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

50 per cent of Unionist community support on the basis of the Forum elections and thus would satisfy the rules of ‘sufficient consensus’ for proceeding with the talks if they chose to accept Mitchell. The pressure from the two Governments was ferocious. Partly, it reflected the investment of time and prestige by both Major and Bruton, who had come to launch the talks. Any failure would reflect badly on them, with attendant effects on the UUP’s relationship with the two Governments. The talks had already started badly enough. Sinn Fein leaders, who claimed entry into the talks on the basis of their mandate in the Forum election, were denied admission because the IRA still had not declared a ceasefire. But they arranged for a piece of street theatre: to the intense annoyance of Mayhew, senior republicans turned up at the gates of Castle Buildings so their exclusion would be on view for the whole of mankind, and especially the Irish portion of it.¹⁵ Moreover, George Mitchell and his two colleagues had been waiting for nearly two days whilst the parties wrangled over his appointment and the procedures. As far as the Governments were concerned, the friend of the US President was being ‘humiliated’. Mayhew and Spring repeatedly apologised to Mitchell for the delay in seating him: they feared he might pick up his bags and go home (though Mitchell reassured them that he would sit it out till some kind of conclusion).¹⁶

      But the pressure on Trimble was redoubled because key Irish and British players reckoned that such techniques might work. Nora Owen, the Republic’s Justice Minister recalls thinking if Trimble really wanted to reject Mitchell, he would never have come to Castle Buildings with the American already designated as chairman.¹⁷ British officials calculated similarly. ‘I think that Trimble came to the negotiations knowing he would have to accept Mitchell as chairman,’ observes one senior civil servant. ‘But in the process he wanted to establish himself as the key figure who had to be dealt with – in other words, he was saying “don’t think that you can go off and deal mainly with Adams and the DFA”. He therefore played along with Paisley and McCartney to extract the most he could on the rules and procedures. He was saying “I’m a serious character, I don’t care about being bolshie.”’ But it was a tactical escalation amidst a strategic retreat: John Taylor declared that to put Mitchell in charge of the talks ‘was the equivalent of appointing an American Serb to preside over talks on the future of Croatia …’.¹⁸

      Late on Tuesday 11 June, in his office on the fifth floor of Castle Buildings, Mayhew told Trimble of his decision. There were, he said, no alternatives to Mitchell. Trimble went silent; according to one official, the pause ‘seemed like an eternity’.¹⁹ The UUP then withdrew to their own offices. Trimble finally decided to go along with Mitchell, but extracted a price for it. He had determined that the quid pro quo would be a blank sheet on the rules governing the talks – that is, not the Ground Rules paper nor the document of 6 June. At 5:30 p.m., Trimble visited the Irish Government’s rooms for direct talks to see if they would back this compromise. Shortly thereafter, Nora Owen and Proinsias de Rossa visited the UUP rooms and were happy to supply Trimble with the sort of reassurance he wanted. ‘The agenda is not written in stone,’ said Nora Owen. ‘That’s very interesting,’ replied the UUP leader.²⁰ Nigel Dodds, the then DUP party secretary, remembers Trimble moving back and forth with drafts of how the talks would be structured. ‘I’ve always made it clear I may part company with you [on the issue of the chairmanship],’ Trimble told the DUP.²¹ Trimble recalls that when he kept reporting to Paisley and McCartney the nature of his conversations with the Government, the DUP leader warned him ‘to consider the personal implications of what I was doing. Up till then there had been no question of attacks.’²² McCartney, though, asserts that Trimble never told the other Unionist parties of his intention to accept Mitchell.²³

      Even the physical imposition of Mitchell in the early hours of Wednesday 12 June had to be organised ‘like a military operation’. Mayhew feared that a hardline Unionist such as Cedric Wilson (then of the UKUP) might try to prevent Mitchell from being seated in the chair; Wilson was certainly hovering in the general vicinity. Accordingly, a politician and an official – Ancram and Stephen Leach – were deliberately sat in the co-chair before Mitchell approached the spot. Mayhew remembers propelling Mitchell by the arm into the conference room; the politician and civil servant moved only seconds before he arrived. The DUP reaction was, to say the least, forthright: Sean Farren, a senior SDLP negotiator observed in his notebook that ‘Trimble [was] taunted with remarks like “remember Brian Faulkner”.’ As hardline Unionists raged, the twelve- to fourteen-strong Irish team led by Owen and de Rossa repaired to the Anglo-Irish Secretariat to celebrate. The Irish ministers formally toasted the officials; the officials responded in kind. The seal had formally been set on a long-time Irish goal – the internationalisation of the conflict. ‘There was a huge sense of achievement,’ states Nora Owen. ‘We already had the New Ireland Forum Report [of 1984, composed of nationalist parties north and south of the border, but from which Unionists absented themselves]. But we did not have the majority community there. Now we did. Mitchell was in as chairman, with Ulster Unionist agreement and they had not walked. Without this, there would have been no process.’²⁴

      British ministers, such as Patrick Mayhew, were also impressed that Trimble had braved huge pressure in his own party and within the wider Unionist community.²⁵ But to senior officials, the events of June 1996 began to have a familiar pattern or – in the opinion of one civil servant – ‘an almost algebraic rhythm’. This ran as follows. A proposition would be put forward by the British and Irish Governments. The Alliance party and SDLP would offer broad support, though possibly not Sinn Fein. The small Loyalist parties would then often back the Government. The DUP and UKUP would express outright opposition, whilst the UUP would express grave doubts but not close the door completely. The acceptance of the proposal would then depend upon Trimble, for whom all sort of dances would have to take place till he had established his credentials within the wider Unionist community; only then could he proceed.²⁶ But how much did this approach profit him? Trimble was under no doubt that it had brought about substantive gains. He had obtained his blank sheets on the rules for the talks. The all-powerful chairman, as envisaged in the two Governments’ paper of 6 June, would now be more of a facilitator than an enforcer – or, in John Taylor’s revised description of Mitchell, ‘a Serb with no powers is acceptable’.²⁷ Trimble noted with pleasure to how he had shaved the Governments down. In the first Irish draft, the Government of the Republic proposed that ‘the two Governments with the assistance of the chairmen will consult the parties’; the UUP objected. In the second, the Irish suggested ‘the chairmen, with the assistance of the two Governments will confer with the parties’. Again, it was rejected by the UUP. The third draft read: ‘The chairmen, the two Governments and the parties will confer.’ Trimble accepted this version.

      But Trimble’s Unionist critics (and the SDLP) regarded his victories as the window-dressing – the illusion of control rather than the reality. According to this analysis, the two Governments were perfectly prepared to let the parties mess around with the small change of the talks once the big accounts had been settled, notably with nationalist Ireland and the United States. Decommissioning had again been postponed. Mitchell came with the blessing of the President of the United States: his mere presence was enough to constrict the UUP leader’s room for manoeuvre. For once the prestige of the American Commander-in-Chief was bound up with the process, it would be ever harder for Ulster Unionists to walk away. For all of the reassurance offered to Trimble about his role, Mitchell was not insulated from the presidential election and he even played the role of Clinton’s Republican opponent, Senator Robert Dole, in the mock debates that preceded the live television exchanges between the two