BBC On The Record - Broadcast: 21.05.00

Interview: DAVID TRIMBLE, Ulster Unionist Party leader.

Says he will tell his party that there is no alternative to accepting the IRAs offer to put its weapons beyond use.



JOHN HUMPHRYS: Next Sunday the eight hundred and sixty members of the Ulster Unionist Party's ruling council will meet to decide whether to follow their leader, David Trimble, accept the deal on offer from the IRA and go back into a devolved government with Sinn Fein. Or to throw the whole thing out and force Mr Trimble to resign. Well then what? Mr Trimble is in our Belfast studio. I think it's Saturday in fact Mr Trimble of course isn't it.. DAVID TRIMBLE: Yes it is. HUMPHRYS: And the way the council feels at the moment it seems unlikely that you are going to be able to pull it off doesn't it? TRIMBLE: No I don't think that's right. The reason why we've postponed was simply that it had taken so long to sort out some details, important matters too, with the government that the whole picture didn't stabilise until Wednesday of last week. So we felt and indeed people were telling from all levels in the party that as our opponents had been out spreading an awful amount of misinformation around that it would be better if we took more time to give people the chance to think things through to explain them to them. There's no reason why we should rush things to satisfy other people in some arbitrary deadline, we thought it was better that we should take our time so that we could have a serious dialogue and that the council will, on Saturday as you say, then come to a balanced and considered decision. HUMPHRYS: But the meeting was originally called and then postponed wasn't it. The explanation many people give is that it was because you simply didn't have the support. TRIMBLE: Well I've given you my explanation and as I took the decision I can tell you the reasons too. HUMPHRYS: Okay. Your message then next Saturday is going to be quite straightforward is it. You are saying I had my reservations, my reservations about the IRA offer and all the rest of it but the questions that I was asking have now been answered so I accept Republicans' offer. That's going to be your message is it? TRIMBLE: It's going to be slightly different actually to that. I am going to say to them as I have said over the course of the last week or so that there are some new things in this IRA statement and I have to say too, had the IRA said this in January it wouldn't have been necessary to suspend the institutions. But I do think it was only because the institutions were suspended that we got this further advance and on this further advance the key thing is that the IRA are saying that they will - not could not might - but that they will completely and verifiably in an incredible manner put their weapons beyond use. Now, I still have some questions because we don't know precisely when they are going to do this and there are still some points that we expect General De Chastelaine and his commission to sort out about the methodology but I have to say to people that the only way that we are actually going to achieve the objective of bringing about a society at peace and free from the threat of paramilitary organisations - Republican and Loyalist - is to go and put this offer to the test, holding back gets nothing, whereas going forward and putting it to the test will produce progress. I hope it will produce progress quickly and smoothly and cleanly but if it turns out that people let us down, well then I mean we know what to do and from February what pressure actually works. HUMPHRYS: The fact is of course, they may let you down. It is a promise of something that they will do rather than you being able to act on something they have already done. So therefore what you are saying to your members is look, trust me, trust my judgement of the IRA's intentions. TRIMBLE: Again I would put it in slightly different terms. I would say to my colleagues: trust yourselves, trust yourselves, you do not have to do anything other than through your own free choice. And you can make a judgement now, you can make a judgement later as to whether people are complying with the promise that they have given. But I have to also say, let us bear in mind what the objective of all of this is. And it comes back to some very basic things: It comes back to the agreement that we made two years ago. Do we think that that was important, do we think that was worthwhile, do we think that it offers the opportunity for a better future for everybody in Northern Ireland? I still think it does and I think it's still worth pursuing with. It gives us the opportunity of producing a society free from threat and where everybody can feel at ease with ourselves. I think that's still worth working for. I know it's not going to be easy, it hasn't been easy over the last few years and nobody said that it would be easy. But you have to consider what alternative is there. I know there are people with grave reservations about it, I know people who feel very hurt about aspects of the arrangements and how they have operated. But at the same time we have got to look at this carefully and coolly and there is no practical alternative being offered. My critics have nothing to offer. Nothing at all, no achievement to point to, no hope to point to for the future either. This gives us hope and we know what we have achieved and what we can achieve. So I say to my party and my council be confident in yourself. Be confident in yourself and let us put other people to the test. We've done it before, we can do it again and we know that we can carry this through successfully. HUMPHRYS: But you are actually going a little further than that, indeed quite a lot future than that aren't you. You are saying now the IRA campaign is finally over. TRIMBLE: What I am saying, again, I put it in slightly different terms. HUMPHRYS: It thought you wrote that this morning. TRIMBLE: I'm putting it in slightly different terms just to put it into perspective. I'm not saying the future is going to be entirely free from violence. I think the organised coherent campaign that the IRA operated for thirty years is not going to come back again. There will be problems, there may be still be violence and the violence may come from dissident elements, it may even come from elements within the IRA and indeed we still have occasional attacks and shootings coming from all paramilitaries and we want that to stop. What I am saying is that the major organised campaign has gone because, and the truth of the matter is, that it was beaten. Now it may