Trimble’s final fall from party’s fractured ruins

ULSTER Unionists were outraged during the election campaign when the Rev Ian Paisley claimed David Trimble was counting down the “time to the electric chair and the rope”.

Baby-faced barrister Rodney McCune, a rising star in the party, claimed the comments sent a chilling message to voters.

However, since the DUP's emergence in the November 2003 Assembly Election as the strongest voice in unionism, it has been hard to escape the impression that David Trimble was biding his time as leader of the Ulster Unionists.

The turning point came in January last year, when Mr Trimble's chief UUP rival, Jeffrey Donaldson, defected to the DUP along with two assembly colleagues, Arlene Foster and

Norah Beare.

Under Mr Trimble's leadership, claimed Donaldson, the UUP was no longer the party of traditional unionist values.

But he wasn't always regarded that way.

The Queen's University Belfast law lecturer was elected in 1975 as a Vanguard Unionist in South Belfast.

The party opposed power sharing involving Ulster Unionists, nationalist SDLP and cross-community Alliance Party ministers.

Almost three decades later, he would sit in government as First Minister with Paisleyite unionists, the SDLP and Sinn Féin.

He switched allegiances to the Ulster Unionists with the collapse of the Vanguards in 1978.

A strong Upper Bann by-election victory in 1990 marked him out as a formidable force in the party and within five years he captured the leadership.

In the House of Commons, David Trimble proved an effective operator propping up John Major's government while bringing the destruction of IRA weapons to the fore.

When the Provisionals reinstated their ceasefire in 1997, David Trimble was posed his first real challenge as Sinn Féin claimed its place in talks at Stormont.

While the DUP and UK Unionists walked out of talks, the UUP remained, insisting they would fight the corner for unionism.

The second challenge came during talks leading to the Good Friday Agreement, when Mr Trimble came under intense pressure to sign up to a deal which promised power-sharing but also allowed for the early release of paramilitary prisoners.

Jeffrey Donaldson and others could not stomach it, walking out of the negotiations and creating the hairline fracture which the UUP would never heal.

Mr Trimble's pragmatism was rewarded in 1998 when he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume.

However in the months following the Agreement, he also showed caution initially refusing to rush into government with Sinn Féin without some move on IRA disarmament.

In November 1999, Mr Trimble took another gamble, persuading his party to go into government with Sinn Féin on the understanding IRA decommissioning would follow.

When that did not materialise, he forced the then Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson to suspend the Stormont executive, establishing a pattern of stop start devolved government every time he wanted movement from the IRA.

The IRA's decision in October 2001 to finally embark on decommissioning, in the wake of 9/11, was viewed by the Ulster Unionist leader as a personal vindication.

"This is the day we were told would never happen. This is the day we were told we would never see," he triumphantly declared.

However every Trimble gamble was not rewarded at the ballot box.

In the 2001 general election, the DUP was making inroads into the UUP grip and Mr Trimble faced a recount in his own constituency.

The 2003 Assembly Election was the watershed moment in his battle with the DUP when the party could no longer sustain internal divisions or maintain its grasp on unionism.

David Trimble found himself an increasingly marginalised figure as the Democratic Unionists assumed the lead role in unionism in negotiations featuring Sinn Féin.

"David Trimble's been an electoral liability for us for some time," one colleague caustically remarked as Mr Trimble slipped to defeat in Upper Bann.

"It's time to draw a line under the Trimble era and find a way to rebuild this party from the ruins."