NI POLITICS: Walking with Dinosaurs
Yeah, like it’s over
I wish I could write like this:
The Natural History Museum in London is a hugely enjoyable place to spend a few hours. I was wandering around the dinosaur section last week, musing upon the extinction of the species, which had once dominated the landscape and shaped the environment about it. Around the walls were samples of some of the theories propounded to explain their demise: a huge meteor, sheer boredom, mass suicide, and even an argument that the gas from their enormous piles of excrement poisoned them!As I thought of old monsters knee deep in their own doo-doo, my mind was irresistibly drawn to the Ulster Unionist Council.
Beat that for an intro: I mean, so what that you could hear the analogy trundling up Donegal Place before it eventually arrived? Feel the passion. Its author is Alex Kane, a freelance columnist with the Ulster News Letter, who for the sake of, ahem, ‘context’, is part of the Ulster Unionist staff at the NI Assembly and a Tremble partisan. If the Belfast Agreement was ever going to be sold within unionism it needed the energy and panache of someone like Kane. There’s no one. That’s not to say that Kane is correct. He’s not. But part of Mr Trimble’s problem in getting his party onside lies in his Praetorian Guard. Nearly all are from the soggy liberal traditionally pro-power-sharing-at-any-price wing of the party, and thus do not carry the confidence of wavering members: the names of Michael McGimpsey, David McNarry, Lord “Dublin Ken” Maginnis and James Cooper spring to mind. Many liberals backed Dublin Ken in the 1995-leadership election, which helped him finish third out of five. In defeat, the winner, who had been surprisingly elected on a right wing platform, adopted the agenda of the man who finished third. (Gosh, so it has happened before.)
Leaving aside the monkeys, what about the beetroot-coloured organ grinder? The UUP leader has been going around the increasingly dilapidated branches of his party trying to win them over. Alex Kane, who attended one of the meetings, was especially scathing. His leader was ‘lacklustre, unfocused, uninspiring, ill at ease and clearly uncomfortable’. That sounds just like Mr Trimble and, yes, it does hurt him in these situations. It suggests a serious flaw in a political leader: namely failing instinctively to grasp the gut instincts of his supporters. Lady Thatcher was very far removed in real life from the suburban housewife but, golly, at least until her third term, she always knew what they were thinking and why. (As a footnote, I remember attending a UUP reception for distinguished professionals, so why they invited me is a mystery. In a room full of about 60 people, I noticed Willie Thompson, then an MP, working his way around the room making sure he spoke to everyone. David Trimble, who was also in attendance, made no such effort.) Once upon a time, when he used to go out into the sticks, to one remote Orange hall after another, giving a cultural talk on Orangeism or Sir James Craig on behalf of the Ulster Society, he probably did know what the wee man would wear. But now he listens almost exclusively to the likes of Eoghan Harris and Ruth Dudley Edwards who are (I suspect) egging him over the cliff in his duel with nearly half his party.
Having said all that, I don’t agree with Kane that Trimble’s deficient social skills have landed him in the mess he’s in. If you want to understand unionism and the Belfast Agreement you have to go back long before that Referendum campaign all the way to Sunningdale in the 1970s. Even then with memories of Stormont still very recent, most unionists would have been inclined to give power-sharing a fair wind, despite the voting in the ‘73 Assembly election. What transformed the disparate anti-power-sharing unionists into a strong coalition with decisive industrial muscle was the Council of Ireland. Otherwise, the original power-sharing Executive would have survived until the next scheduled elections in 1977 where it would have been an established part of the landscape.
Fast forward to 1998 when substantially the same Sunningdale package was put on offer. That Referendum campaign, for all the fact that there were polling stations across the island of Ireland, was fought for the allegiance of Ulster Unionist Party voters and possibly life-long abstainers, the only undecided segment of support. Unionist Ulster narrowly supported the Agreement, whilst emotionally accepting the logic of No campaigners, in the hope that this biggest humiliation would be the last. Tony Blair played to this sentiment with a set of spurious billboard claims in the run-up to voting that are still not forgotten in the parlours of middle Ulster. The problem is that Sinn Fein/IRA endorsed the Agreement as an hors d’oeuvre and not unexpectedly retained their weaponry to ensure that its interpretation prevailed. What was negotiated on 10th April 1998 marks the absolute limit of unionist tolerance. Unfortunately the “peace process” doesn’t end with the Agreement, just as it didn’t begin with it.
This is David Trimble’s problem. His position would be unassailable today if he had linked implementation of the Agreement to progressive IRA disbandment. Instead, back in 1999, he boasted that his party had implemented all its obligations when the republicans had not done theirs. There are no brownie points in a world of realpolitik. He could also have distanced himself from the Agreement and stolen DUP clothes (regardless of the actual outcome of this gambit) by calling for renegotiation on the basis that Blair’s 1998 pledges had been dishonoured. Instead he has stuck to the Agreement through thick and thin, through all the humiliations that Blair and Adams have piled upon his gingery head. It’s difficult to underestimate the visceral hatred of even the unionist middle class for Adams and his ilk and they are the people who have done best out of Northern Ireland post-1998. Trimble may have been sincere about giving Sinn Fein a chance to change, but then so was the Blue Peter producer who trusted that elephant not to crap in the studio during a live broadcast.
