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ON THE RECORD
DAVID TRIMBLE INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 24.5.98
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good morning, good afternoon to you.
DAVID TRIMBLE: Good day.
HUMPHRYS: Good day, that's safe.
Right, you probably didn't hear Gerry
Adams on the programme this morning because you were travelling there. But what
he said was - I asked him about decommissioning, as you might expect and he
said: let's sit down with David Trimble. If he's serious about this, we're
serious about it, let us talk about the whole thing. Why will he not do that?
TRIMBLE: Well, why will Mr Adams not actually
stop evading issues and deal with them properly and honestly, that's the-I am
getting really quite fed up with all these excuses that he presents. He was
told, he's been told again and again, and again, the Prime Minister spelt it
out in his speech in Balmoral, at the Balmoral show here in Belfast Thursday a
week ago and he set out various criteria. And the very first one, right at the
top, time for Mr Adams to say: the war is over. He can say that, he is after
all the leader of the Republican movement, which includes Sinn Fein and the
IRA. It's time for him to say it. But, look, why are we wasting time on him.
The important task, over the next four weeks, is to make sure that we now put
in place a Northern Ireland assembly that will work. There will be people going
there with the intention of making sure that it doesn't work and that includes
Mr Adams, and of course we can fill in the names of the rest. The important
task now is to bring on board, those who voted No last Friday. And here I am
thinking of the forty-five per cent of Unionists who voted now. We had a
Unionist majority on Friday, but we had a significant minority and there many
of them are good people, who are concerned and have been misled by the people
who've been giving them a false account of this agreement and spreading so many
scare stories around. The time has come now to focus attention on them and to
bring them on board. Mr Adams could help in that too, by saying that the war is
over and there will be no return to violence and until he does that, Mr Adams
is irrelevant to the next task which is that of making sure we have a
sufficiently broadly based administration that does include that very important
segment of our people here in Northern Ireland.
HUMPHRYS: But he is entirely relevant to the next
step after that, which is the setting up of an executive. Now...
TRIMBLE: No, he's not even significant in that...
HUMPHRYS: Well, come on if he isn't on that
executive..
TRIMBLE: No, John, let's stop this myopia and
let's focus on the really important thing. The really important thing is to
make sure that we have a stable arrangement. Now we know that seventy-one per
cent of the entire people-population of Northern Ireland, the electorate of
Northern Ireland supported this. We know that ninety-five per cent of
Nationlists have supported it. We have fifty-five per cent of Unionists,
that's good. But we have to get better and that's where the focus should be.
And on that issue, Mr Adams's activities have been entirely mischievous,
deliberately so. It was he who orchestrated that extravaganza of celebration of
terrorism with the Balcombe Street Gang for the purpose of winding up
Unionists. Now, Mr Adams could stop the wind up and start to make a
contribution. But, irrespective of whether he makes the contribution, we will
focus on the really important job, which is bringing as many people together
round this new beginning that is here for all of us and making sure that we
have a stable base. We have taken an important step. We must follow it through,
and we must bring on board those who have been misled about this agreement and
who are fearful about the future.
HUMPHRYS: I'll come to that in a minute if I may,
but let's just deal with Mr Adams again for a moment. You say irrelevant, the
fact is he will be, assuming the elections go ahead and they get the kind of
support that you'd imagine they would on the basis of past performances. He
will therefore qualify to sit on that executive. And the question is, whether,
you would sit alongside him if real decommissioning, and the actual
handing-over of weapons, not just stated intentions, had not begun. That's a
crucial question, isn't it. Would you do that?
TRIMBLE: Well, look, I've made this clear again
and again and again. Go back to what the Prime Minister said at the Balmoral
Show, the criteria he listed, starting with his clear statement that the war is
over, including the necessary actions that flow from it, which include
decommissioning, all these things have to be done and they must be done. This
time, there must be no shirking. But look, again I come back to you John, Mr
Adams can only command the support of something in the mid-teens, varying
between fourteen and seventeen per cent, depending on turnout.
HUMPHRYS: That would still give him a seat on the
executive.
TRIMBLE: And what about twenty-eight per cent.
Darn sight more important than fourteen per cent.
HUMPHRYS: Well as I said, I was coming to that.
TRIMBLE: So consequently, I'm not, no, no, let's
get back to this point. I don't know whether Dr Paisley has the stomach for
much more politics, but if he has, then he might be entitled to a seat and he
might have a better right to it than Mr Adams. So let's focus on those. We must
not be driving people out into the cold.
HUMPHRYS: No
TRIMBLE: It's a question of making sure there is
a broad enough base and the area where the work has now to be done, the area
where the focus should be on. Where those who, at the moment lack confidence in
this process. Now we want to build their confidence, and we want to bring them
along with us because we need to have a stable base.
HUMPHRYS: But there are those in your party who
are still - in your party, not Ian Paisley's party - who are still dedicated to
- I quote one of them, Mr Thompson, frustrating the agreement. They want to
get into that assembly, then they want to frustrate it.
TRIMBLE: That's exactly the point that I'm making
John, that there are people who will be going with the intention of wrecking.
Now, let's not focus, let's not worry about the individualities. I mean poor
Willy Thompson's got lots of problems, and I don't know that anyone will be
able to put them right for the next election whether he stands or not. But
we've got to look at the people who voted No, and they are a proportion of
Ulster Unionist voters, not a very big proportion I have to say. We're quite
comfortable within the party, within our own support, we've problems with
individuals, but the party is pretty solid. But there is that segment of the
electorate who've been fed various scare stories who lack confidence and who
are worried. We have to address those worries, we have to show them that
things are actually safe, and that we are building a secure basis for the
future, and that has got to be the focus of the next four weeks.
