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

and those who wished to go down a more political route. It would enable them to show to the apolitical militarists that the electoral route could yield greater gains than the armed struggle of the old variety. In consequence, the British came up with a hybrid of the constituency and list systems: electors voted for parties rather than people in the new, expanded number of eighteen constituencies, each of which returned five representatives. Two extra seats would be allocated to each of the ten most successful parties in the Province as a whole, thus guaranteeing representation to the small loyalist parties with minuscule levels of public support. The outcome of these deliberations was, in the view of one senior official, ‘the least democratic election of all time. It shows that Governments can tweak voting systems and how careful you have to be with reforming the mainland system.’ In the background all of the time were the Americans: Anthony Lake recalls that he would have long discussions with Sir John Kerr in his office in the West Wing of the White House to determine what kind of electoral method would be used for the elective route (that is, Single Transferable Vote, etc).³⁶ It was a remarkable illustration of the degree of American interference in internal United Kingdom matters.

      Indeed, Brian Feeney, a former SDLP councillor in Belfast with a regular column in the Irish News, spotted the irony in the system which was set up for the elective route into negotiations. It was, he asserted, the most un-British, un-unionist formula ever devised. ‘Professor Umberto Eco, who knows about these things, says all structures in the west display a Protestant or a Catholic mentality. If Protestantism is all about individualism the list system is fundamentally the opposite of a political system where people vote for individuals rather than parties. This political Protestantism reaches its peak in the USA where Democrats and Republicans do their own thing on the floor of the Senate … but thanks to David Trimble, we’ve got a Catholic continental system where the individual is subsumed within the party discipline and dogma. Only Sinn Fein has adopted an innovative approach. They have fielded candidates from the Republic who will be elected. Also in a number of areas they have placed at the top of the list prominent figures who have been convicted of high profile IRA activities. No doubt these men unambiguously support the armed struggle. They will certainly be elected. So thanks to David Trimble and his political acumen, the pro-Union vote will be divided a dozen ways and more overtly republican candidates than ever before will be elected under a system as mysterious as a papal conclave. Take a bow, David.’³⁷ Feeney was being customarily bilious about the Unionist leader (whom he nicknamed the ‘Portadown Prancer’ after Drumcree I) and it was undoubtedly unfair of him to blame Trimble for the kind of system adopted. But Feeney’s observations were invested with one underlying truth. Like so many of Trimble’s victories, the elective route into negotiations blew up in his face. Thus, Trimble reproved Robert McCartney for splitting the Unionist vote in the 1996 Forum elections. McCartney replied that but for Trimble’s elective route into negotiations – which required that anyone who wanted to be at the talks table had to stand for the contest – he would never have set up the United Kingdom Unionist Party (prior to that, McCartney sat as an independent Westminster MP for North Down but had no Province-wide party organisation).³⁸

      Trimble duly sought to make the best he could of his unexpectedly bad hand in the run-up to the elections, which were to be held on 30 May 1996. As ever, he set a cracking pace. Elaine McClure of the Ulster Society recalls that Trimble was perhaps ‘the only Unionist leader with the guts to canvass the main street of Newry [an overwhelmingly nationalist town]. There was always an excuse for not doing the town, such as the top part of Hill Street. But he took his red, white and blue bus there, and it was a huge psychological boost to those remaining Unionists.’³⁹ But Trimble’s aim was also to reach out to those members of the Catholic community who were not so staunchly nationalistic. The encouragement which Trimble gave to the candidature of John Gorman typified this approach. Gorman was a third-generation Catholic Unionist: his maternal grandfather, Dr Patrick O’Brien, had been a close friend of the moderate southern Irish Unionist, the Earl of Midleton, at the start of the century. Gorman’s father, a native of Co. Tipperary, had served as a major in the Royal Horse Artillery Irish Guards in the First World War and was thereafter the last Adjutant of the the Royal Irish Constabulary. He moved north – as loyal Catholics and Protestants from the south did after Partition – and served as County Inspector of the new Royal Ulster Constabulary for Londonderry and Fermanagh. Later, he became deputy head of the RUC mission in Greece during the Civil War in the Hellenes in the mid to late 1940s. Gorman himself fought in the Second Battalion, the Irish Guards, in the Second World War, winning a Military Cross in Normandy; the Intelligence Officer of the Battalion was Captain Terence O’Neill, later the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1963–9. After the war, Gorman joined the RUC, becoming District Inspector for Ballymoney, Co. Antrim. Gorman and Trimble came to know each other when Gorman subsequently headed the Housing Executive, and Trimble was the foremost authority in the Province on housing law. Gorman, who would have become actively involved in Unionist politics much sooner than he did but for the Orange link, was precisely the kind of man whom Trimble admired. For he embodied the diversity of traditions and allegiances that had been obscured by 30 years of Troubles. Trimble further addressed this topic in his speech at the 1996 UUP conference in Ballymena, Co. Antrim, when he extolled the Catholic Unionist tradition as personified by Sir Denis Henry, who was present at the creation of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, represented South Londonderry at Westminster, and was subsequently appointed as the first Lord Chief Justice of the newly created Province of Northern Ireland.⁴⁰ Forge an enduring settlement, believed Trimble, and such allegiances could reassert themselves. Trimble later recommended that Gorman become the chairman of the elected Forum, and he received a knighthood in 1998.⁴¹

      Gorman was not the only Catholic whom Trimble sought to recruit to be a flag-bearer for the Unionist cause. He endorsed the appointment of Patricia Campbell, the daughter of an RUC constable, as organiser of the Unionist Information Office in London. This was set up in 1996 under the aegis of David Burnside, which held twice-yearly receptions and occasional briefings for journalists. Under Burnside’s tutelage, she edited a magazine, The Unionist, brimming with anodyne articles. These were accompanied by pictures of kittens and puppies frolicking with each other, bearing such italicised captions as Reconciliation is possible and a cover photograph of a cherubic sleeping new-born in swaddling clothes headlined Let’s keep The Peace For Their Tomorrow.⁴² It prompted some mirth in journalistic circles that so ruthless an operator as Burnside (affectionately known in the PR trade as ‘the kneecapper’) should produce such sentimental copy; a more serious point was that none of these treacly images did anything to increase any real understanding of the Unionist cause. Even when Unionists finally grasped the importance of PR, they could only rise to the challenge by coming up with images that erased their distinctive message almost completely. Nonetheless, Campbell’s appointment – like that of Gorman – incarnated a mood of change that seemed to abound in certain Unionist circles during this period. Indeed, keen as Trimble was for more women candidates, only seven were actually selected for the Forum elections (out of a total of 78) – of whom only one was successful.⁴³ Selecting standard bearers remained a local affair, where Trimble’s personal preferences counted for little. ‘New Unionism’ was for much of the time a glimmer in his eye, rather than a reality.

      Trimble was especially exercised during the campaign by the remarks of the Tanaiste’s special adviser, Fergus Finlay, on Channel 4’s Dispatches programme. Finlay stated that talks without Sinn Fein were ‘not worth a penny candle’.⁴⁴ Bruton was also furious, because he believed the remark took the heat off the Provisionals.⁴⁵ Why, he wondered, should the IRA call a new and this time more credible ceasefire if they knew that the process could not go on without them? The only way in which republicans would do so was if they feared that there was a possibility that