DECEMBER 1999/JANUARY 2000
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DAVID TRIMBLE:
'The Most Progressive and Forward-Looking Leader of His Time9
ELFAST — Extraordinary times make heroes of ordinary men. David Trimble - leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and main voice of northern Protestants - is
the proof.
This painfully unassuming former law lecturer has undergone one of the most remarkable political conversions ever seen in Irish history. Of course, he \vould never speak in those terms.
A master of understatement, Trimble does not indulge in loose comments about the "providence of the peace process" or his "moment in history" but his contribution has been immeasurable.
Indeed, were another personality at the Unionist helm, these latest developments might never have happened.
Rather than a footnote in a long list of obstructionist unionist politicians, Trimble will now surely go down as the most progressive and forward-looking leader of his time. Remarkable, considering his roots.
David Trimble cut his political teetfi in the fringes of right-wing unionism of the Seventies. When the last Stormont government fell, Trimble was part of the Vanguard movement opposed to direct rule from Westminster.
The leader of Vanguard, Bill Craig, - a fierce orator with shadowy paramilitary connections -once controversially told a crowd of unionists that if politics failed it was up to them to "liquidate the enerfiy"
Trimble eventually joined mainstream unionism but was still considered a hard-liner. In 1994, Trimble rose to public attention duriPg the first Drumcee standoff. Shoulder to shoulder with Port&down Orangemen, Trimble stared down the police who were preventing their march along the, mostly Catholic, Garvaghy Road.
Trimble scolded police lines and then, when the march was even-tually allowed ahead, danced triumphantly down the streets of Portadown with Reverand Ian PaisJey. Those images propelled Trimble to the Unionist leadership and led moderates to despair.
But that is when the change came. Carefully and, sometimes, infuri-atin^ly slowly, Trimble led the Unionist Party through the peace process. Trimble - with a keen strategic mind and eye for detail _ coiild see where the talks would inextricably end.
Thei'e would have to be new relationships between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Thirty years ago, as a young politician, that idea was anathema to Trimble. Now it seemed inevitably a«d the question was whether he would, or could, lead his party to accept the deal.
By endorsing the Good Friday Agreement, Trimble surrendered many unionist principles to Nationalists and Republicans.
Still, it was a trade off. He won tWo major victories - a repeal of
By PATRICK RUCKER
the Irish Republic's claim to Northern Ireland and the scrapping of the, much-loathed, Anglo-Irish Agreement.
Most importantly, there would be a return to Stormont and self-rule for Northern Ireland if the issue of "decommissioning," or disarming, the IRA could be resolved. Overcoming that final obstacle may prove to be Trimble's finest hour.
For 18 months after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, the peace process was stuck in the mire. Unionists wanted the IRA to begin decommissioning before the new Northern Ireland Assembly was inaugurated. Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, said no -the Assembly should get started first.
Many saw Trimble as the main obstruction. In July, he rejected a compromise from the British and Irish governments that would set up the Assembly first, decommissioning second.
He simply did not have the party's backing, Trimble loyalists said; maybe in the fall things would be better. Widely criticized at the time, that view has been vindicated. ,
It was only after Senator George Mitchell, who brokered the original Good Friday deal, returned that frosty relations between the two main protagonists - David Trimble and, Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams - began to thaw.
Then, at the end of November, after cutting a deal over decommissioning and mustering his supporters, Trimble was ready. Sidestepping skeptics within his own party hierarchy, Trimble called a party caucus. Trimble wanted to take his message directly to his grassroots and explain to them why - despite their misgivings - they should support the deal he brokered.
Trimble managed the meeting adroitly. Traditionally, party members would converge on the Ulster Hall - a musty, old, Victorian building in the center of Belfast, resounding with the echoes the past - but this time it was moved to the Waterfront Hall.
Completed in 1997, at a cost of 850 million dollars, the ultra-modern concert hall has come to symbolize what Northern Ireland could be like, if there were only political stability. In front of the towering glass and steel building stands a bronze statue, Sheep on the Road, portraying a haggard shepherd pushing his flock along.
Whether they were going off to pasture or the slaughter, many delegates must have wondered. Still, they supported Trimble by the slimmest of margins — 58 percent — allowing the recent historic events to take place.
PHOTO. Courtesy of Ann McManus;The Irish News
Waterford
CRYSTAL
HISTORIC NEW ASSEMBLY clockwise from front: SDLP Ministers Seamus Mallon, Brid Rogers, Mark Durkan and Sean Farren; the Ulster Unionists Sam Foster, Sir Reg Empey, and Michael McGimpsey; the Sinn Fein Ministers Bairbre de Brun and Martin McGuinness; the Cabinet Secretary John Semple and the First Minister David Trimble. Nigel Dodds and Peter Robinson of the Democratic Unionist Party are missing as they have refused to sit in the Cabinet with Sinn Fein.
For months before the compromise over decommissioning, there was ubiquitous graffiti in many Belfast neighborhoods announcing "Not a Bullet, Not an Ounce" - avow by the IRA that they would never disarm. The morning after Trimble's party ratified his deal, it was gone: a tacit recognition from the IRA that the time for empty phrases was over.
Now the people who once called for Trimble's Nobel Peace Prize to be rescinded are singing his praises. The tactics once seen as foot-dragging are now called "circumspect." Trimble has become a statesman.
He has modernized his party like no other previous leader. From around the world, people have acknowledged his contribution. Yet, the stringent lines across this unlikely hero's brow still seem to plead "let's all calm down."
Birmingham Bombings
BIRMINGHAM — More than 250 people filled Birmingham Cathedral on November 21 to remember the victims of one of the worst terrorist atrocities carried out in Britain.
Among them were at least 50 survivors and family members of those killed when bombs exploded in two city centre pubs 25 years ago. The attacks, just minutes apart, left 21 people dead and scores more injured.
The service was disrupted slightly when one survivor stormed out. She, along with some of the other survivors, felt too much was said about the perpetrators of the atrocity in a sermon in which the theme was forgiveness. — BBC News
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