The final words of Trimble’s response to Andrew Hunter were significant. ‘I am also going cool on [Senator George] Mitchell since an unsatisfactory response yesterday from Anthony Lake [Clinton’s then National Security Adviser] to my request for assurances that Mitchell was still committed to his report.’ Nationalist Ireland was keen on a key role for Mitchell in the talks, in particular as chairman of Strands II and III, regarding this as a symbol of the further internationalisation of the conflict (and thus the dilution of British sovereignty). Trimble was concerned for several reasons. He liked Mitchell personally and could endorse his report – which he believed presented the Provisionals with some difficulties – but he feared that in a presidential election year the former US Senate Majority leader would be susceptible to pressures from Irish-Americans, who would force him to resile from his own report.3 He wrote to Major on 20 May 1996 to state that he had spoken to Lake who ‘told me that Senator Mitchell was acting in a private capacity, independently of the US administration and Mr Lake said he would be annoyed if the Senator was approached by anyone involved in the US elections. On decommissioning, Mr Lake said he had not spoken recently to the Senator but that he had no reason to believe that the Senator had changed his mind.
‘In view of the somewhat ephemeral and indirect nature of the assurance on the second issue, I would not be able to agree to any involvement by Senator Mitchell as matters stand [author’s emphasis]. Last Monday, however, you mentioned the possibility of arranging a private discussion for me with the Senator. If you are minded to pursue the possibility of the Senator’s involvement in the process, I would now need to have such a discussion before I could agree to such involvement.’ In this letter, Trimble attached his note to UUP candidates in the forthcoming Forum elections. In this message, however, he appeared more inclined to exclude Mitchell: ‘I have made it clear to Major that we want a non-political chair for those stages of the talks [chairing Strands II and III] i.e. not Mitchell. Mitchell did a fairly good job in the Report on decommissioning. It is possible that he could help to persuade the paramilitaries to accept his report and commence actual decommissioning alongside talks. We have not agreed any such role, but we have not closed the door either.’
At Trimble’s next formal meeting with the Prime Minister on 3 June 1996, Major said that he wanted Mitchell to be the overall chairman of the talks process. Trimble says he was surprised by this step, and that he told the Prime Minister that the choice of Mitchell would be unpopular with the Unionists. Major, though, was quite determined to do so. The Government believed that the appointment was important for relations with the United States and in any case there was no one else available.4 John Hunter, who accompanied Trimble to this meeting, states that when Major told Trimble that Mitchell would be the chairman, the UUP leader swallowed hard – but made no real attempt at that meeting to fight the appointment.5 Andrew Hunter recorded in his diary entry of 4 June that when he met Major in the division lobby, the Prime Minister denied that he would concede on Mitchell. This was because: ‘a. He could not deliver because Unionists would not live with it; the negotiations would break down; there would be too many empty chairs. b. Even if he could deliver he would not. c. To entice further comment I nebulously agreed. d. PM said “we simply aren’t in this business to let the Irish have it all their own way. They may do little other than cause immense trouble and be exceedingly tedious but we are on the Unionists’ side.”’ But Major’s notion of being ‘on the Unionists’ side’ depended on a reading of where the Unionists were. Increasingly, it would not be alongside Andrew Hunter and other like-minded friends of Ulster in Great Britain.6
The next day, most of the headlines were devoted to the question of when decommissioning would be addressed. Trimble agreed that the opening stages of talks could begin while a deal on arms was worked out over the summer break, though the UUP would not let the negotiations proceed to a substantive phase until they saw actual ‘product’. ‘The Prime Minister said he will not agree to this issue being sidelined,’ stated Trimble.7 But that, of course, was precisely what was happening – and Trimble acquiesced. Partly, it was because he feared that if he joined the DUP and UKUP in opposing Mitchell in principle, and brought about a stalemate, he would create enemies in America where he was trying to ‘win friends and influence people’.8 But he may also have calculated that the Provisionals would not call another ceasefire – in which case the issue of when decommissioning was addressed was entirely academic, since their political wing could not gain admission to the talks without first ending the violence. Indeed, the events of those June days in 1996 would have appeared to support such an analysis. On 5 June, the IRA issued a statement that it would never decommission short of a final settlement; and on the 7 June, an IRA unit killed a Garda officer, Jerry McCabe, during a mail van robbery at Adare, Co. Limerick. Bruton was enraged by Sinn Fein’s refusal to condemn the act, for which the IRA admitted responsibility a week later, and there was a wave of revulsion in the Republic.9
But the killing did not take the pressure off Trimble by illustrating the irreformable nature of the republican movement. Indeed, if anything, the pressure was increasing upon him daily. On 6 June, the British and Irish Governments produced a joint paper which gave Mitchell the role of chairing the plenary sessions as well as the subcommittee on decommissioning; whilst Mitchell’s colleagues General John de Chastelain and the former Finnish premier Harri Holkeri would be independent chairman and alternate respectively of the Strand II segment of the talks.10 The Unionist community was deeply uneasy. Paisley and McCartney were irrevocably opposed; Trimble appeared to be opposed to this paper as well, though with reservations.
What happened next remains, again, a matter of controversy. Trimble knew that when the Unionist community was under pressure, there was a widespread desire for a common approach. Accordingly, he decided to meet with Paisley and McCartney at Castle Buildings on 8 June to hammer out an agreed line. All were as one, says Trimble, on not wanting the Frameworks Documents, nor the Ground Rules paper. According to Trimble, McCartney noted that he had reserved his position on the appointment of Mitchell, but was keen to know what was the UUP leader’s real position. Trimble states that he replied ‘we’ll have to see when we get there – but it could be difficult for you’. Trimble says he thought he had clearly signalled that he was not opposed to Mitchell per se, but rather to his powers as envisaged by the two Governments.11 Paisley and McCartney, however, were convinced that they had agreement with the UUP to fight the appointment of Mitchell; McCartney says that the agreement was based upon a document which he faxed to Trimble on the day before. He adds that he was never, at any stage, made aware of reservations by Trimble.12 Trimble felt that the DUP and UKUP might work with him to dispose of the Frameworks Documents, but that any such achievement would always be secondary to gaining party advantage over the UUP: he feared that if he rejected Mitchell, he would vindicate their contention that the process was rotten all along, and they would then be able to hijack Unionism for their form of protest politics.13 His preferred solution was for the Northern Ireland parties themselves to write the rules of procedure (including the chairman’s role) rather than have the two Governments impose them. Thus, he could claim a victory, even if the Ulster-British had suffered a symbolic defeat through the internationalisation of the conflict in the person of Mitchell.
McCartney noticed that Trimble, who had held his ground on Monday 10 June, was ‘weakening’ in his opposition to Mitchell by Tuesday 11 June: he sensed that some dealings were occurring between the UUP and UDP/UDA and the PUP/UVF.