Opposition defeated by leader's secret aces Trimble's tactics
From DAILY TELEGRAPH November 29th, 1999
By Peter Foster in Belfast
EVEN before David Trimble rose to speak at the crucial Ulster Unionist Council
meeting, the opponents of the Mitchell compromise on decommissioning suspected
they were already beaten. On Friday night word filtered from the Trimble
camp that the leader had slipped two political aces up his sleeve to win
over the wavering voters in his party and secure a majority to proceed with
a power-sharing executive with Sinn Fein. Earlier in the week a Daily Telegraph
straw poll of the 860 delegates had shown that the rival factions were evenly
divided. The figures, which were confirmed by a private internal poll conducted
by the party, left Mr Trimble in no doubt that something extra would be
required. Mr Trimble played his first ace trump as soon as he rose to open
the debate. He announced that he had handed a post-dated letter to the council's
president, Josias Cunningham, in which he offered his resignation as First
Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly if IRA decommissioning had not
begun by early next year. The date of the letter and its exact contents
remain known only to the president but one insider at the meeting said it
was clear even then that Mr Trimble had done enough to reassure the waverers.
The motion contained one further "insurance policy" to sway the voters,
instructing the president to "reconvene the council in February 2000 to take a final decision". One anti-agreement campaigner who was present said
yesterday that the framing of the motion had made all the difference: "Effectively he was saying, `Give this deal a go but, if decommissioning has not started
by February, then you can come back and there is no harm done'." After Mr
Trimble's 15-minute speech, the debate began with both sides speaking with
passion yet restraint. Martin Smyth, the South Belfast MP, spoke first for
the No camp and, according to one insider, invoked the memory of Neville
Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis as he listed the concessions that
Mr Trimble and Unionists had been forced to make to Sinn Féin and the nationalists.
Jean Coulter, a west Belfast delegate, employed similar imagery when she
described those who were in support of the Mitchell compromise as "collaborators".
Several members read out letters they had received from Mr Trimble earlier
this year promising that he would resign if there was not decommissioning
before the establishment of a power-sharing executive with Sinn Féin. "Mr Trimble offered no reply or explanation for that," said one insider. The
only notable absence from the list of 25 speakers was Mr Trimble's deputy,
John Taylor, the assemblyman for Strangford, who declared his support for
the leadership only on the eve of the meeting after receiving written assurances
from the Secretary of State, Peter Mandelson, that the executive would be
suspended if IRA decommissioning did not take place. But Mr Trimble kept
his final ace until the dying minutes of the debate. As he began his closing
speech, a heckler called out, "What about Rob Bradford?" referring to the
late Robert Bradford, the South Belfast MP who was shot dead by the IRA
in 1981. Mr Trimble produced a letter from Mr Bradford's widow, Norah, in
which she urged the party to back the Mitchell deal. "It was a sombre and decisive moment, far more important than John Taylor announcing he would support Mr Trimble," said one present. "It tugged on the heart strings." |
