David Trimble tells Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor, why he is confident of defeating the latest challenge to his leadership from dissident MPs.
David Trimble finished his whistle-stop tour of the party's 18 constituencies yesterday. He looked a little tired but was still pulsing with his trademark nervous energy. The Ulster Unionist leader isn't considered a great schmoozer of his grassroots, but this was a week's work that could yet be the saving of his leadership next Saturday.
There were mutterings from his internal opponents that the audiences were handpicked, although that didn't prevent the likes of David Burnside and Lord Molyneaux wandering along to the South Antrim meeting in Templepatrick on Wednesday.
During the week there were a couple of head-to-heads with individual Ulster Unionists opposed to his leadership. Generally though, Mr Trimble was accorded a good reception on his tour.
He spoke to several hundred Ulster Unionists, probably as many as he will face at the Ulster Unionist Council in the Ulster Hall, Belfast, next Saturday. Not all of those will have been UUC delegates but the strategy seems to have been that word of Mr Trimble's confident performance would filter out and persuade those wavering delegates to maintain faith in their leader.
Even Mr Burnside acknowledged that Mr Trimble argued his position with skill and fervour in Templepatrick. Listening to the South Antrim MP - with Jeffrey Donaldson and the Rev Martin Smyth, one of the three so-called dissident MPs - one would think he could be persuaded back into the Trimble tent.
We're sitting in a corner of the Europa Hotel in central Belfast and Mr Trimble makes the point that he, the leader, won the last leadership vote with 54 per cent. He wishes it were more but believes that it's the "settled position" and Mr Donaldson won't shift that vote.
"Having got a result at the June Council meeting, these people turned around and repudiated that result. It was in effect saying: 'I know we can't get our way democratically but what we are threatening now to do is split the party unless you do what we want'. That was the sub-text. I hope that is too gloomy a prognostication, but they have to make clear what the issue actually is," says Mr Trimble of Donaldson-Burnside-Smyth.
Asked why the UUC amid such internal convulsions should maintain faith in his leadership, he adds with characteristic almost staccato-type emphasis: "Because that is the only way we are going to get progress. The reason why I won the leadership in '95 was because I was the only one who went to the council and told them if they elected me there would be a serious effort to make political progress, and things would be done in a serious way."
Ahmm . . . was Drumcree One not a factor in his success eight years ago?
"No, that is part of a media mythology, that is not why I was elected in that (Ulster) hall."
And he proceeds with his central argument of why he feels he must win next Saturday's Ulster Hall vote: "And with me something has got done. It has not been free of difficulties but there has been clear progress, and with me the efforts to maintain that progress will continue. And without the current leadership there is no prospect of progress being sustained. With a shift towards those who are challenging the current leadership there will be a return to the failures that preceded me."
Perhaps recalling the commitment of some delegates who actually came to council meetings pushing Zimmer frames, he adds: "That is why people dragged themselves time and time again to these meetings to vote and to listen to the same old argument. With an increasingly weary expression they came because they know this leadership has to be sustained."
At some of the previous 11 UUC meeting since the Belfast Agreement five years ago, the disputing sides found compromises or false common ground to give the appearance of unity.
Listening to Mr Trimble there seems little hope of conciliation this time, notwithstanding the efforts of Sir Reg Empey and Mr Jim Rodgers. Referring to the notion of a "third way" candidate such as Sir Reg or a "dream team" axis of Donaldson-Empey uniting the party, Mr Trimble says: "There is no middle way."
Isn't the inevitable outcome of all this a split in the UUP?
"A split is not inevitable because I have since the agreement attempted to accommodate those with tender consciences on certain issues. I can't accommodate those who wish to turn back the clock entirely, but I have done my best to accommodate those who have reservations, whether over prisoner release or whatever it was."
It is clear though that Mr Trimble does not believe the differences with Mr Donaldson are over policy. Both want IRA decommissioning and an end to IRA activity and both won't go back into government with Sinn Féin unless there are acts of completion.
"While we can represent the policy in narrow differences in fact there are substantial, underlying, unstated factors at work here," says Mr Trimble, hinting at Mr Donaldson and his chief supporters being motivated by something that goes beyond normal politics. What factors? He won't elaborate, but talk of people "turning back the clock" probably provides the answer.
Mr Donaldson has focused on the proposed International Monitoring Commission (IMC) as giving Dublin an unacceptable role in Northern Ireland affairs. The IMC ensures sanctions against Sinn Féin if the IRA does not maintain a commitment to peaceful and democratic means.
How could Mr Donaldson be opposed to that, queries Mr Trimble. "It is going to be quite difficult for some folk to vote against that which they were calling for."
But if Mr Trimble feels the IRA has moved at a "glacial pace" and slowed down the opportunity for a true political settlement might not Mr Donaldson have a better chance of persuading them to move faster?
"There is no way progress can be sustained without the present leadership, and a change of leadership in the direction of my critics, however dressed up, is an end to progress."
Mr Trimble asserts that despite all the political gloom, 75 per cent of Ulster Unionists still support the agreement, and would be more vocal in that support were the IRA to deliver.
He gives one of his strongest endorsements of the Good Friday deal.
"The Belfast Agreement is good for everybody in Northern Ireland because it does provide a modus vivendi. It does mean that issues will be settled by democratic, peaceful means. It does mean an end to any attempts by republicans to impose constitutional change against the will of the people by violence. That I would have thought unionists would recognise, and most unionists do recognise, is a huge success, not just for unionists, but for everybody.
"But there are folk who I am sorry to say are doing serious damage, not just to the political process in Northern Ireland, they are doing serious damage to unionism by their approach . . . Unfortunately some elements within unionism are trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."
This interview is mainly about next Saturday's UUC but I can't help asking about his previous comments about the Republic being sectarian, pathetic, mono-ethnic and mono-cultural. He says he does not have an antipathy to Southerners but reckons if people can dish abuse against unionists they should be able to take abuse.
But that's an aside. Monday week, two days after the UUC vote that could determine his future, will be the eighth anniversary of Mr Trimble winning the leadership. It's been a gruelling eight years, indeed a gruelling week.
You'd wonder having helped bring the agreement thus far would he not now settle for the House of Lords or a safe seat in England and a front bench Tory spokesmanship, and exit the UUP stage for someone else? He's having none of it. "There is a simple, small matter of one's duty to the party, to those who have assisted in this effort and to the community at large. I have a rather old-fashioned view about duty and I know that I would have some difficultiesfor my conscience were I to evade my responsibilities. I don't want to sound pompous, but there you are."