Transcript:
Eventually, the Prime Minister brought Ahern and Trimble together again. Trimble had been given fierce instructions by his colleagues not to accept another body, or not to bother coming back. He was adamant. Ahern pressed but in was persuaded to propose again vain. Eventually Trimble, was persuaded to propose again a pretty meaningless health body. We sold this to an unhappy Ahern on the basis of an additional reference in the text to other bodies being considered, and an exchange of letters with Trimble where Ahern set out four Irish requests again, and Trimble agreed to consider them later.
This fudge allowed the text to be circulated around midday. We sat back and waited for the next problems. They were not long in arriving but were worse than we had anticipated. First the UUP insisted that the Anglo-Irish Secretariat at Maryfield be closed by the end of the year. But the Irish were resistant to further concessions to the UUP. Then the Unionists wanted to change the wording on decommissioning. We told them it was impossible.
But it quickly became clear that Trimble’s troops were in general revolt, particularly his young staffers, but also major figures like Donaldson. Faced with the prospect of selling to their community a deal involving Sinn Fein at the Assembly and Government table with no guarantee of decommissioning, with all prisoners out in two years, at least severe doubts about the future of the RUC, a new relationship with Dublin, and a nationalist hold on major Assembly decisions, they were losing their nerve. The precise cause varied over the hours. First, it was prisoners. We provided written comfort on how the scheme would work. Then it was policing. Then it was decommissioning.
Notes
- The ‘Anglo-Irish Secretariat’ was a group established in 1985 and located in the Belfast suburb of Maryfield. It was made up of officials from the UK and Irish governments. Unionists were opposed to Irish government involvement in Northern Ireland.
- ‘Donaldson’ is Jeffrey Donaldson, an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) politician (he walked out of the UUP delegation on 10 April). He later joined the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
- The ‘RUC’ was the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the police force of Northern Ireland before the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement.