The seemingly endless internecine contest between internal dissidents and the UUP leadership is only the latest battle in a long-term war. The war started with squabbles in the mid 1960s when Terence O'Neill was prime minister. Changes were initiated and designed to make Northern Ireland more inclusive and avoid the pain that would follow intransigence. The resistance to change was led by street and mission hall preacher and up-and-coming politician, Ian Paisley. At that time dissidents within the UUP were sparse on the ground and tended to huddle in the corner.
On one occasion I led the charge against O'Neill. I stood in front of him pointing and accusing him of being the source of all our troubles. He was literally a few feet from where I was sitting with the so-called 'fur-coat-brigade'. I had stepped where angels feared to tread but suddenly there was loud cheering at the back of the Glengall Street hall and dissidents congratulated me on my stance. The Shankill UUP MP Desmond Boal then presented a bitter critique of O'Neill's activities.
At that time I was listening to Paisley's ranting in his Ulster Hall meetings and I really believed that O'Neill was the source of our ills.
A Shankill Road lady and friend of my mother was part of the said fur-coat-brigade and castigated me for attacking her hero. She was sure I was wrong but couldn't adequately explain why – at least not convincingly. When Paisley was jailed I supported his deputy Rev William Beattie's rally where banners reading,"O'Neill Must Go" were held aloft.
Eventually O'Neill did go and James Chichester-Clark followed the same path. Extreme elements in both camps fed off each other and could never be satisfied. What's more I began to see that unionists who differed from so-called 'traditional unionists' were subtly and sometimes not so subtly intimidated and silenced. Opponents of O'Neill seemed prepared to go to almost any lengths. Brian Faulkner tried to change things and ultimately led the power-sharing executive of 1973/4 before going the way of O'Neill.
The IRA opposed power sharing and the SDLP insisted on the Council of Ireland, which was seen as a step too far, so loyalists brought the assembly down.
Each step in this battle was more difficult and an increasingly heavy price was being exacted from Ulster Unionists. Paisley kept crying that any change was too much, too soon, followed by a nationalist echo claiming it was too little, too late. Jeffrey Donaldson is now the internal Paisley figure weakening Ulster Unionism. His mentor James Molyneaux, a wily unionist politician and onetime UUP leader, was formerly secretary to Sir Knox Cunningham, an Ulster Unionist who regularly contributed to Paisley's Protestant Telegraph. A thin line thus connects Donaldson with the dissidents of the 1960s who helped lay a foundation for the resurgence of the IRA in the early 1970s.
David Trimble is right, however, in suggesting that a major part of the blame lies with republicans. Five years after the Good Friday Agreement and the IRA remains intact and armed.
Constructive unionists in contrast have borne the heat of the day. Many ordinary punters can't see the bigger picture and are oblivious to long-term consequences and, in the absence of 'acts of completion', pro-agreement unionism frays at the edges.
David Trimble has brought us along a difficult but productive path so that international pressure is placed where it belongs – with the republican movement. The Ulster Unionist Party is determined under Trimble's leadership not to return to government without significant movement from the republicans, but dissident unionists cannot appreciate why it was necessary to enter the executive with Sinn Féin in the first place. They can still see no further than the slogan 'Ulster Says No' while they surrender the initiative. Internal and external critics have a field day exploiting fear and uncertainty among their fellows.
That David Trimble has achieved a turnaround in such a context is an amazing feat given the tardiness of republicans.
The (forlorn?) hope is that Jeffrey Donaldson might make his long awaited decision and either walk or accept party policy. But has Jeffrey the courage to take the risk?
Responsibility for negotiating this difficult impasse lies with all parties but particularly with republicans and the SDLP. Republicans must decommission and give firm indications that the war is over.
The SDLP should return to their concept of an 'Agreed Ireland' and commit primarily to the agreement leaving the Irish unity aspiration to the future.
Irish unity can only happen when the time is ripe and with the consent of unionists.
This is neither inevitable nor impossible. The crying need is for mutual accommodation, which by its very nature requires action from all sides.
