'Hardline' Trimble victory upsets Irish peace hopes

THE Irish peace process yesterday looked at its most fragile since the IRA announced its ceasefire a year ago, following the surprise election of David Trimble, a hardliner, as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.

The hopes of British and Irish ministers that the party, Northern Ireland's largest political grouping, would send out a signal of greater willingness to participate in the peace process were dashed as Mr Trimble won a decisive victory.

And he wasted no time in airing his uncompromising views on Sinn Fein and the IRA. "The private army is being maintained, the weapons are still there, the punishment beatings continue, murders are occurring," he told his press conference in Belfast yesterday. "The political representatives of this body [the IRA] are using language which is wholly inconsistent with a commitment to peaceful methods because implicit in their language is the threat of a resumption of violence."

The 50-year-old former law lecturer, who has been an MP, representing Upper Bann, for just five years, was the most hardline of the five candidates in the election to succeed James Molyneaux, the veteran who led the party for 16 years.

Some Unionist sources are now predicting that the party will move closer to the Reverend Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party, and Mr Trimble made it clear yesterday that he saw unionist unity as one of his long- term goals.

His election did nothing to cheer the British and Irish governments after a week in which they called off a planned meeting between John Major and the Taoiseach, John Bruton. The main aim of that summit was to try to settle the dispute on arms decommissioning which has caused near-deadlock in the peace process for some months. That it had to be called off indicated that months of diplomatic effort had failed to close the gap.

London and Dublin have been acting together in an increasingly co-ordinated manner over the past decade, a partnership which both regard as a valuable source of stability in Anglo-Irish relations. But now a clear divergence has emerged, with Britain insisting that some IRA arms must be handed over before Sinn Fein can be admitted to all-party talks, while the Irish government believes the Gerry Adams leadership could not deliver any armaments.

The Northern Ireland political affairs minister, Michael Ancram, flew to the United States on Friday to explain Britain's position on the issue. The White House is known to be anxious for substantial progress to be made in advance of the planned visit of President Clinton to Belfast in late November.

The election of a more conciliatory Unionist leader would have introduced a new element which could have contributed to breaking the logjam. Instead, the message from the party was the opposite, electing a leader who is expected to toughen the party line in most respects.

Mr Trimble has been in Unionist politics since the early 1970s, often associated with the most uncompromising elements. Most recently he played a leading part in July in pressurising the RUC to allow an Orange parade through a Catholic part of the town of Portadown. He was later pictured celebrating this as a victory with Mr Paisley. Throughout his career he has been on the Unionist right wing, as a member in the 1970s of the Vanguard Unionist Party and in the 1980s of the extreme Ulster Clubs movement.

His election was greeted with dismay by nationalists who had urged the party to engage in the peace process. Under Mr Molyneaux the party essentially refused to play any active role in the process. Mr Trimble, though promising a less passive style of leadership, is deeply sceptical of the whole process and is against the idea of talking to Sinn Fein.

He was elected on a final vote of 466 compared to 333 for John Taylor, another right-winger who had been favourite to win. The fact that on the first ballot these two right wing candidates took 513 of the 806 votes cast is an unmistakable indication of a leaning to the right among party activists.

There was some opinion poll evidence suggesting wider public support for the most moderate candidate, Ken Maginnis, but in the event he attracted only 117 votes, a clear sign of the comparative weakness of the party's liberal wing.

Mr Trimble was until Friday his party's legal affairs spokesman. He is divorced and has four children by his second wife, a solicitor who was originally a student in his law class at Queen's University, Belfast.

He has a reputation for becoming emotional during debates, once notably storming out of a television interview when a member of Sinn Fein appeared on screen. During the election some of his opponents suggested he was too excitable to become party leader.

In the event he surprised all observers by leading comfortably on the first ballot. He is, at 50, comparatively youthful among Unionist politicians.

His performance at the Portadown parade appears to have been rewarded by delegates, and most observers believe this makes it unlikely that he will deviate from his right-wing position.

Before his election there had been speculation that the general Protestant population had moved towards a more moderate attitude since the IRA ceasefire, which has now lasted for more than a year. There are many indications that this may indeed be the case, but Mr Trimble's election demonstrates conclusively that no such new mood has permeated party activists.