TRIMBLE FACES MORE DISSENT FROM WITHIN
Trimble faces more dissent from within
MP unleashes broadside at deal strategy
By MERVYN PAULEY
ULSTER Unionist leader David Trimble would appear to be faced with increasing internal dissent over strategy on the Stormont deal.
Party unrest surfaced on Saturday when he came under fire from one of his MPs and also from an officer of the UUC, the party's governing body.
William Ross, MP for East Londonderry, and David Brewster, UUC honorary secretary, unleased their broadsides at the Young Unionists' annual conference in Belfast.
Their attacks came just days ahead of the setting up of a new party pressure group, Union First, aimed at focusing the forces of dissent on present party policy.
Group founder Peter King claimed the response to the move - in terms of money and membership support -was overwhelming. It was not the group's intention to form a separate party structure, he said.
Reports that attendance at the UUP's annual conference looks like being well down on previous years provided a further indication of discontent.
A party official was quoted as saying it was "appalling" that so far only about 200 of the party faithful plan to be at the conference in Londonderry on October 24.
The lack of interest is believed to flow from splits over the Agreement and the likelihood of Sinn Fein getting seats in government.
Mr Ross said that what was needed was a "mass movement" which would go out to unite people around sound unionist policies.
Mr Trimble told Young Unionist delegates that the IRA would wreck the peace process if it failed to disarm.
Even though he believed the Provisionals would jettison weapons, the First Minister insisted the issue could no longer be postponed indefinitely, avoided or fudged.
The deadlock on weapons has delayed the peace progress and there is virtually no chance of a shadow executive and north-south institutions being set up by the October 31 deadline, as set out in the Agreement.
Mr Trimble and senior party members insist Sinn Fein must not be allowed to hold ministerial office before IRA disarmament. Any change of tack could provoke a revolt against the leadership.
The UUP chief told the conference: "I believe the issue will be resolved by the republican movement actually commencing the decommissioning of its weapons. Realities are bearing in on them...
"After Omagh, there is no significant segment of opinion anywhere that can see any reason why anyone should hold on to Semtex, detonators and hundreds of guns.
"There are no excuses any more. Society is not going to allow a handful of men - only one element of the republican movement - to defeat or destroy this process and defeat the hopes people have invested in it."
Mr Trimble said if republicans were allowed to hold on to their weaponry, it would destroy the process. "People should be under no doubt whatsoever about that," he added.
Earlier, Mr Ross said it was time unionists applied the brakes to the "conveyor belt of concession".
He hit out at power-sharing government, saying he thought the party's settled fixed view since Sunningdale was that such a system was so inherently unstable it could not work in practice.
Some in the party had clearly only paid lip service to that policy, he said.
"It is on that issue that I depart from the presently received wisdom on how Northern Ireland should be governed," Mr Ross said. "Decommissioning is simply a symptom of our divisions, not the root cause."
He insisted that that which was unworkable in the past was just as unworkable today.
"I believe that as this fact dawns upon more and more activists in our party they will realise that our present course of action will not create the peace, constitutional stability and prosperity we crave," he said.
Mr Brewster, a "Union First" advocate, told the Young Unionists: "Like many in this party I feel a deep sense of dislocation when I see Ulster unionism as the keystone in the Northern Ireland Office's strategy to appease Sinn Fein...
"It is no exaggeration to describe many facets of the Agreement as not only hostile to our political beliefs, but anathema to our sense of morality."
Mr Brewster, a self-confessed pessimist, warned on decommissioning and said he wondered how many of the party's Assembly members were aware of how difficult the days to come would be.
He said: "Sometimes they seem to me like the crew of the Titanic who, having spotted a large iceberg up ahead, studiously ignore it and carry on their normal duties, secure in the belief that the captain has a plan to avoid collision."
MP unleashes broadside at deal strategy
By MERVYN PAULEY
ULSTER Unionist leader David Trimble would appear to be faced with increasing internal dissent over strategy on the Stormont deal.
Party unrest surfaced on Saturday when he came under fire from one of his MPs and also from an officer of the UUC, the party's governing body.
William Ross, MP for East Londonderry, and David Brewster, UUC honorary secretary, unleased their broadsides at the Young Unionists' annual conference in Belfast.
Their attacks came just days ahead of the setting up of a new party pressure group, Union First, aimed at focusing the forces of dissent on present party policy.
Group founder Peter King claimed the response to the move - in terms of money and membership support -was overwhelming. It was not the group's intention to form a separate party structure, he said.
Reports that attendance at the UUP's annual conference looks like being well down on previous years provided a further indication of discontent.
A party official was quoted as saying it was "appalling" that so far only about 200 of the party faithful plan to be at the conference in Londonderry on October 24.
The lack of interest is believed to flow from splits over the Agreement and the likelihood of Sinn Fein getting seats in government.
Mr Ross said that what was needed was a "mass movement" which would go out to unite people around sound unionist policies.
Mr Trimble told Young Unionist delegates that the IRA would wreck the peace process if it failed to disarm.
Even though he believed the Provisionals would jettison weapons, the First Minister insisted the issue could no longer be postponed indefinitely, avoided or fudged.
The deadlock on weapons has delayed the peace progress and there is virtually no chance of a shadow executive and north-south institutions being set up by the October 31 deadline, as set out in the Agreement.
Mr Trimble and senior party members insist Sinn Fein must not be allowed to hold ministerial office before IRA disarmament. Any change of tack could provoke a revolt against the leadership.
The UUP chief told the conference: "I believe the issue will be resolved by the republican movement actually commencing the decommissioning of its weapons. Realities are bearing in on them...
"After Omagh, there is no significant segment of opinion anywhere that can see any reason why anyone should hold on to Semtex, detonators and hundreds of guns.
"There are no excuses any more. Society is not going to allow a handful of men - only one element of the republican movement - to defeat or destroy this process and defeat the hopes people have invested in it."
Mr Trimble said if republicans were allowed to hold on to their weaponry, it would destroy the process. "People should be under no doubt whatsoever about that," he added.
Earlier, Mr Ross said it was time unionists applied the brakes to the "conveyor belt of concession".
He hit out at power-sharing government, saying he thought the party's settled fixed view since Sunningdale was that such a system was so inherently unstable it could not work in practice.
Some in the party had clearly only paid lip service to that policy, he said.
"It is on that issue that I depart from the presently received wisdom on how Northern Ireland should be governed," Mr Ross said. "Decommissioning is simply a symptom of our divisions, not the root cause."
He insisted that that which was unworkable in the past was just as unworkable today.
"I believe that as this fact dawns upon more and more activists in our party they will realise that our present course of action will not create the peace, constitutional stability and prosperity we crave," he said.
Mr Brewster, a "Union First" advocate, told the Young Unionists: "Like many in this party I feel a deep sense of dislocation when I see Ulster unionism as the keystone in the Northern Ireland Office's strategy to appease Sinn Fein...
"It is no exaggeration to describe many facets of the Agreement as not only hostile to our political beliefs, but anathema to our sense of morality."
Mr Brewster, a self-confessed pessimist, warned on decommissioning and said he wondered how many of the party's Assembly members were aware of how difficult the days to come would be.
He said: "Sometimes they seem to me like the crew of the Titanic who, having spotted a large iceberg up ahead, studiously ignore it and carry on their normal duties, secure in the belief that the captain has a plan to avoid collision."
Further Information
Publisher: NEWS LETTER
Ref: NL/331
Published Date: 05-Oct-98
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