Belfast Agreement @25: We were surprised by David Trimble's resolve for the deal, and later struck by his resilience, says Mark Durkan

​During the multi-party talks process (1996-8) a recurring question among the SDLP negotiating team (and others) was whether David Trimble was going to seriously negotiate, never mind agree anything substantive.​

SDLP and UUP teams had collaborated to submit identical draft agendas for each of the three strands of the talks. Having embraced the idea of that confidence-building signal, David then declared that the UUP would not make submissions or enter talks on any of those agenda items unless and until they were satisfied about “decommissioning and the terms of entry for Sinn Fein”. It seemed perverse to adopt a stance that refused to allow even exploratory exchanges on substantive issues or ideas until Sinn Fein would be joining. Doubts lurked as to whether the UUP would ever be able to declare themselves satisfied on those apparently synonymous issues.

Other participants found ourselves speculating on the intent or tendencies of this man whom none of us then really knew well and who had only become leader of his party in the year before the talks. John Hume’s glass half-full assessment drew positive inference from the fact that David Trimble had broken with other unionist parties to accept George Mitchell in the chair in return for parties being allowed to renegotiate the ground rules laid down by the two governments. That concession of renegotiation by the two governments had worried the SDLP. Anxious to avoid slippage in the ground rules (including in terms that might be sought to prejudice future Sinn Fein entry or narrow the broad agenda), we were apprehensive about a break-down being engineered over the rules themselves. That renegotiation went better than we feared with Trimble being prepared to vote for various rules that the DUP and UKUP (UK Unionist Party led by Robert McCartney) performatively denounced.

John Hume had initially been sceptical about the idea of an election being called in 1996 to provide mandates for the talks but was persuaded by a few considerations. One of these was that the new UUP leader, whom he hoped was more devolutionist than his predecessor, could have the cover of a mandate for the party’s participation under himself in these new talks. Another was how the form of election could afford mandates for more inclusion in the talks, for loyalist parties and others. A further ground for accepting it had been that the respective mandates could provide an index for marking “sufficient consensus” - a concept used in the South African negotiations to avoid impasse.

Over the course of the talks, we often found ourselves wondering if the stated political commitment of his party to the talks process was matched by personal commitment or interest from David. Even after his decisiveness in leading the UUP back into the talks, helpfully flanked by the PUP and UDP (loyalist parties), after SF’s accession following the renewed IRA ceasefire, much of the chat among others remained about how to read David Trimble. The new evidence for the Hume glass half-full assessment was the fact that David had pivoted on the nuance of differentiating between the previously synonymous issues of decommissioning and the terms of entry for SF. Boldly sidestepping DUP demands to abandon the talks, he presented as doubling down on decommissioning within the talks.

In the few days of uncertainty about whether all unionist parties might then leave the talks, John and David had a conversation about the colour of negotiations that might take place on the Three Strand agendas which their parties had agreed over a year before. John’s take was that David was assessing whether our likely line in submissions and negotiations might take on a different hue with SF in the room. We believed that he similarly personally gauged the Irish government’s likely positioning. A subsequent bilateral meeting between UUP and SDLP teams confirmed our impression that the UUP had taken confidence that they would not be facing a pan-nationalist front if they were the only main unionist party to return to the table.

However, having courageously kept the UUP in the talks, David reverted to a mode of apparent personal detachment from the process. It became a recurring complaint among the rest of us that he seemed to prioritise going to Westminster. He was not the only leader to delegate to others in the negotiations but we found that as the UUP line-up changed its line changed. Even in March 1998 we were still wondering where David Trimble’s head was at.

Such confused impressions from then came to mind when David and I chatted in his house last May. He had volunteered the reflection that he had made a deliberate decision to lead the party from London, touching on the less supportive attitudes of some of his MPs and needing to manage the unclear centre of gravity in that party.

This line of recollection led to recalling how he turned to the Ulster Unionist Council as a forum of endorsement to manage challenges he faced after the agreement. David smiled at my observation that he could not pass a brink without teetering on it as he navigated the strange political novena of those nine meetings. Then a brooding pause. After a short tut as he looked into middle distance, I assumed that he was silently pondering the tightrope stress he had endured then. He then calmly voiced that those repeated difficult decisions showed judgement and an appetite for peace on the part of many ordinary unionists for which they are not credited by others. A short stare at me punctuated by raised eyebrows was his typical way of registering the point.

We delicately discussed the protocol that day and how Strand Two and Three arrangements could be used in added ways to give us all a way forward. Again typically, he used the word “doable” which I had often commonly heard him use in the format of “not doable” in the talks and subsequently in office. Amidst recent reflections on the agreement’s 25th anniversary, I have pondered how he moved his line from branding lots of distinct propositions “not doable” in mid-March 1998 to casting them as a “doable” collective set on 10 April. The apparent gaps between his party and most others (on most issues) when, on 25 March, George Mitchell set the 9 April deadline signalled little prospect of accommodation. He had sounded adamant about what seemed to be respective absolutes. That is an approach to political negotiations. But mutual adjustment – as arguments and critiques by colleagues and himself were answered in refined texts – seems to have allowed him to make a judgement on the aggregate, the balance of prospects, the bigger picture and longer term considerations. David’s resolve for the agreement surprised many - including some of his supporters. His resilience in the face of sustained challenge and constant detraction impressed many - including some of us even as we felt frustrated by his stances around the agreement’s implementation.

So, even after the agreement, we could lapse into the syndrome of wondering how to read David Trimble. I know from our conversation, nearly a year ago now, that he felt that too many had misread him by perceiving as recalcitrance what he pursued as necessary resolve. However, I did not find him rueful or resentful on that score. His regret was about the apparent wider lack of understanding here and across relationships embodied in the Belfast Agreement so many years later. Too much of what should have been “doable” through its structures remains undone.

Like our impressions of Brexit’s impact, our respective lists of such possibilities would have differed. But they would still have had some overlaps. When we touched on the likely attention to be given to its 25th anniversary, we seemed able to agree that the agreement needed to be treated as a toolkit or machinery to be worked rather than regarded as a precious ornament.

• Previous essays in this series are in the opinion section of our website. Next week: Bertie Ahern, Graham Gudgin, Brid Rodgers, Billy Hutchinson and others