Why David Trimble mattered

David Trimble, who died yesterday afternoon at the age of 77, played a seminal role in forging the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 – becoming the first leader of Northern Ireland’s unionists to share power with Irish republicans. Trimble and John Hume of the SDLP, the then leader of northern constitutional nationalism, duly received the Nobel Peace Prize; Trimble thus became the last British politician to win that accolade.

With his demise (and the deaths of Ian Paisley of the DUP in 2014 and John Hume in 2020), Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein/ IRA now becomes the last surviving leader of the Province’s major political parties from that period – not an outcome that anyone would have bet on at the height of the Troubles.

Trimble vaulted to national and international prominence for his part in the mass Orange protests at Drumcree in his Upper Bann constituency in 1995 – and off the back of them won the leadership of the Ulster Unionists, then the pre-eminent pro-British party in Northern Ireland.