Republican News · Thursday 12 December 2002

Just what does Trimble think he's doing at Drumcree?

BY LAURA FRIEL

Metaphorically, we're all back at Drumcree, with unionists demanding the right to impose their will while wilfully denying the rights of others

It has been six long years. In 1996, David Trimble had held a meeting with loyalist killer Billy Wright at Drumcree. Behind the barbed wire and lines of RUC officers and British soldiers Trimble, in his Orange Order regalia, had paraded in front of the cameras.

The year before, Trimble had danced hand in hand with Ian Paisley after Orangemen, despite opposition, had walked down the nationalist Garvaghy Road. The deal struck with nationalist residents was never honoured.

But in the bitter and bloody years to follow, Trimble had stayed away. In 1998, following the brutal murder of the three Quinn children, Trimble had called on Orangemen to "leave the hill", echoing the honourable words of Orange Chaplin William Bingham, said "no road is worth these lives".

In the years that followed the Quinn murders, support for the Orange Order's campaign of sectarian intimidation dwindled and the Drumcree protests gradually declined into tokenism.

To the vast majority of people, Catholic and Protestant, north and south, the decline of Drumcree was a relief. It had done nothing to enhance the image of Ulster unionism, it had bitterly divided the Church of Ireland and northern nationalists had repeatedly paid the price of unionist violence.

So, after six years of staying away, just what did David Trimble think he was doing when he visited Drumcree Church last week?

It would have been 'unhelpful' at any time, but with the suspension of power sharing and the peace process facing its most serious crisis to date, resurrecting the ghost of Drumcree Past is as welcome as Christmas to the unreconstructed Ebenezer Scrooge.

Worse still, the visit took place at a time when the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party is claiming that he is unable to attend inter-party and governmental talks designed to save the peace process at Stormont citing "diary conflicts".

In other words, a handful of disgruntled Orangemen clinging to a discredited past, as far as the leader of 'moderate' unionism is concerned, takes precedence over the project of peace and progress.

Outside the chapel, Trimble said he had made the visit in order to express "solidarity" with what he described as the "principled stand" taken by the rector, John Pickering.

At the height of Drumcree violence, Pickering had stood alone, defying the Church of Ireland synod and even Primate Robin Eames, and refused to lock the gates and deny the Drumcree protestors access to church property and grounds.

Inside the chapel last Sunday, members of Portadown Orange Lodge were present when David Trimble held 'discussions' with the rector and other church officials. The Orangemen were there 'in an individual capacity', the media was told.

Afterwards, Trimble expressed his "continuing support" for the protesting members of Portadown district Orange Lodge and their demand to walk down nationalist Garvaghy Road.

Three months ago, as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble adopted a 'wrecker's charter', designed to bring down the power sharing institutions at Stormont and fragment the Good Friday Agreement.

opinion poll commissioned at the time revealed that the majority of unionists rejected power sharing with the SDLP as well as Sinn Féin. An even larger majority of unionists were against the Good Friday Agreement.

After a summer of anti-Agreement violence, Trimble totally capitulated to rejectionist unionism. After six years of estrangement, he was once again hand in hand with Ian Paisley. In such circumstances, is it so surprising that we find him back at Drumcree?

In the late 1990s, in places like Portadown and South Belfast, Orange Supremacists subjected their nationalist neighbours to sustained violent intimidation attempting to maintain the ultimate 'right' of unionists to stamp their authority as well as their feet along the Garvaghy and Ormeau Road. They did so in the name of religion and culture. It was a lie.

At the turn of new millennium, in a cynical attempt to scupper the peace process by breaking the IRA cessation, anti-Agreement paramilitaries began systematically attacking vulnerable nationalist areas.

The paramilitaries hurled their particular brand of sectarian hatred at the pupils and parents of Holy Cross and the people of Ardoyne and Short Strand. They did so in the name of social and economic justice. It was, and remains, a lie.

d now, on the back of a crisis manufactured by the Special Branch, rather than face up to the challenge of progressive change David Trimble has collapsed the power sharing institutions and appears to be boycotting attempts at a resolution.

This week, armed with the unionist veto, Trimble demanded the scraping of the Good Friday Agreement and threatened to withdraw from the entire peace process. He claims he is doing so in the name of democracy. It is a lie.

To the bemusement of the NIO, Trimble demanded urgent clarification of the role of the North South Ministerial Council and accused the British government of colluding in the establishment of a mechanism which "unlike the real NSMC would not be subject to the unionist veto".

Clearly in the unionist mindset, the veto is not an obstacle to the development of meaningful democratic relations with their nationalist neighbours but an intrinsic right to be defended even at the price of peace.

"This is typical of the NIO," said a suitably irate Trimble. "As soon as we were out of office, they were back to their dirty tricks." Irony beyond comprehension, the former First Minister accused the British government of "riding roughshod" over the Good Friday Agreement.

Meanwhile, fellow Ulster Unionist David Burnside has been telling US special envoy Richard Haass that nothing will induce rejectionist unionism to re-enter power-sharing arrangement with nationalists.

Even a "dramatic gesture by the IRA" would not be "sufficient enough" to persuade the UUP to rejoin Sinn Féin in a power sharing executive, Burnside told the media after his meeting with Haass.

"If he [Haass] thinks there is any chance of unionists considering that with events in Colombia, Castlereagh and the spy ring, he is wrong," said Burnside, "I can see no circumstances in the foreseeable future where the UUP can contemplate going into an executive with Sinn Féin."

Of course, as the UUP are clearly aware, the exclusion of Sinn Féin would guarantee a unionist dominated executive, effectively disenfranchising the entire northern nationalist population. In the late 1960s, the blatant gerrymandering of Derry, a city with a nationalist majority but controlled by a unionist elite, provoked direct confrontation with the state.

Thirty years later, acknowledgement of the percentage of nationalists within the northern population is currently considered so dangerous that the British government has suppressed the publication of the results of the latest census.

Leaks to the media have suggested that if a unionist majority exists, it is at best marginal. Some commentators have even suggested that the figures reveal equal numbers of unionists and nationalists, with a small percentage, possibly 6%, non-aligned.

With the imposition of Partition, a unionist majority was artificially carved out of nationalist Ireland in the interests of continued British rule. The notion of majority rule, masked with the illusion of democracy, a deeply reactionary, sectarian anti-Irish body politic.

The project of the Good Friday Agreement is to create some semblance of meaningful democracy that reflects the interests of all sections of the community. Tragically, the UUP hope to maintain the old style one-party rule system with its illusion of democracy but this time with the illusion of a majority by way of the unionist veto.

Nothing can change, they are saying, unless endorsed by a majority of unionists. In real terms, a minority of the northern population must be conceded the power to hold the rest of us to ransom.

In the vision of the English Civil War philosopher Thomas Hobbes, in his work "Leviathan", having once alienated individual rights to the monstrous beast of unionist rule, it must stand for all times, unchanging and unchangeable. Or so David Trimble would like us to believe.

So metaphorically, we're all back at Drumcree, with unionists demanding the right to impose their will while wilfully denying the rights of others and, like the Orangemen before them, refusing to compromise, refusing to talk and refusing to come down from the hill.