Trimble’s ‘fear of showing emotion’ caused his downfall

FORMER Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble’s poor negotiating skills and fear of showing emotion caused his downfall.

That is the view of former SDLP leader Seamus Mallon who shared power with Mr Trimble in the Northern Assembly for more than three years.

Mr Mallon said yesterday he was very sad about Mr Trimble’s downfall on a personal level and confirmed that he had appealed to people to vote for him before the Westminster elections.

“The man never played a decent hand of poker in his life, while he had enormous political strengths he was not a good negotiator and I think that was part of his downfall,” Mr Mallon told RTÉ.

He recalled an incident when he brought Mr Trimble to meet the families of a Catholic and Protestant who had been murdered side-by-side in Northern Ireland.

“He found it very difficult to deal with people on that kind of basis, he was afraid of emotion, absolutely afraid of it. Again he would have seen it as a sign of weakness,” Mr Mallon said.

But when Mr Trimble was sitting talking to those people in their houses, the real David Trimble surfaced and the emotion showed, according to Mr Mallon.

“I will never forget sitting in both those houses and that emotion was actually raw. If we could have translated that emotion somehow back into the political process in a more public way, then I think his problems and indeed the problems of Northern Ireland, might not be as deep as they are today,” he said.

He said Mr Trimble was a very complex person and in his relationship with the Good Friday Agreement and negotiations and the working of the Executive was quite unique.

While Mr Trimble supported the Agreement, he could not handle it politically or emotionally, the former SDLP leader said.

“He could not say ‘look I am leading on this basis’ and he had a hang up about what he called ‘this vision thing’,” Mr Mallon said. The former UUP leader thought the ‘vision thing’ was wimpish. “He thought it was not real politics, that real politics was dealing and conniving - unfortunately when it came to dealing he was probably one of the worse negotiators I have seen for a long time,” Mr Mallon added.