Ex-BBC journalist Stephen Walker has a different view of retirement than most of us. After writing an acclaimed biography of John Hume, he has turned his attention to one of the other main figures of the peace process – David Trimble.
In his new book, David Trimble: Peacemaker, he explores the history of a complex character who still divides opinion to this day.
Extracts from the book have been covered by the Belfast Telegraph, and there are some interesting gems. On his school days:
At Ballyholme Primary School, Miss Martin recorded that 10-year-old David was very bright and able, but the presentation of his work needed to improve: “David is probably one of the most intelligent in the class yet this report rates him just very average – halfway down. So long as progress is made by written examinations he will remain in this category. Unless he makes a real effort to overcome his indifference and write legibly and intelligently. His work is dirty, carelessly set out and his compositions so full of ridiculous mistakes that often it is not worth marking. Very often he can’t decipher his own figures. Look at his accuracy marks. Five out of ten.” His teacher said there was “not the slightest hope” of him getting into grammar school the next year “unless he eradicates this gross carelessness”.
Miss Martin also said in 1955: “Received little cooperation this year. A pity to make so little use of a good mind.” However, Walker writes that “in the months that followed, Trimble’s school work clearly improved, and Miss Martin’s prediction of failure did not come to pass. Much to the relief of his parents, David passed the 11-plus exam and was accepted into Bangor Grammar School. He would be the only Trimble child to pass the test…the Trimbles were naturally delighted that David had secured a place at the local school, which was just a minute’s walk from the family home in Victoria Road.” However, when Trimble joined Bangor Grammar in 1956, he was, Walker says, “a shy, awkward 11-year-old and felt like he did not belong. The early years were difficult, and as with his time at Ballyholme Primary School, his experience at the grammar school would be mixed”. Walker says the headmaster regarded Trimble as “academically challenged” and there was a personality clash between headmaster and pupil which “may partly explain why he did not look back at his days in Bangor Grammar with much fondness”.
Sam McBride also covers Trimbles’ suspected autism and his brusque manner:
Walker was told by the writer Ruth Dudley Edwards, part of Trimble’s informal coterie of advisers, that he was a “most obliging, kind friend” but “never got signals”. She said a number of colleagues had told him they thought he was neurodivergent: “David said to me in later years ‘They tell me I’m autistic, and I probably am, rather’.”
Trimble’s press secretary, David Kerr, admired the UUP leader’s far-sightedness, telling Walker: “You have to understand the man that he was. He was highly intelligent, probably on the spectrum in terms of his level of intelligence. He was able to read documents faster than anybody. He was able to properly process information and see through issues and see beyond issues further and faster than anybody.”
His economic adviser, Graham Gudgin, was in awe of Trimble’s ability, telling Walker: “He was a difficult man to like because he wasn’t communicating. I think he was on some sort of autistic spectrum. He had a phenomenal memory, better than anybody I met in Cambridge.”
Despite his intelligence he came across as very rude and arrogant. When introduced to former deputy first minister Seamus Mallon’s chief of staff, Trimble cut off an official to say “I know very well who he is, and I have no wish to be introduced” before walking off. Walker recounts how, after being appointed BBC NI’s London correspondent, a UUP official organised for him to “bump into” Trimble coming out of a studio interview. He says: “When Trimble walked towards me, I introduced myself and proffered a hand. I said ‘Mr Trimble, I am Stephen Walker, BBC Northern Ireland’s new London correspondent. I wanted to say hello’. To which Trimble uttered three words: ‘Hello and goodbye.’ He then walked off.”
Sam is at pains to point out that being autistic is no excuse for rudeness: “It should be added that many people who are autistic are impeccably polite. Many people who are not autistic are insufferably rude.”
What does appear to be utterly abhorrent is his gloating reaction to the Bloody Sunday atrocity. From Stephen Walker in the Sunday Life:
The next day, David Trimble, as normal, made his way to Queen’s University in Belfast, where he worked as a law lecturer. There was only one topic of conversation on campus: the shootings in Derry. Law student Mary McAleese remembers that Monday very well: “I travelled over to the university that day, as I did many a morning, on the bus with a man who is now a retired High Court judge, Catholic and a very fine fellow, very fine brain.
“We were walking down the avenue when David Trimble came towards us with a huge smile and said words to the effect of ‘Isn’t it a wonderful day?’. I was a bit taken aback precisely because he wasn’t the kind of person who ever greeted you. If he met you in the street he wouldn’t have greeted you. He wouldn’t have known who we were, certainly at the beginning of our academic careers in Queen’s. He never was a person to engage in conversation, but on that day, he was very, very friendly.
“The Pollyanna in me thought ‘Oh gosh, this is remarkable. What’s happened to him? He’s become so friendly’. My friend said nothing until we got into the library, and there were little groups of people standing around to whom he had done the same thing. They said he was actually going up and down the road, looking for Catholics to whom he could say wasn’t it a wonderful day, which wasn’t a reference to the day at all, but a reference to the day before.”
McAleese is convinced Trimble was talking about the shootings in Derry, and says the remarks were obvious to everyone he made them to: “You see he was nakedly sectarian back in those days. I had not experienced that side of him, I have to say, until that day. I was stunned when it was brought to my attention.” She also insists his remarks were not a one-off. She recalls a story of Trimble being at a dinner at Queen’s, and using “naked sectarian language” to describe Catholics, and how a diner sitting close to him was “absolutely shocked”.
Many Nationalists never liked Trimble and still don’t. They most associate him with the triumphalism of Drumcree when he danced down the street with Ian Paisley. They don’t like how he is portrayed as an equal to John Hume. Eamon McCann described Trimble winning the Nobel Peace Prize as “winning the lottery without buying a ticket”. It did not help that while John Hume donated all of his Nobel Prize money to charity, Trimble stuck it in his pocket.
Trimbles’ supporters point to the personal risks he took for peace, about how he faced down the hardliners of Unionism. They say his views softened as he got older, again from Mary McAleese:
In 1998, Trimble was on a family holiday in the Moselle Valley when a Real IRA bomb tore apart the centre of Omagh. He and Denis Rogan, the UUP chairman, went to a funeral Mass at St Mary’s Church in Buncrana in Co Donegal for three boys who died in the bombing.
After a successful career in academia, McAleese had been elected president of Ireland in 1997. She was sitting in front of Trimble, and at the end of the church service, she turned around to greet him: “I was there and David was there, and he was sitting behind me in the seat. Now, you know we hadn’t ever been really bosom pals, let’s face it, (but) I would always have regarded Daphne very highly.
“He was sitting behind me, and I turned initially just to welcome him. I was going to shake his hand, and the two of us just stood up and hugged, and both of us were very tearful. That was a moment, I think, when a lot of things just fell away, a lot of old baggage. A lot of old stuff just fell away. I saw in him the man he had become — the quite extraordinary person he had become. Now, he hadn’t abandoned unionism, and he hadn’t abandoned his beliefs, and he hadn’t abandoned those principles. Still, of course, there would be times, you know, when he would be quite scathing about the Republic. But that was a different David Trimble. That was a man who had been on the hot-red forge of life.”
It should also be noted that Trimble changed his position on gay marriage and walking his lesbian daughter down the aisle on her wedding day.
So a complex guy indeed, and ultimately, like everything in Northern Ireland, how you view his legacy depends on where you are observing it from.
Stephen’s book David Trimble: Peacemaker is published this Thursday and will be available from all good bookstores and online from Amazon etc.
Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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