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IAIN WATSON: It's tough at the top; in
the Ulster Unionist Party, leadership challenges seem to be coming round
with increasing frequency. David Trimble's hold on power is uncertain.
But there are fears that if he goes, the peace process will be gone with
him.
David Trimble's political
future could be decided within weeks. Senior members of his own party are
now denouncing him as a lame duck leader and even his closest allies are
saying his hold on high office is in danger. But the real danger is to
the peace process itself. A senior official for the Northern Ireland office
told On the Record 'without Trimble, we're doomed.'
JEFFREY DONALDSON MP: I think there has got to be a change
of policy and if there isn't a change of policy then I think the party
as a whole, never mind the leader, is in deep deep trouble.
KEN MAGINNIS MP: In a major UK party you wouldn't
find a policy change leading to a leadership change, but emotionally people
are now tied into, they've paid for where we are with their own blood and
hence that could lead very easily to a leadership change and I believe
a leadership change, under those circumstances would give us thirty years
of turmoil.
BRIAN COWAN: We want to see a situation
where everyone survives in the forthcoming period because these are the
people who are the architects of the agreement, these are the people who
have given the commitment to the Agreement.
WATSON: Trimble's grasp on his
own party has been slipping; he narrowly survived a leadership challenge
in March, gaining just fifty-seven per cent of the vote. In May he called
on his party to support his decision to share power with Sinn Fein at
Stormont - even though the IRA had refused to decommission any of its
weapons in advance. This time, he gained only 53% backing. Now, his opponents
are saying his leadership is about to be consigned to history.
It's party time for the 'No Surrender' faction of Unionism - The Reverend
Willie McRea - a member of Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party - snatched
South Antrim at a by-election ten days' ago. This had been the Ulster Unionists'
second safest seat. Many of David Trimble's MPs are now worried that this
spectacle may be repeated in the general and local elections next year.
Pro-Agreement Unionists, along with the Northern Ireland Secretary, blame
the candidate.
DAVID BURNSIDE: I think there will be a
lot of spin doctors trying to use the line, "Oh well, there are - there's
this great swathe of new Unionism out there. Sitting out there, doesn't
vote, so, everything's perfect out there, and they didn't vote in this
by-election because Burnside was sceptical about the agreement, and somehow
they're going to vote in the future." That's dangerous. Because that's
fooling yourself of the feeling of the Unionist population. Everybody who
was on the ground in South Antrim knows, the Unionist community is disillusioned
WILLIE ROSS MP: If we lose in such a very
moderate liberal constituency, heaven knows what the position is going
to be in the others, certainly much worse.
WATSON: David Trimble is on foreign
territory. As Northern Ireland's First Minister, he attended a meeting
with his Southern Irish counterparts in Dublin last week. A new grouping
in his own party, called Re-Union, say it's time he was more vocal about
the benefits of the Good Friday Agreement. And the Irish government say
he has much to be proud of. The Republic's long-standing, constitutional
claim over the North has been peacefully put to rest.
COWAN: I think great credit has
to be given to David Trimble and to those like him in the Unionist Party,
who have for example by their negotiating stance, they have brought about
changes in Articles 2 and 3 of the constitution which no rejectionist by
means of the less constructive, means by which they were going about things,
would ever achieve.
ALEX KANE: I think one of the troubles
with the Agreement is that it wasn't promoted. It became, even though
we adopted it, it became the policy that dare not speak its name, to some
extent and if the leadership is not seen to have a total loyalty to the
Agreement, it makes it very difficult for your grass roots - now I think
there are a lot of benefits within the Agreement
WATSON: Evidence that the Good
Friday Agreement is working in practice was on display here in Dublin Castle.
Ministers from both sides of the Irish border met to discuss areas of common
concern - such as tourism, and funding from the European Union.
But David Trimble and other pro-Agreement Unionists say that unless there's
progress on the two major issues which concern them - the decommissioning
of paramilitary weapons and reform of the policing service in Northern
Ireland - then his leadership, and with it all the institutions of the
Good Friday agreement, could fall.
Some say that nothing short of divine intervention may overcome one of
the most intractable difficulties -the reform the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Proposals from the former Conservative Cabinet minister Chris Patten are
before parliament. These would change the name of the force, reduce its
manpower and scrap its badge. All this is seen as essential if Nationalists
are to be persuaded to join up. But some Unionists would prefer to leave
the Agreement behind than see Patten's proposals implemented in full.
BURNSIDE: This agreement was not
meant to destroy the Royal Ulster Constabulary, that's not why I voted
for it, that's not why many Unionists voted for it, here and now, like
me are very disillusioned. If it's Patten a hundred per cent, it brings
down the Agreement in my opinion because he operated outside the Terms
of Reference and that's what David Trimble has said as well.
WATSON: In June, Cyril Ramaphosa
from the ANC and the former Finnish president, Maarti Ahtasari, visited
Downing Street following an inspection of IRA weapons dumps but nothing
has happened since. Perhaps to encourage a new gesture from the IRA, the
government announced plans for further troop withdrawals from Northern
Ireland and the abandonment of extradition proceedings against Republican
terrorists. But another inspection of IRA arms won't be enough to satisfy
sceptical Unionists.
