Emma deSouza: Northern Ireland needs today's politicians to live up to Trimble's example
David Trimble once said: “Anyone who thinks that in 1998 that the unionist people can impose their will on all the people of Northern Ireland, and the British government, and world opinion, international community, is deluded.” Photo: Niall Carson/PA
Northern Ireland has lost another peacemaker; David Trimble, the unionist architect of the Good Friday Agreement died on Monday. What he leaves behind is a legacy championing peace, and people, over party politics — a principle which Northern Ireland sorely needs in its political representatives as much today as we did in our past.
Trimble became the Ulster Unionist Party leader in 1995, and shortly thereafter became the first unionist leader to meet with a Taoiseach in 30 years. In 1997 during the all-party peace talks, he became the first unionist leader to sit down with Sinn Féin since the partition of Ireland in 1921.
He was unwavering in his determination to find a negotiated solution to bring peace to Northern Ireland and was unafraid to step out of the trenches despite fierce opposition from political opponents, some of whom were within his own party.
Those who worked to deliver peace didn’t do so for favour or political points; Trimble — like John Hume, David Ervine, Seamus Mallon, and others — knew there was a political price to be paid for delivering peace.
Yet they persisted, safe in the knowledge that despite protest from a vocal minority, people in Northern Ireland wanted peace, and they were tasked with delivering it.
Yes, there were tensions — negotiating an agreement whereby no one party received everything they wanted, but everyone received something, was an incredibly challenging feat and stands today as one of the greatest political accomplishments of the last century.
As with those who passed before him, the airwaves, papers, and now — social media — are littered with eulogies, memories, and media clips of Trimble’s path to peace. With this renewed focus, a whole new generation are being shown a window into the past.
In 1998, Trimble was under constant protection, rushed out of meeting halls by police guard and facing fervent and vicious attacks from the DUP and its supporters — some sang about burning him alive. Such vitriolic hatred for a unionist perceived by hardliners as “too quick to compromise” still echoes today.
Earlier this year, a new Ulster Unionist Party leader, Doug Beattie, was subjected to malice and threats after he announced that he would not be attending further unionist protests over opposition to the Northern Ireland protocol. One of his election posters was vandalized with a noose graffitied around his neck. Hard decisions over political expediency and ease come at great personal and political cost.
Trimble was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside John Hume in 1998. Their joint acceptance was yet another marker of the mutual respect and understanding that developed between the two leaders, a generosity which has slowly ebbed away as the DUP, who vehemently opposed the Good Friday Agreement, rose to prominence.
Today, political unionism is deeply fractured, becoming wholly intractable and uncompromising over the impasse stemming from Brexit and the Northern Ireland protocol. Who within unionism is capable of stepping into the shoes of the political leaders that preceded them?
Despite having no functioning Assembly for the sixth time since 1998, the people of Northern Ireland have embedded for themselves the principles of mutual respect and understanding. An entire generation has since grown up under the cover of peace, and it is through this generation and the ones who follow that the legacies of Northern Ireland’s peacemakers will live on.
Evidence already demonstrates that young people in Northern Ireland have been unburdened by the trauma of the past. Emerging is a generation focused on a shared future. Matthew Taylor, who co-founded Pure Mental NI, a youth-led charity campaigning for mental health education, has often spoken of moving beyond green and orange politics.
Reflecting on his own upbringing, Taylor said, “I’m from a very unionist area.
"It doesn’t really matter, the symbolic has never mattered to me; it’s always been about the social and economic bit. That’s how I think you get change."
This is a new generation who do not see things through the binary lens of the past, but rather take a more nuanced, pragmatic, and empathetic approach to living in a shared society. Many of us could learn from them.
We are facing the greatest challenge to the gains of the peace process since 1998, Brexit and its outworkings have disrupted the delicate equilibrium of the Good Friday Agreement, but the way to restore it is not by imposing one community’s wishes over another.
As Trimble once said: “Anyone who thinks that in 1998 that the unionist people can impose their will on all the people of Northern Ireland, and the British government, and world opinion, international community, is deluded.”
The same applies today, neither community can seek to impose their will on another — to do so is to undo the very fabric that holds this place, and its people, together. Unilateral action is not the answer, nor is collapsing the Northern Ireland institutions.
We need a negotiated solution, one which once again requires compromise. A third attempt to nominate a Speaker to the Northern Ireland Assembly looms, this shouldn’t be perceived as a “political stunt”, but an opportunity to come back from the brink.
Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, but this work is not complete, not even close. The vast majority of human rights provisions remain unimplemented, sectarianism and paramilitaries continue to blight progress, but then peace was never going to be achieved overnight. It is a process that we all must work at – not just in Northern Ireland, but across the island of Ireland.
In the words of David Trimble: “The dark shadow we seem to see in the distance is not really a mountain ahead, but the shadow of the mountain behind – a shadow from the past thrown forward into our future. It is a dark sludge of historical sectarianism. We can leave it behind us if we wish.”
As in 1998, unionism and its people need leadership, we all do. The Good Friday Agreement was not achieved through grandstanding and threats, it was forged by compromise and generosity of spirit, by reaching out the hand of friendship and working together — not apart.
Let this be a moment — an inflection point, to renew relationships so that the legacy of those who gave us peace is not lost but built upon.
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