David Trimble

William David Trimble, Baron Trimble, PC (born 15 October 1944, in Belfast), is a politician from Northern Ireland. He served as Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP; 1995–2005), was the first First Minister of Northern Ireland (1998–2002), and was a Member of the British Parliament (1990–2005).^[1][2] He is currently a life peer for the Conservative Party. Trimble was awarded the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, along with John Hume.

While a professor of law at Queen's University Belfast, he was elected to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention.^[2] He served as Member of Parliament for Upper Bann from 1990 until 2005. He resigned leadership of the UUP soon afterwards. In June 2006, he became a member of the House of Lords, as The Right Honourable William David Trimble by the name, style, and title of Baron Trimble, of Lisnagarvey in the County of Antrim.^[3] In April 2007 he left the UUP to join the Conservative Party.^[4]

In June 2010, the Israeli government appointed Lord Trimble to be one of two international observers serving on an Israeli commission of inquiry looking into the events surrounding an Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara, along with Canadian former Judge Advocate General Ken Watkin.^[5] The panel concluded both Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza and the interception of the flotilla “were found to be legally pursuant to the rules of international law”.

Early life and education

Trimble is the son of William and Ivy Trimble, and grew up in a lower-middle class Presbyterian home in Bangor on the County Down coast.^[6][7] He was educated at Bangor Grammar School in Bangor, County Down (1956–63).^[8]

He then studied at Queen's University of Belfast (QUB) from 1964 to 1968, winning the McKane Medal for Jurisprudence.^[8] There he received a first class honours degree (the first at Queens in three years), becoming a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B).^[9][10]

Early career

Academic career

Trimble qualified as a barrister in Northern Ireland in 1969. He began that year as a Queen's University of Belfast lecturer, subsequently becoming Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Law from 1973–75, a Senior Lecturer in 1977, and Head of the Department of Commercial and Property Law from 1981 through 1989.^{[8][11][12][13]} In 1990, after becoming a member of Parliament, he resigned from the university.^[8]

In 1983, as he sat in his office at the university, he heard gunshots which turned out to be those of IRA killers of Edgar Graham, a friend and fellow law professor of his.^[13] He was asked to identify the body.^[13] In 1994 he himself was targeted for assassination.^[13]

Political career

Trimble became involved with the right-wing, paramilitary-linked Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party (known as Vanguard) in the early 1970s. He ran unsuccessfully for the party in the 1973 Assembly election for North Down, coming in last.^[14] In 1974, he was a legal adviser to the Ulster Workers' Council during the successful UWC strike against the Sunningdale Agreement.^[15]

He was elected to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention in 1975 as a Vanguard member for Belfast South, and for a time he served as the party's joint deputy leader, along with the Ulster Defence Association's Glenn Barr.^[16] The party had been established by Bill Craig to oppose sharing power with Irish Nationalists, and to prevent closer ties with the Republic of Ireland; however Trimble was one of those to back Craig when the party split over Craig's proposal to allow voluntary power sharing with the SDLP.

He joined the mainstream established Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in 1978 after Vanguard disbanded, and was elected one of the four party secretaries.^[10][16] He was Vice Chairman of Lagan Valley Unionist Association in 1983 through 1985, and became Chairman in 1985.^[11] In 1989 through 1995, he was Chairman of the UUP Legal Committee, and in 1990 through 1996, he was Honorary Secretary of the Ulster Unionist Council.^[11]

He was elected to Parliament with 58% of the vote in a by-election in Upper Bann in 1990.^[16][17][18] He was one of the few British politicians who urged support for the Islamic government of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the civil war in the 1990s.

