Edited remarks at the launch of Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism by Dean Godson; Queen’s University bookshop, Belfast, 22 June 2004.

The biggest thing in this colossal book is the subject himself, David Trimble, who is revealed as a very big man indeed. Quite simply, the Northern Ireland peace process would not have happened without him, nor would it have continued. The book is a gripping portrait of a man who, when called upon to respond to a particular set of circumstances, made a strategic decision — perhaps the Ulster Unionists’ first ever strategic decision — which appears to have been at odds with his former self and which definitely put him at odds with a large section of his own people, in whose interests he was acting. The book provides an immensely detailed account of the tensions, compromises and brinkmanship of that tortuous process, about which Dean pulls no punches and to whose ambiguities and complexities he does more than justice.

But the book is not just a story of a big man. It is also the story of a very big idea — the idea of the peace process. In the old, simple days of the past, there was war, and there was peace. Sometimes peace was produced by war, in which one side won and the other side lost. But in the peace process, no-one wins and no-one loses. Instead, everyone benefits. The peace process rests on the belief that every problem in the world can be solved by negotiation, compromise and the application of reason. In a fight between God and the devil, the peace process would sit them both down in a room and split the difference between them — with the Downing Street archangel in attendance, to beat swords into ploughshares and eradicate all prejudice, hatred and unreason from the planet: the New Labour project.

The question is, however, whether this process necessarily results in a Faustian pact. Tony Blair is in no doubt that it does not. For him, the Northern Ireland peace process is a template for the world to follow. Every tribal conflict on the globe can have its own Nelson Mandela moment. And here in Northern Ireland, one hears many people say that the situation has been transformed, and that their children are now being brought up in a world unknown to their parents, a world without bombs and terror on the streets. And that is a benefit which cannot be gainsaid or ignored, not least by someone who has not experienced a life lived under the terrible shadow of such terror.

But there is undoubtedly a dark side to a process which negotiates with terror. Here in Belfast, one hears that paramilitary violence through bombs has merely been translated into organised crime on the streets, drug-running and protection rackets, a breakdown of law and order and a retreat in the face of this by the police. People say: but surely it’s better for the men of violence to become part of the democratic process? And of course on the face of it that must be right. But voting in elections does not necessarily produce a free or democratic society. If democracy is hijacked at the point of a gun, that is a victory for terror. And this has implications for the rest of the world, where other terrorists are watching and learn a deadly lesson —that they can infinitely string along people for whom a military response to terrorism is simply never an option. Instead, the ‘peace process’ becomes the be-all and end-all. So all compromises become a moral necessity in the interests of the wider goal.

But then the question is, what is that wider goal? David Trimble’s goal was clear —to preserve the union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Has he succeeded? Here again, opinion is very divided. For some, he has saved and entrenched the union for all time. For others, he has undermined it and signed its death warrant. Those who think he has saved it claim that the principle of no unification with Ireland without the consent of the people of the north has been reaffirmed and is now even spouted by Gerry Adams; that Ireland has renounced its constitutional claim to the north; that the Unionists’ consent is even more remote than ever, since their opposition to unification has merely deepened since the peace process brought Sinn Fein into the government of the province; that the IRA is defeated and can never be re-activated, since that would turn the British government even more firmly against unification. Those who think David Trimble has undermined the union, on the other hand, claim that the Belfast Agreement has produced ‘unification creep’, a stealthy moving of the goalposts with cross border initiatives, harmonisation of social policy, the encroachment of Gaelic, and the gradual disappearance of the border with Ireland into the shifting sands of Europeanised supra-nationalism.

But maybe both sides are right. Is the union with Britain now strengthened? Yes. Are hundreds of people alive now who without the peace process would have been dead? Yes. Has this process undermined the rule of law? Yes. Have bombs in the main thoroughfares been exchanged for paramilitary, mafia-style control of some areas of Northern Ireland? Yes. Has terror been rewarded, with incalculable consequences? Yes.

The hallmark of the peace process is structural ambiguity. Sinn Fein does nothing to stop low level IRA violence on the streets because it serves its purpose to continue to remind the British government that terrorism has not gone away and that this is the alternative to the peace process. The British government does nothing to step this violence because it cannot afford to jeopardise the peace process by calling Sinn Fein/IRA to account. The peace process becomes an end in itself, unchallengeable and unquestionable. It thus becomes a legitimisation of intimidation and terror, and is therefore deeply, intrinsically, inescapably corrupt and corrupting.

But the bottom line is that the UK government has never cared about Northern Ireland and would gladly be shot of it, if it could. If it had cared, it would have been prepared to defeat the IRA by military means, and then peace might not have been bought at such a high price.

Those of us who, like me, care deeply about another terrible conflict in the world, the one in the Middle East, surely cannot fail to see certain similarities with Israel. There too one finds a people who are unloved by much of the rest of the world, whose history is either unknown or misrepresented, and who the world regards with at best indifference at worst the feeling that, if they simply vanished off the face of the earth, they would do everyone else a favour. But there is one big difference. For although Israel is also urged to negotiate with terror, it has chosen instead to try to destroy it through military means — for which it has been turned into the pariah of the world by a Europe for whom terrorists turn into freedom fighters if they choose to attack a western democracy.

It reminds me of a story I heard recently about a biblical zoo in Jerusalem. In this zoo there was a pen containing a wolf and a sheep. Above the pen was the quote from Isaiah: ‘And the lion shall lie down with the lamb’. A visitor to the zoo was very impressed. He said to the zoo-keeper, ‘How did you achieve such a miracle?’ The zoo-keeper replied: ‘Simple. Every day we replace the sheep’.