Public opinion crucial, Trimble warns UUP

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble said tonight he wanted to see rival factions within his party unite around a common position as tension mounted in the run-up to a crucial meeting of the UUP’s ruling executive.

As pro- and anti-Good Friday Agreement wings of the UUP wooed party members in the run-up to Saturday’s meeting, Mr Trimble confirmed that there were frantic efforts taking place behind the scenes to find common ground.

However he warned critics of his power-sharing policy that whatever strategy they came up with it would have to “take public opinion with you”.

“It’s all very well to say: Oh, set a deadline.

“At one meeting of our party executive, one person was heard to say all the ministers should resign and we should wait to see what happens.

“It seemed to me like, you know, let’s pull the house down and wait to see what turns up.

“That isn’t itself the sensible approach. What you have got to do has got to be in terms of a strategy and within a context where you have reasonable expectation that things will work out. But one of the things that is critical in all of this, and some of my unionist opponents forget this, is that you have got to take public opinion with you.

“Not hardline unionist opinion, not just unionist opinion as a whole, but you have got to take public opinion with you in Britain and around the world. That is crucial.”

Mr Trimble was commenting after rival camps set out their positions ahead of Saturday’s meeting of the party’s 860-strong ruling council.

In a letter to delegates, one of the chief sceptics of the party’s power-sharing policy, Lagan Valley MP Jeffery Donaldson, proposed a plan which would focus on the need to preserve the Assembly while at the same time offering a mechanism which would exclude Sinn Fein from power-sharing.

Mr Trimble, in his letter to delegates, acknowledged their concern about the peace process but also insisted there were economic and social benefits.

He argued that the paramilitary violence monitor was a useful mechanism for maintaining pressure on republicans and in the event of a negative report it would force the British government to act against Sinn Fein.

However, he warned that if the British government failed to act, the Ulster Unionists would.

Unionists have been concerned about republican intentions towards the peace process following a summer of street violence along sectarian flashpoint areas of Belfast and allegations of IRA involvement in a burglary at Castlereagh police station.

Mr Trimble said tonight Mr Donaldson’s letter could appear to delegates as “not being miles apart” from his own position.

He noted that his opponents within the party were not talking about bringing the Assembly down.

And he told them: “This is the only devolution show in town.”