I think about my friend David Trimble often, especially when there is yet another revelation of how he was betrayed by former prime minister Tony Blair.
Published: 10 April 2025
The last few weeks offered a choice example to which Ross Hussey alluded in his article the other day in this newspaper about Blair’s appeasement of the IRA at the turn of the century (Unionists should have made more of fact that Blair appeased the IRA, April 8).
It was at a time when the appalling Islamist terror attacks on the US on September 11, 2001 had created a favourable climate in which to lean on the IRA to quit stalling on decommissioning and honour its promises. And this came two months after the arrest in Colombia of three IRA heavies who were training FARC members.
The secretary of state for NI in the early 2000s John Reid wrote despairingly about republicans to Blair that “we cannot for much longer go on hiding the truth about what they’re really getting up to — killing, robbing, targeting, developing new weapons, racketeering”.
Bertie Ahern would admit later that they had been turning a blind eye to IRA criminality, but few Irish diplomats or politicians cared.
Trimble had already gone through hell in in the negotiations for the agreement — abandoned by the DUP, which would later, when it suited them, sell out spectacularly.
A 1999 memorandum from Ireland’s senior Irish diplomat, the late Dermot Gallagher, and released a couple of years ago, gives a sense of what Trimble was still enduring as he sought to persuade the two governments to honour their promises. “The tone and approach of Trimble at this session was extraordinarily rude”, complained Gallagher.
There was a row about the decommissioning timetable in which Trimble said Blair’s position was “not consistent with what’s there in black and white; we’ve had crude tricks like this played on us before”.
“When the prime minister responded with ‘not by me’, Trimble added ‘not yet’,” to which Blair replied “in exasperation” that he was trying to help.
The meeting concluded with an agreement to change the preamble to state “disagreement about timing and implementation”.
Trimble was far more charitable about Blair than I was, but he had little option.
Unionists had so few friends that it was difficult to walk away from Blair, who would be secured a global reputation as a peacemaker by the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement — despite the blatant subterfuge and dishonesty of the process.
I agree with Ross that he was “the second-hand salesman politician”, but then in fairness, he was a genius at it. Having few scruples and a soft spot for bad people helped.
Look at him now. Loaded and revered as head of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. “We have led countries, businesses, NGOs, think-tanks and charities. We have advised presidents and assisted prime ministers.”
He’s in his element at the moment as an adviser on what to do about Trump, whom you can see from interviews he envies. “You’re either a disrupter – or you’re disrupted”, he explains, as he encourages the terrified establishment to pull its socks up with the help of his institute.
Meanwhile we owe it to David Trimble, the decent people of Northern Ireland and posterity, to keep telling the stark truth of how they were betrayed by two governments.