not be diplomatic to say that but the terrorist campaign failed and it failed primarily because the security forces were effective and society as a whole was determined that it wouldn't succeed. So that campaign isn't going to come back and I think people needn't worry about that. But there are still problems with groups and individuals and there's potential problems until the weapons issues is resolved properly. HUMPHRYS: So, just to repeat my earlier question then. The IRA campaign as we understood it, the Provisional IRA campaign is over as far as you are concerned? TRIMBLE: I don't think it's going to come back again and I don't even think we're likely to have a Canary Wharf type incident again either because they discovered indeed from the popular reaction to the Omagh incident, which was the work of dissidents that there is no future in that sort of campaign at all, so they know themselves that terrorism isn't going to work and indeed it will destroy their political objectives, their political project, so I think we don't have to fear that. But that doesn't mean that we have no problems. We have problems through the racketeering that goes on, from the criminality that's associated with it and from paramilitary bosses wishing to exercise power in particular neighbourhoods, so we still have problems to tackle there and that's why it's important that we keep the focus not just on weapons but on the need for paramilitarism as a whole to end and for us then to get on to try and clean up the racketeering. There's a big clean up job that's going to have to be done in this society and the only way it's going to be done is through us moving forward with the Assembly, having security functions, having police and criminal justice functions devolved to it and doing the job ourselves. If we wait for the Northern Ireland Office to clear up society in Northern Ireland it will never happen. The only people that can do it are the people of Northern Ireland, their elected representatives working together. HUMPHRYS: Yeah, but your problem next Saturday is going to be that many of your members believe that the focus should be kept on weapons and they believe that promises from the IRA are all very well but they will not believe the campaign is over until they see weapons being destroyed, actually destroyed, being got rid of. TRIMBLE: Well what I'm saying to them is that what we're proposing to do will achieve that but that what they're proposing to do will not. I mean my critics have no plans or no proposals and no ideas as to how in practice decommissioning can be achieved and paramilitarism actually ended. They have no proposals, they have no idea, they have no way to point out how it can be done. What I'm saying is that this path that we're following will do it but I'm not saying that it's going to do it easily and quickly, it will probably require continual effort on our part but then by virtue of our efforts so far we have moved the IRA to the point where they are promising to do it - now that's a long way from where they were a year ago when they were saying there would be no decommissioning by the front door, the back door, and not a bullet, not an ounce and all the rest of it. They've moved on a long way from that, those statements are no longer being made. Now they're saying that they will put weapons beyond use completely, verifiably and in a credible manner. HUMPHRYS: There is another reason why your council may not agree to letting you go back into the Executive and that is the RUC. They have passed unanimously a resolution saying that the name of the Royal Ulster Constabulary must be retained and you don't have that undertaking to give them. TRIMBLE: What the Council wants and what the Council said at its last meeting was that it wants to see that the proud name of the RUC does not disappear. I don't think it will. I think that we will see that as we move into new arrangements that the honoured name of the RUC will be kept in perpetuity, it may not be used on a day to day basis...... HUMPHRYS: No. It won't be a working title will it....? TRIMBLE: That may be a working title but that doesn't mean that the name will disappear - it will not, of that I'm quite confident but we'll put all the matter before that. You see what Council was after, what the ordinary Unionists felt about this, and it's quite a simple matter but quite an important matter. Republicans have been going around and other people who are sympathetic towards them or try to understand them kept saying to us that with regard to these arrangements for decommissioning and all the rest of it, we mustn't humiliate the paramilitaries, we must allow things to appear that they haven't been defeated and then at the same time, nationalists are turning round and saying, 'we must inflict a defeat upon the police force', because that is what the business about stripping them of their proud title of the Royal title of the crown and of the flag - that's what it means. It's a symbolic defeat which for some reason, for some pique within Nationalism they wish to inflict upon the police force and of course people feel that, they feel that they've been... they're going to be humiliated and what they're insisting with regard to this resolution is 'we will not be humiliated'. HUMPHRYS: Indeed, and your own..... TRIMBLE: That is not going to...... I must now...... I'm now satisfied that the government has learned the lesson of the folly that was in Patten and that it is now very anxious to ensure that the police and their families do not feel humiliated and they're going to reflect that in the future arrangements with regard to the name and with regard to the badge. HUMPHRYS: Your own deputy.......... TRIMBLE: ....and I think that when the Council see that they will see that as a meeting the need that they had. HUMPHRYS: Just a very quick final thought and that is if you don't succeed, one of your strongest supporters has warned, that there will be a joint administration between London and Dublin - that will be the result of it. I'm sorry we've only got twenty seconds. Can you deal with that? Is that likely in your view? TRIMBLE: I don't like proceeding by some form of blackmail and furthermore I don't actually think that that's going to happen in any formal sense but we do know that there is a close working relationship and people had better bear in mind who are going to take the decisions if we don't take them? HUMPHRYS: David Trimble, thank you very much indeed.
NB. This transcript was typed from a transcription unit recording and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy.