E-Book, Englisch, 464 Seiten
Walker David Trimble: Peacemaker
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80458-193-3
Verlag: Gill Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 464 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80458-193-3
Verlag: Gill Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Stephen Walker has covered the politics of Northern Ireland for over 30 years. He worked as a lobby correspondent at Westminster and is a former political correspondent with BBC Northern Ireland. The author of four highly acclaimed books, his previous work was John Hume: The Persuader, a bestselling biography of the Nobel Laureate.
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1
BANGOR BOY
‘His work is dirty, carelessly set out and his compositions are so full of ridiculous mistakes that often it is not worth marking.’
David Trimble school report, 1955
David Trimble was running for his life. His would-be attacker was armed with a hatchet and seemed pretty intent on causing him harm. David had the advantage of being a few paces ahead of his assailant and knew if he could just reach the sanctuary of his house, he would be safe. He sprinted and made a beeline for the glass-panelled back door, which was at the side of his house.
In the summer months it was used all the time and was normally kept wide open. As David reached the house, he quickly pushed his body forward.
On this occasion the door was surprisingly shut, and the momentum resulted in his arm going straight through the glass. There was a scream, followed by blood and tears. Pandemonium broke out. It was not meant to end like this. His pursuer was none other than his younger brother Iain. He and his sister Rosemary had been playing in the back garden of their Bangor home when David had surprised them and had tried to frighten them by pretending to be a scary monster. Iain’s decision to fight back ended badly, leaving his brother with scars that he would carry for the rest of his life. Their parents were understandably furious that an innocuous bit of fun had ended in such a horrific way. Iain was told that he had behaved badly and recalls that he was punished for his behaviour and remembers being ‘in the doghouse for ages’.1
The incident did not damage his relationship with his brother, however. In later years, often over a glass of wine, the two men would make light of that dramatic day. David would be characteristically blunt: ‘Iain, do you remember the day you tried to kill me with a hatchet?’2
Iain may have been the villain on that occasion, but there were other times when David’s temper got the better of him. David recalled getting cross on one occasion:
I do remember when I was aged about five having an argument with another person and he got me so angry that I put my head down and ran at him. The other lad of course did the smart thing and stepped to one side, and I ran straight into a wall.3
This may be the first time the famous Trimble temper was aired in public. However, it was something his brother Iain would become well used to. The two boys were born four years apart. David was older, having been born in Belfast on 15 October 1944, while Iain was born on 14 December 1948 in Bangor. They got on well together, so much so that Iain was David’s best man when he married Daphne Orr in 1978. Yet, the two brothers were very different. David was shy, awkward and bookish, with no interest in sport. He was the more intellectual of the two:
I remember a teacher saying, ‘You’re David’s brother, aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh,’ came the reply. And then there is an expectation which I could never fulfil because I am not that bright.4
Iain clearly looked up to his older brother. While they played together as kids, it was clear David was perfectly happy in his own company.
He had a room of his own, you never saw him, except for meals. He was in his room reading. He got told off time and time again for reading in the middle of the night by candlelight.5
Rosemary, the eldest, was born on 8 April 1943 in a private nursing home in Belfast. She got on well with her brothers:
We had plenty of room. We had a big garden at the back and a garden at the front. There was grass and fruit bushes, raspberries and gooseberries. We had lots of fun, chasing each other and playing all sorts of games. It was idyllic.6
Like Iain, Rosemary remembers David would disappear and often go and sit alone. She recalls how he was happy in his own company, but if he was missing he would be easy to locate. ‘If you could not find David, you would find him with his nose in a book.’7
Their parents were Billy and Ivy, although Ivy was not her original name. She was going to be called Annie Margaret Elizabeth, which were the names of three great aunts. Her mother, David’s grandmother, could not decide which name to use, so she decided to call her Ivy, which, according to Iain, was ‘the name of the heroine of the book she was reading at the time’.8
Ivy was born on 4 November 1911 and met Billy Trimble while they were working as civil servants for the Ministry of Labour in their home city of Londonderry. That was how the Trimbles referred to Northern Ireland’s second city. Others preferred to call it Derry, but Ivy and Billy used the longer title. The name of the city has always been controversial and cuts to the core of Northern Ireland’s identity battle. Unionists have traditionally called it Londonderry, which was the name given to it by the trade guilds from London during the Plantation of Ulster. Nationalists generally regard the ‘London’ prefix as colonial appropriation and therefore refer to the city simply as Derry.
Beyond the name linking it to the UK, there are other reasons why unionists see the ‘Maiden City’ as a special place. The old streets and the world-famous walls close to the River Foyle are all part of the Ulster Protestant psyche. Those of a unionist tradition in a majority nationalist city often felt outnumbered and talked about being ‘under siege’ politically. It was here where the loyalist battle cry ‘No surrender’ was first heard, and it was home to Robert Lundy, who sought to negotiate a surrender. The name Lundy became synonymous with being a traitor to Protestantism. It was a term of abuse often hurled in David Trimble’s direction when he backed the Good Friday Agreement.
The city of Derry is an important part of the Trimble story and helps to explain how he got some of his politics and beliefs. In later life, he often talked about his parents growing up there. Beyond his mother and father, the young Trimble was influenced by Captain William Jack and his wife, Ida, who were his maternal grandparents. Grandfather Jack worked in a timber merchants’ firm and was then employed in the building company Robert Colhoun Ltd, which was run by his wife’s family.
His politics were unionist, and, like many, he signed the Ulster Covenant in 1912, which was part of the campaign to oppose Home Rule. The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 changed everything. The Home Rule Crisis was postponed and thousands of men signed up to fight and help Britain’s war effort. William Jack was one of the many Ulstermen who went off to war, and he initially served with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.
He later transferred to the Royal Irish Regiment and eventually ended the war in Egypt. He returned to Derry and settled back into a normal routine, and for the rest of his life lived with Ida. After he died, Ida came to live with the Trimbles in Bangor. She needed some care and support at this stage, as she was elderly and confined to a wheelchair. However, she quickly fitted into family life, and a bedroom was made for her in the dining room.
Even though Ida was physically limited, she was mentally sharp and had a strong influence on young David, as he recalled:
I remember one year when school was off because it was a polling station. I remember coming down a little bit later because I did not have to go to school to find that Grandmother was up and out of bed and in her wheelchair. She was rattling her stick saying, ‘Where is David to take me up to the polling station?’ She grew up in Londonderry, where every vote counted.9
Trimble’s use of the name ‘Londonderry’ illustrates the division over the city’s name perfectly. It was a term he most likely heard from his relatives, like Ida. David’s sister Rosemary says it was clear there was a special bond between David and Ida, and she observed that the ‘two of them really seemed to hit it off’.10
As a child, David enjoyed hearing Granny Ida’s recollections and was particularly fascinated to learn that he may have had ancestors who played a role in the Siege of Derry. Ida was not the only figure who helped to influence his political thinking. A cousin of his mother’s was Jack Colhoun, who was known affectionately as Uncle Jack. He was well known in Derry and was a former politician who ran a construction firm and helped to build the city’s Altnagelvin Hospital. David held him in high esteem and often had political conversations with him at family gatherings. So, when stories emerged about discriminatory practices in the city against Catholics as the civil rights campaign began in the 1960s, David questioned whether the claims were valid:
When we had first of all street disorders associated with a movement calling itself the Civil Rights Association … this was in 1968, I was 24 … it came to me as quite a shock. And what I found most difficult to cope with in that shock is all the things that were being said about discrimination in Londonderry, the city of Londonderry. And it just so happened that my mother came from Londonderry, and a close relative of hers who we refer to as Uncle Jack. Uncle Jack was Mayor of Londonderry. He was active politically and he was Mayor of Londonderry for three or four years in the late ’50s and early ’60s. And these...