JEFFREY DONALDSON: Well the first arms inspection
didn't save South Antrim, it didn't stop the DUP winning that seat - who
in their right mind is going to suggest that a second inspection is going
to save the Ulster Unionist Party from electoral meltdown?
WATSON: The waterfront
hall in Belfast symbolises a growing sense of confidence in the city during
a period of relative quiet. But, over the past year, it's doubled as
the venue for many of David Trimble's battles with his own party. The
Ulster unionists will gather here for their Annual Conference next Saturday.
Even those close to David Trimble say he'll get a reception somewhat less
friendly than Tony Blair received at the hands of the Women's Institute.
But Trimble's opponents say he'll try to suppress dissent by packing the
meeting with his own supporters and controlling the agenda; the real showdown
will have to wait. Trimble's opponents plan to call a meeting of the party's
ruling Ulster Unionist council for later this month and demand substantial
policy changes which could make his position as leader untenable.
ROSS: I would expect the
council meeting to be called within the relatively near future; I would
expect at that council meeting there will be demands for policy changes
in regard to the Patten report on the RUC and policy changes in regard
to weapons - no guns without government is still the basic demand.
DONALDSON: Well, I think that what we have
to do is, urgently review our continued participation in a power sharing
executive, that includes Martin McGuinness, and Barbara de Brun, Sinn Fein
IRA ministers, in the absence of any decommissioning by the IRA. That may
mean that the executive has to be suspended until decommissioning has happened
or it may mean that we have to withdraw from the executive in the absence
of decommissioning.
KANE: If that policy is endorsed
by the Council, I think David Trimble's position would probably become
untenable because he would be a First Minister, in name only, because he
would have been forced to withdraw by his own party and I don't think the
IRA would shift. I don't think nationalists would shift, I don't think
the government would shift and I think Trimble would shift, I think he
would probably choose to fall on his sword at that stage.
WATSON: Jeffrey Donaldson gained
credibility with the anti-agreement unionists by walking away from negotiations
just before the Good Friday agreement was signed. He had concerns as to
whether decommissioning would ever be delivered, and over the early release
of terrorist prisoners. At thirty-seven, he's in no rush for the Ulster
Unionist leadership. But his opponents say, if David Trimble falls, he'll
try to step in to the vacancy
KANE: If he doesn't strike now,
someone else will strike, and the danger of Ulster Unionist politics, is
that leaders tend to stay much longer than expected.
DONALDSON: My priority is to ensure the
Ulster unionist party is placed back on a firm footing -whatever it takes
to do that I will not shirk my responsibility as an elected representative
and I hope that that will be the same for others.
WATSON: So you won't rule out standing?
DONALDSON: Well we haven't got a leadership
contest at present and therefore there is nothing to stand for, but at
the end of the day it is absolutely essential the Ulster Unionist party
grasp these issues. There is a crisis of confidence at the moment, there
is no doubt about that and that needs to be dealt with, that requires firm
leadership and I think everyone now is watching and looking to see what
David Trimble will do, will he provide that firm leadership?
MAGINNIS: Those who talk about
going back to strong leadership forget that strong leadership never achieved
anything. well it did, it achieved the Anglo Irish agreement. And that
wasn't very clever. That was a huge slide down a very unpleasant slippery
slope for Ulster Unionism. Do they forget that? Do they forget the coffins
that they walked behind?
WATSON: But David Trimble can take
control of events, says the defeated South Antrim candidate . As party
leader, he could call a meeting of the Ulster Unionist council himself
and steal a march on his opponents by taking a tougher line on decommissioning
and policing. David Burnside says this would avoid an assault on his leadership
and help heal divisions.
BURNSIDE: I think he's got to set
deadlines - deadlines on decommissioning, hand over a real product. Guns,
hundred of guns, and tons of explosives. I think it's better to lead
from the front rather than have the party dragging, dragging the policy
endorsement out of the party organisation, I think it would be much better
if David led from the front, and I hope he does.
ACTUALITY.
WATSON: At a rally of the pro-Agreement
Re-Union group, there was plenty of talk about fighting for a tolerant,
inclusive unionism. But if David Trimble now takes a tougher line on decommissioning
and policing, he may leave himself with little option in the future but
to withdraw his party from the power sharing executive. This would lead
to the second review of the peace process - and pro-Agreement unionists
say that's nothing to cheer about.
KANE: It just about survived the
last one, and I think we are back to the problem as well, if the previous
review and suspension didn't resolve the dilemma, there's no reason to
believe that a second one will, because I think the real issue here is
IRA weapons and all weapons, loyalist weapons as well and I cannot see
how Ulster unionists pulling themselves out of an executive will encourage
the IRA to actually hand over their weapons
WATSON: But for some unionists,
getting the policy right is more important than propping up the current
leader - or the Good Friday Agreement, in its present form.
DONALDSON: It is a very perilous political
process that stands or falls on the fate of one individual. And let's
look at that. Surely if that is the case then the agreement is so fundamentally
flawed, it is so fundamentally weak that it needs to be reviewed.
WATSON: Northern Ireland has come
a long way since the Good Friday agreement was signed two-and-a-half years
ago. In the next few weeks, the province will find out if the peace process
has enough momentum to overcome the current difficulties, or whether David
Trimble's leadership, and perhaps even the process itself, are nearing
journey's end.
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