Leader: Well Done, David
Fortnight June 2000
Within minutes of securing a spectacular victory, David Trimble blew it again. Making remarks about Sinn Féin ministers needing "to be house trained" on the eve of a nail-bitingly close Ulster Unionist Council meeting, made the right sounds to nervous supporters who want to hear macho talk about fighting them in the cabinet room. It reassured those unionists who were outraged about the absence of flags over the departments of Education and Health & Public Safety, even if such outrage has a strange habit of soaring in direct proportion to unionism's internal difficulties.
But to repeat, in the jubilant tone of a university common room wag, that "as far as democracy is concerned, these folk ain't house trained yet", at the post-Council press conference, was indicative of a couple of things. First, David Trimble hasn't got much of a sense of humour. He was in giddy form throughout the press conference, and his answers to questions posed were familiar in tone to other occasions when he seems high on the nervous energy of a narrow win. Clipped, even curt answers, with a screaming urge to tell a joke to ease the tension. Someone must have congratulated him for his original comment in the Irish Times, so he jumped feet first at a chance to share his witticism with the hacks and the folks at home.
What he had forgotten was that he had finished campaigning, the power-sharing Executive was back, and the fountain pen of Peter Mandelson was dangling over the devolution order, impatiently waiting a TV camera to record its master's flourish. Trimble appeared genuinely taken aback by the embarrassed silence of the media throng, and perhaps the penny dropped when asked if "implying Sinn Féin are dogs aids an inclusive settlement?" Trimble snapped, "that's your language, not mine." Well, what then did the First Minister mean? One could make charitable excuses about the continued militaristic language of SF and the smug culture of victimhood with which they excuse their sectarianism. Alternately, one could recall protestant myths about 'dirty catholics' - the same stuff settled catholics spout about Travellers, by the way. An example of this mythology is crudely, if prosaically, told in Susan McKay's new book about Northern Protestants*.
The ould sow grunted and keenied And dundered her snout of the dure, She
devoured all we could give her She was looking for more to be sure.
The poem continued, writes McKay, how the pig "kept on demanding more, even though she spilled what she had 'in the muck and the filth of the craw'." Why, the poet asked, was she so obstructive? The answer is plain: "She was a fenian, as sure as you're there." This recital, at a DUP fundraiser in Beragh, Co Tyrone, with musical entertainment by Paul Berry MLA and stacked cream teas, may be a million metaphorical miles from the college humour of new unionism, but the internalised mythologies stem from the same strong roots. Those roots remain unsevered despite the semi-public dependence on catholic revisionists that Trimble reaches for when the going gets complicated, and the slower coaches in the peace train need a friendly voice to explain that the provos, like the times, are a-changing.
The irony is that Trimble felt the need to resort to sectarian codes to
sell an Agreement whose avowed aim is equality and inclusion. Note how the
opposition from Jeffrey Donaldson and David Burnside strenuously avoided
outright opposition to power-sharing, and concentrated on the character
flaws of Sinn Féin, rather than its ideology. This is in marked contrast
to the opposition from Willies Ross and Thompson, who publicly state their
belief that nationalism is incompatible with unionism. Union First spokesfolk
get into a well-rehearsed lather when accused of not wanting a 'taig around
the place'. What they don't want, publicly anyway, is a fenian, at least
the ideological (and tactical) descendants of the 1867 rebellion, around
Stormont. |