Leadership of Ulster Unionist Party

In September 1995 Trimble was unexpectedly elected Leader of the UUP, the largest party in Northern Ireland and the voice of mainstream unionism, defeating the front-runner John Taylor and three other candidates.^[12][19]

Trimble's election as party leader came in the aftermath of his role in the Drumcree conflict, in which he led a controversial 1995 Orange Order Protestant march, amidst Nationalist protest, down the predominantly Roman Catholic Nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown, County Armagh.^[6][12] Trimble and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley walked hand-in-hand as the march, banned since 1997, proceeded down the road.^[20] Irish Catholics viewed it as insensitive; Protestants viewed it as Trimble sticking up for them.^[12]

Trimble shortly after his election became the first unionist leader in 30 years to meet with a Taoiseach (prime minister) in Dublin.^[12] In 1997, he became the first unionist leader to agree to attend negotiations with Sinn Féin since the island of Ireland was partitioned in 1922 between Northern Ireland, which remained in the United Kingdom, and the quasi-independent Irish Free State.^[21]

Later, in the All Party negotiations, he led the UUP delegation and sat at the table with Sinn Féin, though in the eight months of the negotiations he never spoke directly to their leader, Gerry Adams.^[6][11] The talks were successful, culminating in the Belfast Agreement of 10 April 1998, which resulted in power-sharing with Nationalists.^[10][11] On 22 May 1998, the Agreement was approved by 71% in Northern Ireland.^[11]

Trimble was appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in the 1998 New Year Honours.^[22][23]

First Minister of Northern Ireland; Nobel Peace Prize

Trimble at first opposed the appointment of former U.S. Senator George J. Mitchell as the chairman of multi-party talks, but eventually accepted him. The talks resulted in the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement (GFA) of April 1998.^[24] Trimble was subsequently seen as instrumental in getting his party to accept the accord.^[25] He backed the agreement despite opposition from more than half his parliamentary colleagues, which won him overwhelming support from London, Dublin, and Washington.^[25] In a referendum, over 70% of the Northern Ireland electorate endorsed the agreement, and he later won support for his approach from his party’s ruling body.^[25]

Trimble was elected on 25 June 1998 as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Upper Bann.^[26] On 1 July 1998 he was elected First Minister of Northern Ireland in the New Northern Ireland Assembly.^[26]

In October 1998, Trimble and John Hume were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland.^[27] The Nobel Institute noted:

As the leader of the traditionally predominant party in Northern Ireland, David Trimble showed great political courage when, at a critical stage of the process, he advocated solutions which led to the [Belfast (Good Friday)] peace agreement.^[27]

Arguments over the extent of Provisional Irish Republican Army decommissioning led to repeated disruptions during Trimble's tenure as First Minister. In particular:

• The office of First Minister was suspended from 11 February 2000 to 30 May 2000.
• Trimble resigned as First Minister on 1 July 2001 due to the continuing impasse with regard to the IRA refusing his demands that it decommission its arms, as per the commitments all parties had signed up to in section 7 pt. 3 (page 25) ^[28]of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement^[29] but he was re-elected on 5 November 2001.
• The Assembly was suspended from 14 October 2002 until 2007 due to accusations of an IRA spy ring being operated there (the so-called Stormontgate Affair).

In 1998, Tony Blair announced a new judicial inquiry, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, into the killing of 14 unarmed civil rights marchers in Derry in 1972. A previous investigation, the Widgery Tribunal, into the same event had been discredited. During the debate in the House of Commons, Trimble was one of few dissenting voices. He said "I am sorry to have to say to the Prime Minister that I think that the hope expressed by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) that this will be part of the healing process is likely to be misplaced. Opening old wounds like this is likely to do more harm than good. The basic facts of the situation are known and not open to dispute."^[30] Reporting in 2010, The Saville Inquiry confirmed that all of the 14 killings and 13 woundings were unjustified.

House of Lords; Conservative Party

At the general elections of 2005, Trimble was defeated by the Democratic Unionist Party's David Simpson in his bid for re-election to Parliament in Westminster. The Ulster Unionist Party retained only one seat in Parliament (out of 18 in Northern Ireland) after the 2005 general election, and Trimble resigned as Leader of the party on 7 May 2005.

On 11 April 2006, it was announced that Trimble would take a seat in the House of Lords as a working life peer, as an appointed members of the Peerage whose title may not be inherited.^[31] On 21 May 2006 it was announced that he had chosen the geographical designation Lisnagarvey, the original name for his adopted home town of Lisburn. Subsequently, on 2 June 2006, he was created Baron Trimble, of Lisnagarvey in the County of Antrim.

