Revealed | Trimble told PM of concern that judge hearing key case was ‘north Lurgan Catholic’

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/trimble-told-pm-of-concern-that-judge-hearing-key-case-was-north-lurgan-catholic/a1192919161.html

Sam McBride
Today at 06:39

David Trimble told the Prime Minister that he thought a High Court judge’s verdict in a legal challenge taken by Sinn Féin would be influenced by him being “a north Lurgan Catholic”, declassified government papers reveal.

Sinn Féin had gone to Belfast High Court to judicially review a decision by the then First Minister to block the party’s ministers from attending meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council.

Trimble, by then under intense pressure from both the DUP and internal dissenters led by Jeffrey Donaldson, was using the tactic to try to pressure the IRA into decommissioning.

Files declassified at The National Archives in Kew include a confidential Downing Street note of a meeting between the Prime Minister and a UUP delegation on January 17, 2001.

Trimble told Tony Blair that he was expecting judgment in the case soon but “he had not yet received the normal two days notice” and had asked his private secretary “to make discreet enquiries”.

The case was being heard by Mr Justice Kerr, who would go on to become Lord Chief Justice and ultimately Baron Kerr, the final law lord to be appointed before the creation of the Supreme Court in 2009.

The note said Trimble told the PM that “the judge of first instance was a north Lurgan Catholic. His personal sympathies would incline him towards Sinn Féin’s position but he held ambitions to be appointed the first Roman Catholic Lord Chief Justice [in fact, Northern Ireland’s first Lord Chief Justice in 1922 was Sir Denis Henry, who was a Catholic] and this might inform his approach.

“In any event if the case was lost, Trimble was confident his position would prevail in the House of Lords. He would take it that far if necessary. Trimble agreed with the Prime Minister that the short term consequences of a negative (for him) judgement would be bad. He would be under extra pressure to be tough towards Sinn Féin.”

Almost a fortnight later, Mr Justice Kerr ruled that Trimble’s actions in banning Sinn Féin ministers from meetings of the north-south body had been unlawful. But he also found that Trimble was not bound to send Sinn Féin ministers to the meetings and was allowed to send an alternative.

Trimble pronounced himself satisfied with some parts of the judgment but said he would appeal.

Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, one of the applicants, said he was “very happy” with the outcome, while the DUP said the verdict was a “humiliating defeat” for Trimble.

Other declassified documents show further comments by Trimble about the religion of other figures in public life.

In February 2001, Trimble told the Prime Minister it was “important for the UUP that the chairmanship of the Policing Board went to a Protestant — since the Police Ombudsman and the oversight Commissioner posts had gone to Catholics, as had the chairmanship of the Parades Commission.”

That same month, Trimble told the Secretary of State that more unionists needed to be appointed to the Human Rights Commission. A note of a meeting between the pair said that Trimble told the government that it was obliged to ensure that the commission was representative “but it had no unionists at all and at least 4/5 ‘Provies’. We should also change the appointment criteria to avoid excluding good candidates as we had done on the last occasion — including Brian Garrett.”

A file declassified in 2019 showed that Trimble privately drew attention to the faith of a senior Electoral Office figure, claiming that a decision “was a deliberate attempt by the Catholic electoral officer to arrange things so that the SDLP would come top in the polls.”

In his biography of Trimble, Dean Godson said of the UUP leader’s views: “If not ‘liberal’, they were certainly ‘accommodationist’ in the sense of being willing to make an arrangement of sorts with Irish nationalism.

“Indeed, one of the curiosities of Trimble’s political behaviour was the way in which he combined lack of personal bigotry against Catholics with a recognition of the durability of sectarian sentiment in the public space.

“It was this long-time ‘realism’ about inter-communal strife, especially on his own side, which made him so suitable a candidate to do a deal with Irish nationalism.”

Godson said that “there was a measure of opportunism” in how Trimble presented himself in ways which made many staunch unionists think that he shared their views. But he added that “it was also a genuine assessment of what he saw as the durability of communal strife in the public space. This cold calculation… made him promising raw material to become a leading player in the ‘top-down’ consociational settlement of the kind which emerged in Northern Ireland.”