Trimble’s obstinacy and his willingness to divide his party over participation in the Executive fanned the current flames. Now, the UUs are unfortunate that, as a hyper-democratic party, governing council meetings can be called almost at will. That enables us all to see precisely what percentages are involved, which we couldn’t see in the early 1990s Tory Party over Europe or in New Labour over the war. I would reiterate my earlier point that the leader’s margin in the UUC over the years is far too narrow to run a party effectively on that policy, without spawning the destructive infighting we are seeing. For all the cooing of government television, and the tame, non-Burnside owned press, you don’t lead a party where 45% of its members are opposed to you in all circumstances, you split that party.
Alex Kane and others have come to the same conclusion about the current crisis, believing that their leader should dispose of Donaldson, whatever the cost — this is known as the ‘change the electorate’ option. (Amazingly Mr Trimble’s supporters have been discussing their internal politics with the UVF who are of course expert in dealing with feuds. They have also cited the John Major’s 1995 precedent of quitting to win, which shows how desperate and daft they are.) That might solve one immediate problem but create other longer term ones. It’s not just that others would go with him, which would enfeeble an already weakening party. Donaldson and co. are needed to deliver anti-Agreement, anti-DUP votes which will paradoxically prop up Trimble. Look at the 2001 general election in Lagan Valley. Donaldson actually increased his majority to 18,500, while next door in Upper Bann, wee Davey had his slashed to 2,000. In fact, I hear Trimble was on his way to his count when he asked his driver to pull in on the hard shoulder to wait for a while until he could be certain that he was going to hold his seat. Shot of Donaldson, Trimble really will lead a united pro-Agreement party, but for all that the likes of Alex Kane fondly claim about a “silent pro-Agreement majority”, it would soon be decimated by a DUP that would suddenly and inexplicably look far more inclusive. Imagine the run-up to an Assembly polling day, with DUP man Donaldson, along with Robinson and Dodds, hammering his former leader as a patsy.
Saturday’s UUC meeting wasn’t “Judgement Day”, the apocalyptic moment when all the books were settled and Donaldson et al thrown into the lake of fire. Well, not yet. Trimble crowed that his winning margin was the same as that in his 1995-leadership election. So that’s all right then. We can all go home and find some other party carcass to pick over. Just after nearly 40% of his own Upper Bann Association voted to get rid of him in July, Arnold Hatch, the Upper Bann chairman, suggested that they all have a barbecue. ERO readers may remember that barbecues can provoke discord, especially when the leader allegedly does not pay for his burger. Perhaps they all did have one, it went well and it has bolstered Trimble for the autumn. The voting confirms the virtual stalemate in the party, with a 55-45 split. It was on a moderate phrased amendment by the Trimble camp that slightly sidestepped the disciplinary issue. On this occasion, Sir Reg Empey did not support his leader. Some think he was the biggest loser from Saturday’s vote, but his leader may already be fireproof — at least until any actual, real-world election to Stormont. Something tells me ‘DT’ won’t be pulling in 55% then (alright, I’ll tell you what tells me: it’s the simple fact that David Trimble has lost — ie reduced the number of seats they held — every election he has led the UUP into).
How will all this end, assuming that the rebels aren’t in fact kicked out (for they won’t be)? The easiest way out for the party is for Mr Trimble, the catalyst for division, to go quietly. That seems less likely than ever, even with all the past electoral reverses and with worse to come. Otherwise, the feuding will continue at a lower level. Donaldson, Smyth and Burnside will join with the DUP in opposing the implementation of the Joint Declaration when the Bills reach the Commons, which will be a constant source of embarrassment and possibly of further dissension. Ian Paisley will, for the first time, lay the wreath at the Cenotaph in November after Charlie Kennedy instead of David Trimble — a powerful symbol to Middle Ulster of changing times. The UUs will stagger on as the DUP (the ‘New DUP’ anyone?) consolidates existing support and moves deeper into the soft underbelly of Ulster Unionism ie Donaldson’s core constituency of anti Agreement but (hitherto) anti-Paisley unionists. As we saw in the 1990s, once a party starts to decompose nothing will stop it.
This piece started with a dinosaur metaphor so let’s end with one. Barry White is the Belfast Telegraph’s soggiest commentator and writer of John Hume: Statesman of the Troubles. (Actually even the most bigotedly moderate unionists distrust Hume immensely.) Once, at a moment of depression, he remarked that if a meteor ever struck Ulster, only the dinosaurs would survive. One particular T-Rex looks better preserved than ever and I don’t mean Marc Bolan. After 50 years hammering at the unionist, orange and Protestant establishments, one granddaddy dinosaur’s moment is at hand. Step forward and tiochfaidh ar la: Big Ian, your day has come.
— The Watchman
ERO's Belfast based politics column
StormontWatch, September 8, 2003 12:21 AM