HUMPHRYS: So what are you going to do about the
people in your own party who want to run on an Ulster Unionist ticket for the
Assembly, knowing that when they get in, if they get into that assembly they
want to frustrate the whole agreement. What do you do about them, how do you
deal with them?
TRIMBLE: We're a democratic party, we have our
procedures, and constituencies will make their selections, and they'll be
abiding by the normal practices and rules of the party, and so consequently I
expect to see those procedures followed, and I expect to see people selected
who will as is the normal course, give an undertaking to support the policies
of this party and to abide loyally by the decisions of the party.
HUMHRYS: And if they don't?
TRIMBLE; Well, this is what I expect to see in
terms of the selection procedures, and what I have seen so far of the
constituency association fills me with confidence on this.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so-
TRIMBLE: Individuals who have had problems have
to now consider what to do, and I must say if I can address some of my
parliamentary colleagues who have had their doubts about this. During the
referendum campaign they appealed to the precedent of the 1970s on the European
election when the Labour Government was split, and had had a gentlemen's
agreement that some people could pursue a Yes or a No vote depending on what
their views were. But that at the end of the referendum they would all come
back together again and loyally support the leadership of the party. Now those
who appealed to that precedent should follow it.
HUMPHRYS: But, those who don't - those who go in
the other direction. The message is quite clear from you as the leader of the
party, you don't want them on that ticket and you hope that their
constituencies will not put forward candidates who are one hundred per cent
behind you?
TRIMBLE: It is essential at this time that we
move into the Assembly with confidence and with coherence - that is what the
Party wants to do and I am sure that it will and I think it's also important -
and this is at the forefront of my mind - is that we bring with us as many as
possible of that forty-five per cent of Unionists, twenty-eight per cent of the
total Electorate, who demonstrated on Friday their lack of confidence in these
arrangements and in the future. I believe that we can have confidence in these
arrangements, I believe that we've got a stable basis, I think we've got to
focus our attentions now on bringing them onboard. We don't want to
marginalise that segment of opinion.
HUMPHRYS: And many of those will no doubt want an
answer to the question that I put to you earlier about whether you would sit
with Gerry Adams in that Executive. It's hugely important for them.
TRIMBLE: You, you've managed to bring it back to
your King Charles' head, which has been dealt with and-and....
HUMPHRYS: Well, has it? Has it? Have we had a
quite clear answer to that? I'm not sure that we have.
TRIMBLE: You have and I'll have to say it again,
the time has come for Mr Adams to deliver.
HUMPHRYS: Indeed.
TRIMBLE: To deliver.
HUMPHRYS: Indeed but that still doesn't answer the
question. What is the minimum you'd accept from Gerry Adams in order to sit
with him at that Executive, at this stage?
TRIMBLE: We go back to what the Prime Minister
said in his Balmoral speech that we start off with a clear statement that this
terrorist war, this squalid, dirty little terrorist war is over, that there's a
commitment to peaceful means, there will be no return to violence; that the
paramilitary apparatus will be set to one side and that's an end to all
paramilitary activity and addressing the issue of disbanding that. Also
addressing the issue of decommissioning by actually doing it, actually doing
it.
HUMPHRYS: Token or total?
TRIMBLE: Over the course, over the course of the
next six months these things must be done or else Mr Adams will start his
Parliamentary apprenticeship on the Opposition Benches.
HUMPHRYS: Doesn't the Agreement say over two
years?
TRIMBLE: No, it has to be completed over two
years.
HUMPHRYS: Right so if they had-
TRIMBLE: And I am saying it has to be commenced
in that period.
HUMPHRYS: Okay, so if they were to hand in and let
me-let me be a bit silly about it, if they were to hand in a couple of rusty
old rifles as a token of decommissioning, you would say-
TRIMBLE: You're at the wrong end of the scale
again John. I started with the things that they have to say and do. Don't
pick and choose on this and I come back to the point that you're on the wrong
agenda. Be not concerned now about whether Mr Adams does or does not fulfil
his obligations. That's for him to decide and we'll consider the consequences
when the time comes.
HUMPHRYS: Right.
TRIMBLE: What the focus now must be over these
next four or five months is to make sure we have a sound basis, a stable basis
including all sections of the community and we must not allow this focus to be
only on this little man and one's end of the spectrum and to ignore the much
larger segment of opinion at the other end of the spectrum. That is where the
focus should now be.
HUMPHRYS: Just a sentence if I may on the marching
season which is about to begin. Are you worried about that?
TRIMBLE: Well I'm worried that Mr Adams will use
that to cause more violence because I don't believe Mr Adams has yet sincerely
accepted his obligations under this Agreement and I must say that to
Republicans and to Nationlists that having come this far, don't allow the IRA
to manipulate you into causing violence this summer. Proceeding normally as we
used to do through the summer and allowing people to celebrate their own
traditions in an appropriate way is a sign of normality, a sign of normality
and if the Republican movement start to wind up things in the summer - as they
have done the last couple of summers - there's another more evidence of their
lack of sincerity.
HUMPHRYS: David Trimble, many thanks.
And that's it for this week, until next
Sunday, good afternoon.
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