FORMER FIRST minister Lord David Trimble provoked the fury of the Democratic Unionist Party at the Mitchell Conference by suggesting that loyalist violence during the period of the first beleaguered Northern Assembly was linked to DUP opposition to the Belfast Agreement.
Lord Trimble said that in the initial years after the 1998 Belfast Agreement loyalist paramilitaries opposed to the accord “maintained a campaign of sectarian violence against Catholics, including several murders”, while the DUP opposed the agreement politically.
“Then after the Assembly election in 2003, when the DUP got their nose in front of the UUP, this particular strand of loyalist violence petered out. This may be coincidence, but I think it more likely that there is a connection.
“Again, the violence may have been spontaneous, or the perpetrators may have thought that this was their contribution to the anti-agreement campaign.”
Lord Trimble asked “if anything was done to discourage this” activity, or if there was “any encouragement, direct or indirect” of this violence?
“I do not suggest that there was any complicity at party leadership level – the place to look is on the ground at local level.”
The former Ulster Unionist Party leader defended the agreement and his part in its creation.
“The core of the agreement was principled and reflected the reality of society in Northern Ireland. When we stretched ourselves for its full implementation we held the high ground.”
Lord Trimble’s comments provoked a furious response from Upper Bann DUP MP David Simpson, the man who took his Westminster seat. He said positing a connection between some elements of the DUP and loyalist paramilitaries was an “outlandish” claim.
“The DUP has consistently opposed illegal paramilitary groups of whatever shade or hue. The same cannot be said of the party which Mr Trimble used to lead. Not only did they connive behind people’s backs to hand over concession after concession to republican paramilitaries, but they also gave credence to so-called loyalists.”
Mr Simpson said the DUP would take no lectures from Lord Trimble. “The determination of the DUP, which stands in sharp contrast to the dithering we experienced under the Trimble-led UUP, has achieved the withering away of paramilitarism within our society.”
