TV tonight: Trimble documentary
It might be a repeat, but there’s a documentary on BBC Two tonight that some of you might be interested in..David Trimble: Out in the Cold is on at 2320. The synopsis is..
David Trimble risked his political life in a bold leap for peace in Northern Ireland. As leader of the Ulster Unionist party, he signed up to the Good Friday agreement, which for the first time committed Unionists to sharing power with Republicans and Nationalists. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and became First Minister of Northern Ireland.
But over the years that followed, Trimble fought a losing battle to push the peace process forward. Increasingly overshadowed by Ian Paisley, and disappointed by the IRA over decommissioning, in June 2005 Trimble was finally ousted from his party’s leadership and from Westminster, and is now in political obscurity.
So what went wrong for David Trimble? Interviews with Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern, Chris Patten, Martin McGuinness, Daphne Trimble and others, reveal a difficult man who many believed could be his own worst enemy – and who was let down by friend and foe alike.
Hard not to feel a bit sorry for Trimble after watching that programme. A complex guy and probably not somebody you would go for a pint with but he showed more courage than somebody like Paisley ever will. The clips of the DUP intimidating Trimble and his wife whilst they got into their car then later on singing “cheerio, cheerio” outside the UUP office were very depressing, how can these people be the main party of Northern Irish unionism?
I thought it was a reasonably balanced programme, and no one (especially Trimble) came out of it very well.
The only thing that grated with me was the lazy repeat of the nonsense the the majority of unionists voted for the agreement in 1998. The majority of protestants may have, the majority of unionists (those that voted for the unionist parties) almost certainly did not.
When you then see what happened later you get a better perspecive on the thin ice Trimble had chosen to walk on.
Good bit at the very end, where Paisley claims to have been a “Kingmaker” and be responsible for the election of Trimble.
Good thing he knew what he was doing!
Yes he took risks but so did Eddie Kidd and I don’t see him in the House of Lords – it’s not about taking risks! Also a number of posters here appear to be attempting to rewrite history and crediting Trimble with bringing peace – the ceasefores predate Trimble and the end to violence had more to do with the Republican movement entering the next phase of the campaign, which he then ironically facilitated and accelerated, than his brief but disastrous leadership of unionism.
Btw Stooper mine was one of the lost Council seats but unlike other at least that’s not my excuse for turning on him – I was a critic long before that not motivated by pure self interest….and JEB is there anything is my first post that is inaccurate….the programme last night only confirms my long held and expressed belief that he sold us what Tony told him The Agreement meant not what it actually said…..
What amazes me is that the Trimble cultists are still at it – and always with their Nos 1 fib, namely that ginger Dave ‘did it for peace’. No he didn’t. As poster after poster on this thread has pointed out, the chronology is 100% wrong. The ‘peace’ the Provos so graciously gave us preceded whatever it was you think Trimble did.
Far, far more accurate to say, ‘”peace” made Trimble do it’. In other words, the things that Agreementsceptical UUPers like me argued with Trimble about where exactly those things DT did in response to the ceasefires. And that plural really does tell you all you need to know about the Republican movement.
As for the litany of heaven-sent boons that happened ‘under his watch’, I’d really drop this line, were I a Turtle apologist. One may as well argue that Unionist Goal Nos. 2 (getting rid of Provo weapons) ‘happened under Paisley’s ascendancy, ergo [the same specious reasoning as employed above goes] the DUP is a Good Thing’.
Unionist Goal Nos. 1, btw, is not merely disarming the Provos (a very provisional achievement that), but getting rid of PIRA itself. And – see murders, robberies, etc, etc passim – they really haven’t gone away you know. But soon enough some Purple fanatic will appear on this thread and inform us that that was because, oh, ‘Jeffrey coughed while David was thinking during an Exec meeting’.
“I spotted myself lurking in the background once, but Bro. Darth not at all”
..er unfortunately I did see myself in the background once, but looks like I got away with it.
As an attempt at self-justification it failed even more than the Frank Millar book. Trimble saved the RUC by trusting Chris Patten’s remarks over a chinese takeaway and did nothing more until the night before the report was published.
He rang Adams and begged him to let de Chastelain say a bit more about decommissioning t save his skin in NOvember 2003.
Mallon damns him as being “enamoured of the PM-always a mistake”.
And saddest of all was the lengths he would go to oblige the programme makers-imagine John major being taken to the office in Castle buildings he used as trimble did- Mjor would say “I am an internatiuonal statesman -film me looking pensive in my library”, not expect to jump through hoops as trimble did, doing walkpast shots outside Leinster House like a parish councillor .
The tone throughout was unashamed self -pity. The coup de grace was again the IRA’s- McGuinness demolished him in two words-”childish intellectual”, and even condescended to him by musing that he ahd no friends.
