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David
Trimble faces yet another challenge this weekend from
his opponents, not all of whom can so easily be slotted
into Paul Bew's 'stupid unionism' pigeon hole. Some
harbour leadership ambitions within their heads rather
than vast amounts of nothingness. And with an election
only months away the antagonisms will be sharpened
and fashioned into stilettos. It is the ninth such
'crisis' for Trimble. For Jeffrey Donaldson it is
the ninth turning point at which he will have failed
to turn for the ninth time, if he keeps faith with
past performances. That would leave Trimble out-doing
those legendary cats in terms of lives, acquiring
a record tenth.
The
problems that Trimble persistently faces are in one
sense symptomatic of a cultural difference between
unionism and republicanism. Despite unionism historically
having had a very anti-democratic outlook towards
anyone outside the unionist camp, internally it has
been much more democratic than republicanism given
the latter's cultivation of a Stalinist ethos which
seemingly produces presidents for life. Unlike republicanism,
unionism seems to display traits that would militate
against a leader emerging who could hold on to power
for twenty years. Although Gerry Adams has on occasion
said ‘we in the Sinn Fein leadership pride ourselves
on the way that we engage with the grassroots’
the view expressed by Tyrone republican Fergal O'Donnell
after the first act of IRA decommissioning in 2001
offers a much more nuanced assessment of the matter:
‘Trimble and his party aren't afraid to say what
their bottom line is … whereas nobody outside
of a small clique of an inner circle of republicans
really knows what's happening on our side.’
Symbolising
the essence and origins of Trimble's current problems
was the comment Gerry Adams made at the 1998 Sinn
Fein gathering which approved the Good Friday Agreement.
Saying 'well done David' because the unionist leader
had sold the agreement to the UUP was a mere ruse
by the republican leader to disguise how poorly Sinn
Fein performed during the negotiations. (Although
there is an alternative view that Sinn Fein performed
precisely as some leadership elements intended). In
those three-strand negotiations, one and two would
form the body of any future settlement. Strand three
was for the optics. Trimble devoted his energies to
Strand two assuming, not unreasonably, that, because
it dealt with the constitutional and geographical
integrity of the Northern Ireland state, to halt republicanism
at the border pass was the most crucial consideration.
As Deaglán de Bréadún, of the
Irish Times put it in 2002:
Trimble
succeeded in reducing the scope and number of cross-Border
bodies very dramatically … the final list was
anodyne and unthreatening … As an intelligent
politician and strategic thinker, Mr Trimble was
obviously aware that constitutional issues were
much more important than transient difficulties
such as prisoner releases or decommissioning.
Gerry
Adams admitted as much in saying that the cross border
bodies were ‘too weak for a republican, but still
we went along with that.’
Any
gains that republicanism could make in strand one
would all fall under the rubric of an internal settlement,
something which republicans had foresworn never to
settle for. Their failure in this respect can be measured
from some observations made by Anne Cadwallader -
by no means sympathetic to unionism or hostile to
republicanism - in November 2001: 'It's not a complete
blank sheet for Nationalists or Republicans, of course.
There are cross-border bodies - although possibly
less far-reaching than those envisaged at Sunningdale
in 1974 - and there is police reform.' Such concise
commentary makes it clear why ‘Victory 74’
has been ‘transitionally’ postponed to 2016.
When
Adams uttered those words ‘well done David’
he was strumming a suspicious chord in the unionist
mindset. Immediately, enough were inclined to feel
that if republicans could embrace something it must
be suspect. Stephen King summed it up a couple of
years ago in Segovia by saying that for a substantial
body of unionist opinion the Good Friday Agreement
seemed such a poor return for republicanism - many
of whose adherents had given their lives to achieve
so much more - that it must be a booby trap unionists
were being asked to pick up. Gift horses for unionists
are invariably of the Trojan type.
So,
no surprise it was to be informed by Rosie Cowan of
the Guardian that ‘Protestants have always
been much more lukewarm in their support for the agreement
than the Catholic community. Only 55% voted for it
in the referendum, compared to 96% of nationalists.’
Trimble,
being, as Adams said, ‘very good at what he does
… a skilled politician’, was too astute
not to realise the defeat he had inflicted on republicanism.
He would later shrewdly comment, ‘the only consolation
republicans have today is the sight of our self-destructive
displays of division. It is on this basis that they
sell the process which has a partitionist reality
at its core.’
And
nothing has changed. The last remaining obstacle to
Provisional republicanism becoming Provisional Fianna
Fail wholly immersed in the structures of the state
it vowed to bring down rather than serve in is the
policing question. And as Maurice Hayes claimed:
What
few seem to have noticed is that republicans, who
had demanded the disbandment of the RUC should now
be calling for the implementation of the Patten
Report which clearly does nothing of the sort.
Yet,
as ever, there remain unionists who seem determined
to amuse us by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Trimble safeguarded the union and forced republicans
to accept the consent principle. He presented his
party with a Northern Ireland shaped cake. Attacking
Trimble on the colour of the cake - basically the
configuration of the internal solution - does demonstrate
that for some unionists having that cake is not enough,
they want to eat it too in an act of self-devouring
political cannibalism.
When
the journalist Liam Clarke wrote in October 1998 that
the only viable settlement was one where the ‘political
class can pig out on democracy until it is bloated
and fat and content’, this was hardly the type
of feasting he had in mind.
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