On 18 December 2006, he announced that he would be standing down from the Northern Ireland Assembly at the next election.^[32]

Trimble was named an Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin.

On 17 April 2007, Trimble announced he had decided to join the Conservative Party in order to have greater influence in politics in the United Kingdom.^[4] At the same time, however, he stated that he did not intend to campaign against the Ulster Unionist Party, and proposed the idea of a future alliance between the Conservatives and the Ulster Unionists, similar to that which had existed prior to 1974 and the fallout of the Sunningdale Agreement. This idea became reality with the formation of Ulster Conservatives and Unionists - New Force in late 2008. It was reported that if the Conservatives won the 2010 general election, Trimble would receive a "significant" ministerial role, possibly in the Cabinet.^[33] In the event, however, Trimble was not offered any governmental or front bench position following the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.

In May 2010 when the former prime minister of Spain Jose Maria Aznar initiated and launched the "Friends of Israel Initiative," a non-Jewish international project supporting Israel's right to exist, Trimble joined him along with Peru's former president Alejandro Toledo, Italian philosopher Marcelo Pear, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton, and British historian Andrew Roberts.^[34]

Turkel Commission of Inquiry

On 14 June 2010, he was appointed as an observer to the Israeli special independent public Turkel Commission of Inquiry into the Gaza flotilla raid.^[35][36]

The Commission investigated whether Israel's actions in preventing the arrival of ships in Gaza were in accordance with international law.^[36] It focused among other things on the security considerations for imposing a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip and the conformity of the naval blockade with the rules of international law; the conformity of the actions during the raid to principles of international law; and the actions taken by those who organised and participated in the flotilla, and their identities.^[36]

On the Commission were former Israeli Supreme Court Justice, Jacob Turkel, and former Technion University President, Amos Horev, as well two other members added in July 2010. (Bar Ilan University Professor of International Law Shabtai Rosenne also served on the Commission from its establishment until his death on 21 September 2010.^[37]) In addition, the Commission had two foreign observers, Trimble and former head of the Canadian military's judiciary, Judge Advocate General, Ken Watkin, who took part in hearings and discussions, but did not vote on the final conclusions.^[38][39] The panel, in January 2011, concluded both Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza and the interception of the flotilla “were found to be legally pursuant to the rules of international law”.^[40]

Personal life

Trimble's first marriage, to Heather McComb in August 1968, ended in divorce in 1976. There were no children from his first marriage. Trimble married a former student, Daphne Elizabeth (née Orr), in August 1978, and they have two sons and two daughters (Richard, Victoria, Nicholas, and Sarah).^[7] Lady Trimble served as a member of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, and later the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, before standing unsuccessfully in the UK Parliamentary election of May 2010 for the UCUNF.

Electoral history

Westminster Elections

Northern Ireland Assembly Elections

1996 Forum

Successful candidates are shown in bold.^[42]

Select works

Books

• To Raise Up a New Northern Ireland: Articles and Speeches 1998–2000, David Trimble, The Belfast Press, 2001

Articles

• "The Belfast Agreement", David Trimble, 22 Fordham International Law Journal 1145, 1998–99

Notes and references

See also

• List of Northern Ireland Members of the House of Lords
• List of Northern Ireland members of the Privy Council

External links

• David Trimble's official website
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by David Trimble
• Transforming Unionism: David Trimble And the Gereral Election 2005, Irish Academic Press, 2005, ISBN 0716533898
• David Trimble: the Price of Peace, Frank Millar, Liffey Press, 2004, ISBN 1904148603
• Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism, Dean Godson, HarperCollins, 2004, ISBN 000257098X
• Trimble, Henry MacDonald, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2001, ISBN 0747553157
• Northern Ireland Assembly bio
• Guardian Politics Ask Aristotle – David Trimble
• TheyWorkForYou.com – David Trimble MP
• Nobel Peace Prize for 1998 – Lecture by David Trimble
• BBC News – The Search for Peace: David Trimble
• Maiden Speech : House of Commons – 23 May 1990
• Other Irish Nobel Winners