My apologies for not catching sight of Darth. In my defence I could claim that one BB looks pretty much like another BB, but that would not be strictly accurate.
I don’t believe I appeared in this one at all – no repeats of the being physically ejected from the launch of the Reunion with Weir thankfully – obviously you two were much closer to the Party Leader than I was at this time….:-P
Well at least Daphne wouldn’t have to drag him down the fruit and veg aisle at Tesco anymore, listening to him girning about everyone else.
Here’s someone who boasted of his academic credentials in a TV exchange with Big Bob in 1998, but who still couldn’t get a simple agreement drafted that stated precisely what the IRA had to do. Even now the man still thinks he got the IRA to promise to decommission by 2000.
Dear goodness, ‘you two were much closer to the Party Leader than I was’, I feel faint. I’d sue, save for the fact that I don’t have much of a reputation to defend. Darth on the other hand . . .
Meanwhile, any maybe this needs a thread of its own [maybe some kindly bearded fellow will consider approaching a born again Paisleyite?], I’d love to read eg a Peter Weir, or suchlike, telling us what it’s been like for ex-UUPers who have gone over to the DUP.
For a host of reasons I just can’t see myself ever leaving the UUP, and certainly not for a DUP still called that, and still led by a Paisley. But I am genuinely interested in hearing what people who grew up in internal opposition to the DUP (ie Weir, Donaldson, Foster, Darth? et al, all were politically socialised in the UUP) make of the DUP now that they’re in it. Their original decision to become members of the UUP was, obviously, a conscious choice, and given their ages, it had to involve, at least partially, a conscious rejection of Paisley, so what is the trajectory they have now taken? Is it simply that too close proximity to Trimble, and his cheerleaders, drove them out of the UUP, or what?
The Watchman,
The Belfast Agreement stated that decommissioning was to be completed by May 2000. Trimble’s mistake i believe was that decommissioning was “an obligation” rather than a requirement.
But i think he was right – the IRA hung him out to dry and Blair shafted him. Its simple as that.
However, you should also note Jeffrey Donaldson’s view which was that Decommissioning should be linked with prisoner releases, but if you follow this line, it is argued there would not have been an agreement.
Watchman -
‘Even now the man still thinks he got the IRA to promise to decommission by 2000′ – shurely that’s the problem? For while admittedly the Provos never quite promised to do that, the rubric of the Agreement-they-didn’t-actually-sign did. But you’ve got to be right in your wider point. One of the reasons such Trimbleites as there are still are, are so consistently peevish when they e.g. surface here must be that – at some level they feel ashamed of themselves for having so blindly admired such a third rate fellow as Trimble.
and the reason they were able to shaft him was that he didn’t put it in The Agreement allowing himself to be shafted…but telling everyone that it was in there when he knew it wasn’t – if he hadn’t done that according to the programme there would have been no Agreement either because the Party would not have backed him…it just took most of the UUP 7 years to realise he had shafted us! other knew it straight away of course…..
“For a host of reasons I just can’t see myself ever leaving the UUP, and certainly not for a DUP still called that, and still led by a Paisley.”
I constantly give this as my reasons for not having the faintest incling to leave anytime soon. I keep repeating, there will always be something between those who pretend not to be unionists (APNI) and sectarian self serving little ulstermen (DUP). I do not seek to suggest however that that entity could never be what is now the DUP. I, like you Karl, will never join a Paislyite party of protest (as Burnside calls it), but in 5 to 10 years, who knows where we’ll be. All I will say is that it’ll never be in the same party as Willie McCrea!
I’ve been wondering for a long time who KR and DR are, and every time I get thinking about it I get drawn to South Belfast…….
GWB
I too get drawn to South Belfast, but only to Windsor Park. Try again.
Karl-
I’ve actually never been to a DUP meeting,so I can’t assist.
That mixed with the comments of Karl would lead me to North Down.
uuugh
If North Down were typical of the Union I’d be in the Real IRA
Ok, well I don’t care enough to go through the other 16.
Now I’ll turn my attention to whoever it is hiding behind the clever handle of Peter Brown……
Its a hard one I know but I feel increasingly lonely using my real name – once we were a majority now a tiny besieged minority….too many paralells starting there. And it has caused problems with my name being mentioned at Exec Cttee meetings quoting my posts here. More to the point who or what is GWB?
I’ll tell you at the Executive Committee AGM. Maybe you’ll get another slugger mention eh?
Just as everytime the BBC runs a show about pop culture in 1979 or 1989 or 1999, Johnny Vegas turns up with a pointless comment, everytime there’s one of these programmes about Northern Ireland recent history, John Taylor turns up to fulfill a similar function. At least the Vegas man gives the impression that he might actually have been there.
CT : I actually thought the same about Seamus Mallon. At least we were spared the “Sunningdale for slow learners” nonsense that became an albatros around the neck of the 1998 agreement.
