Trimble takes step backwards
BY SEAN BRADY
y hope that David Trimble would provide evidence of a possible
breakthrough in the current impasse which besets the peace
process were dashed when he took to the podium at the British
Conservative Party Conference on Tuesday.
Trimble's speech to the Conservatives went completely against the
grain of the new opportunities opened up since Good Friday.
Rather, his words harked back to the days of Margaret Thatcher
and were imbued with a sense of the old Tory security agenda.
In his address David Trimble praised former Prime Minister John
Major for his stalling exercises in the early days of the peace
process. He then took the opportunity to allude to the current
impasse which he himself has created over decommssioning and
while a smiling John Major looked on, Trimble used the former
premier's obstinacy in dealing with republicans to endorse his
own current tactic of immobility. The logic of Trimble's message
is bleak - Major's tactics eventually led to the collapse of the
process and the breakdown of the IRA cessation in February 1996.
Trimble went on to pay tribute to two notorious right-wing
British securocrats, Airey Neave and Ian Gow. Both men were
members of a small coterie of Tory strategists around Margaret
Thatcher who, in the late 1970s, formulated the basis of the
British policy pursued in Ireland throughout the 1980s which led,
among other things, to 10 hunger strike deaths in Long Kesh and
an increased emphasis on a militarist approach to the political
problem. Airey Neave was killed in a booby trap bomb explosion at
the House of Commons in 1979 in an operation claimed by the INLA
while Ian Gow died in similar circumstances in an IRA attack in
June 1990.
Trimble will have added to the growing sense of despair at the
slow pace of political events when he suggested at a fringe
meeting that the establsihment of an Executive in the Six
Counties could be delayed until next February. He claimed there
was ``an explicit cross-reference between decommissioning and
holding office and that while it might be ``convenient'' to have
a shadow executive pending the transfer of powers to the Assembly
``it isn't necessary'' under the terms of the Good Friday
document.
These words are extremely ominous in that they give no hope for
political progress as time rapidly slips away. They also
encourage those on the unionist side who want to destroy the
Agreement and the Peace Process itself. Trimble's posturing has
increased a sense of foreboding in relation to the political
situation.
In a statement issued immediately after David Trimble's address
in Bournemouth, Sinn Féin Chairperson Mitchel McLaughlin said
that Timble had chosen ``to indulge himself in confrontational
politics and is pandering to a narrow minded mentality within the
Tory Party and within unionism - a mentality which has
consistently opposed political progress''.
Trimble's speech is also out of step with the mood of the
unionist people who voted for the Good Friday Agreement. In fact
he is instilling a growing sense of despair among those
republicans and unionists who took the difficult step and voted
Yes in the referendum. Trimble should resist the temptation to
reflect the views of reactionary unionism which can only lead
back to the failures of the past.
The current crisis can be resolved only if British Prime Minister
Tony Blair and David Trimble as the leader of Unionism keep their
word and implement the Agreement. By 31 October the Executive and
the other institutions must be up and running if the Agreement is
to be followed. There are no preconditions. Under the Agreement
there can be no Assembly without the interdependent and
interlocking institutions.
The reality is that David Trimble's current position has little
to do with IRA weaponry and lots to do with hollowing out the
Good Friday Agreement until it becomes merely an agreement on
unionist terms. Trimble has used a tactical split within unionism
to sucessfully talk up the decommissioning issue to a point where
it now threatens all the progress which has been so far made. He
is attempting to blackmail everyone into adopting the unionist
agenda on decommissioning.
The signs are depressing but all is not yet lost. The 31 October
deadline can still be met but it needs a political will to do so.
Decommissioning has this week, and for the umpteenth time, been
raised as a precondition to political progress. It has been
overcome in the past and must be overcome again if we are to move
forward. The alternative is that the agreement will be breached
and the political process which has been followed of late will
collapse entirely. This cannot be allowed to happen.
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