Trimble Runs High-Stakes Campaign in N. Ireland

Paul Humphries was washing his car when the Protestant leader of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government jogged up the driveway to ask for his vote in Britain’s parliamentary elections.

The 44-year-old police officer and father of three held up soapy hands and shrugged at David Trimble. It was one of the more polite rejections the Nobel Peace laureate and Ulster Unionist Party chief received that evening.

“I feel the unionist side has given as much as we can give, if not too much,” Humphries said as the candidate walked away.

For most Britons, the June 7 general election is a choice between the ruling Labor Party and the opposition Conservatives, but for most pro-British Protestants in Northern Ireland, it is essentially a referendum on the 1998 Good Friday peace accord with Roman Catholic nationalists. Their ballots may well decide the fate of the fledgling provincial government.

The Labor and Conservative parties don’t put up candidates in Northern Ireland. Trimble heads the largest Protestant party in the province, as well as the Protestant-Catholic government in Belfast that includes Sinn Fein, the political ally of the Irish Republican Army.

Trimble’s Ulster Unionist Party holds nine of Northern Ireland’s 18 seats in the British Parliament but faces a strong challenge for five of them from the anti-agreement Democratic Unionist Party headed by the Rev. Ian Paisley, who condemns Trimble for sitting in government with Sinn Fein before the IRA has disarmed. In one or two of those districts, the unionist parties may split the vote and throw the seat to Catholics, possibly even to Sinn Fein.

A big loss in the general election could cost Trimble--who is also running for reelection to Parliament--the leadership of his party, which is also divided over the peace process. Without the moderate Trimble, the Belfast government could collapse, as the last cross-community government did in 1974 following the electoral defeat of Protestant moderates.

In an effort to appease doubters in his own camp--and to force the IRA’s hand--Trimble wrote a postdated letter of resignation as first minister that will become effective July 1 if the IRA hasn’t begun to destroy its weapons by then. It is an ultimatum the gunmen surely will try to ignore.

His own supporters and Catholic allies in government have criticized Trimble for risking the peace process for his own party’s gain. But Trimble says he had no choice.

“If we didn’t force the issue, it would be forced on us in any event,” Trimble said, adding that it wasn’t enough for the IRA to keep its weapons locked in depots as it has done. “Unionists will tolerate this as part of a transition, but not if it looks as if it is the end state.”

Although Trimble wants to hang on to his stewardship of the Protestant community, he doesn’t agree that his resignation would lead to the downfall of the government.

“Nobody’s indispensable,” he said.

Yet it often seems that way in Northern Ireland, where politics is personal and politicians are expected to appear in person. As he pinned a red-white-and-blue party rosette on his suit jacket, Trimble explained that all the television time in the world wouldn’t replace door-to-door campaigning in these districts of about 70,000 voters.

“Here, they don’t think anything else matters,” he said.

Many Acknowledge Improved ‘Situation’

It was a warm evening as Trimble made his way through the suburban neighborhood of neat brick houses and nicely trimmed lawns. Most of the upper-middle-class residents he met acknowledged that “the situation” in Northern Ireland had improved since Protestants and Catholics signed the blueprint for ending a 30-year conflict that has taken more than 3,500 lives.

They said that the economy has improved as the killing has diminished. Peace has filled Belfast’s skyline with cranes raising new office buildings and commercial centers. Northern Ireland has seen the birth of its first nonsectarian ice hockey team and a devolved government that looks after local business, education, health care and agriculture better than London ever did, they said. And many supported Trimble’s pro-agreement party.

“If they lose, we go back 30 years,” said Joe Hozack, 70. “There’s no alternative. Not worth speaking about, anyway.”

“Common sense” was a term often used that evening. But then so was “sellout,” “not a chance” and “don’t bother, I’m voting DUP.”

Many Protestants are upset that IRA and Protestant paramilitary prisoners have been released under the peace agreement before completing their sentences. Police officers such as Humphries are offended that the overwhelmingly Protestant force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, is being required to change its name and British insignia.

Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland view the force as tainted by its counterinsurgency past and don’t want their police force paying homage to British royals.

But still, Catholic nationalists haven’t agreed to join the police force, and the IRA hasn’t destroyed its guns. Many Protestants believe that the IRA is supplying the breakaway Real IRA, which continues to set off bombs.

And so even some of those who voted for the Good Friday agreement in a referendum three years ago blame Trimble for giving up Protestant power for what they believe is very little return.

“They betrayed a lot of people’s trust,” said Andrew Ewart, 35, a postal worker and father of two. “I voted for my children’s future. They said they were going to come through, but they didn’t come through.”

This time, he said, he will support the anti-agreement DUP. “I don’t like the thought that power will be in other people’s hands,” he said.

Bias Persists on Both Sides

Three years of peacemaking have not rooted out sectarianism. Some Protestants are clearly uncomfortable sharing power that was once solely theirs, and they say they feel they are treated as a minority even though they are in the majority in the province. Many Catholics say they can’t imagine voting for a Protestant party, however moderate it might be.

“You vote the way you were brought up,” Michele Curley, 23, a Catholic mother of one, said in the hotly contested district of North Belfast. “Most people probably vote what their parents believed.”

Both of the Catholic parties, Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labor Party, support the peace process. An opinion poll in the Belfast Telegraph last week showed that two-thirds of the public still backs the accord, including 52% of Protestants.

But there are at least four Protestant parties in Northern Ireland, and whether that support for peace translates into votes for Trimble’s Ulster Unionists remains to be seen.

Nigel Dodds, the DUP candidate in North Belfast, said he thinks he will beat the Ulster Unionist incumbent by promising to stand up to Sinn Fein. He insisted that a DUP victory “will not take us back to violence.”

Trimble is clearly worried about districts such as North Belfast, where more than 600 people died in the conflict and euphemistically named “peace walls” of corrugated metal still divide working-class Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods. He says he is counting on common sense to pull his party and the peace agreement through.

“There is a big difference between grumbling and then taking a decision as to what sort of future you want,” Trimble said. “They may not like this aspect or that aspect of the agreement, but they don’t want to go back to the way things were.”