Indeed, although it is no doubt lying on the cutting room floor. Seamus Mallon is surely one of the unsung heroes of the anti-agreement movement.
“I’ll tell you at the Executive Committee AGM. Maybe you’ll get another slugger mention eh?”
I’m guessing GWB stands for Great Wet Bollix..which doesn’t really narrow it down much I suppose. Nor does the other possibility-Giant White Banner.
But the fact that you can use the internet suggests you’re under 75 years old, which significantly reduces the search.
“Peter Brown” on the other hand, as any fule kno, is the nom de plume/pomme de terre of Reg Empey, whereby he can express the innately decent commonsense views that occasionally surface from the deep void of defeatism and anti-Puntism, without anyone knowing it’s him, and immediately deposing him as leader of the Stupid party. He has gone to extraordinary lengths to maintain this fiction in Ballymena where he owns his holiday home.
If you doubt this ask yourself when was the last time you saw Peter Brown and Reg Empey together. And why does Reg’s face always look squished? Obviously because of all the time it spends in the Peter Brown mask.
I presume the Peter Brown mask is a Hallowe’n creation deemed too scary for public sale – or is Reg in fact Peter Brown wearing a Reg Empey mask….I’ll never live down the “bright young thin” tag from his GMU interview on the demise of the UYUC v1.0 which led to me being christened Smithers by certain former colleagues – does anyone get that joke and can explain it to me? ;-P Last time we were in the same room was now some time ago – at least 2005 so maybe one of us has killed and replaced the other since then…….
I’m not a great fan of Trimble’s, but in my opinion this is all a load of unionist blather to find a scapegoat for the fact that unionists have been trying for some time now ( with some considerable success, it must be said) as hard as they can to bury their heads in the sand and turn their backs on reality. ‘Oh it’s all Trimble’s fault, he did this and he did that’ etc. Trimble couldn’t act decisively enough when he needed to because the rest of the Unionist community were too cowardly to turn words into deeds. So in the end, he became irrelevant. Just as Ian Paisley, with each passing day, is slowly becoming more and more and more irrelevant.
The circus will move on, with or without Trimble, with or without Paisley,…maybe Robinson is finally beginning to realise that and that’s why he tried so desperately to strike a conciliatory chord with that ridiculous speech. Mind you, he had to; he was talking to a bunch of pro-Irish yanks. If he’d reverted to the normal DUP rhetoric everybody would have looked at their watches after about 30 seconds, settled up with each other (I’m sure a book would have been opened beforehand to see how long it would take him to start foaming at the mouth or his cheeks to turn ruby red) and walked out of the room, leaving him standing there talking to himself (which of course is all the DUP and the UUP before them are/were interested in doing anyway). Maybe Robinson now accepts that he cannot afford to wait around for Big Ian to kick the bucket, ‘cos by then it’ll be too late and he’ll be seen as just another old grey-haired, scarlet-faced fogey screaming ‘NEVURR, NEVURR’ while some trendy early-30′s graduate type comes along, does a deal with Republicans and steals the glory, leaving Peadair to reflect on a completely wasted life & career.
The game is largely up for unionism. it wasn’t Trimble’s fault that things aren’t going well for Unionism in general. He’s a convenient scapegoat. When it became obvious that the line the UUP – and unionists in general – kept drawing in the sand kept being crossed out/walked over and everyone involved in the process insist they stop drawing lines in the sand because everyone outside of unionism accepts unionism has much further to go yet, UUP support collapsed and everyone ran for shelter under Paisley’s giant trenchcoat. But in truth all that has happened is that Unionism has backed itself into an ever tighter corner, with an ever-decreasing number of options. Who will you turn to when the DUP’s support collapses just like the UUP’s did?
Mind you, the whole obstructionist thing slows the process down so effectively that given enough time, the UUP will have elected a leader by then who will be seen as ‘hardline’ enough for the pendulum to swing all the way back again and the cycle to renew itself…great work lads.
Your UYUC was at least v2.0 as v1.0 disbanded in the 70′s!
…or are you a negotiator for the UUP-Gurn Whinge Boke?
“….I’ll never live down the “bright young thin” tag ”
nor indeed the “next Peter Weir” tag-you should have sued
“Getting back to Trimble, Yes, I accept the man did make mistakes but dont we all
“The bottom line is that the man took risks for peace and that should be commended by all”
Never a truer word was said, Lord Belmont,
At least he lived to reach the House of Lords. The big fella Michael Collins was shot by his republicans for also taking risks for peace,.
.
truthseeker must be Roy Garland!!!
Its only taken me a month but I think I’ve got it Darth!
East Londonderry.
I’m still pretty sure that Karl is South Belfast through. Think I’ll collar my suspect at the next UUC meeting.