (13.5%)

      Taylor – 255 (31.5%)

      Trimble – 353 (44%)

      Trimble now knew for sure that he would become the 12th Unionist leader since the formation of the UUC in 1905, and felt utterly flat inside. There was thus an inevitability about the final result as far as the cognoscenti were concerned – as Trimble’s rivals sat with arms folded and legs crossed. Ross could not break out from his core of supporters from the farming community west of the Bann, dropped out. So, too, did Maginnis: he could see that not only did Trimble do well outside of the greater Belfast area generally, but that he had made substantial inroads amongst some of his own constituents in Fermanagh, notably in the Newtownbutler, Rosslea and Lisnaskea areas close to the border. After the third ballot, Nicholson announced the result of the run-off:

      Taylor – 333 (42%)

      Trimble – 466 (58%)

      Trimble remembers one big blur; whilst Daphne Trimble says that ‘on one level I went into shock. Nothing would ever be the same again. Part of David didn’t want it at all; a part of him wants a quiet life – to sit at home and listen to music and to go to the opera. But at least as far as the house was concerned, his election didn’t make much difference since he doesn’t do the normal things that husbands do like the gardening. When we married he at least made an effort and we definitely had shelves put up.’²²

      How had he done it? After all, here was a man who just a few years earlier could not even win a council by-election in ultra-safe Lisburn. Moreover, this bookish academic had now been elected as the leader of one of the least intellectual political forces in the United Kingdom; indeed, he was the first university graduate since the foundation of Northern Ireland to lead the UUP, for many of his patrician predecessors had served in the forces but never attended a university (Carson was a graduate, but effectively handed over the leadership to Craig upon the foundation of the state; and Faulkner matriculated at Queen’s in the autumn of 1939, but never graduated).²³ Nor did he seek to make himself congenial to his colleagues – indeed, in some ways the very opposite. ‘Drumcree’ was an obvious answer, and is certainly the explanation for his victory most favoured by senior colleagues. Likewise, Caroline Nimmons, who did much of the telephone canvassing of the delegates, says that Drumcree was referred to positively more often than any other issue.²⁴ Others, such as Jim Wilson, are not so sure: they think that it may have cost him as much as it gained him, and Trimble certainly said as much in his first interview with the Portadown Times after his victory.²⁵ Gordon Lucy, one of Trimble’s closest aides in the contest, attributes his victory to a wider range of causes, though he does not doubt Drumcree’s importance. He notes that Trimble had built up a profile well before that. Such sentiments were expressed to Ruth Dudley Edwards during her visit that summer to Aughnacloy, Co. Tyrone for ‘Black Saturday’ (the last Saturday in August, when the Royal Black Preceptory hold their most important procession). Clogher Valley Blackmen told her that Molyneaux’s successor should be higher profile and more combative.