David Trimble, the former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland (1998 and 2002) Y Nobel Peace Prize for his work of reconciliation between Protestants and Catholics in the country, He died this Monday at the age of 77.after facing a “brief illness”.
“It is with great sadness that the family of Lord Trimble announce that he passed away earlier today (Monday) after a short illness,” the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) said in a statement.
training lawyer, Trimble entered politics in the early 1970s in the unionist Vanguard party., very close to the paramilitaries. He led the UUP from 1995 to 2005 and was instrumental in the Good Friday Peace Agreement (1998), which put an end to the nationalist armed conflict in Northern Ireland.
Shortly after the news of his death was known, well-known figures of British politics expressed their regret. “PDeeply saddened by the death of David Trimble, who played a crucial and courageous role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland,” he wrote on Twitter. Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin.
For his part, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnsonpraised Northern Ireland’s former leader, calling him “giant of British and international politics”. “He will be remembered for his intelligence, personal bravery and steadfast determination. to change policy for the better,” Johnson added on Twitter.
“David was a great figure, who played a decisive role in achieving the agreement (of Good Friday, ndlr) and in the creation of Northern Ireland today,” added the leader of British diplomacy (and candidate for prime minister ), Liz Truss.
In the same sense, Doug Beattie, current leader of the UUP, expressed: “David Trimble was a man of courage and vision. He made the decision for peace when the opportunity presented itself and sought to end decades of violence that plagued his beloved Northern Ireland.”
political career
Trimble joined the UUP, Northern Ireland’s largest Protestant unionist party, in 1978 and became its leader in 1995.five years after his first term as an MP in the British parliament in London.
He was the first party leader in 30 years to meet the Irish Prime Minister in Dublin, and in 1997 he became the first unionist leader to negotiate with the Irish republican party Sinn Fein.
Trimble shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with moderate Catholic leader John Hume, head of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, for his work.
In the same year he became Prime Minister of Northern Ireland’s first power-sharing government, with Seamus Mallon of the SDLP as Deputy Prime Minister.
But both the UUP and the SDLP were soon overshadowed by more hard-line parties: the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein.
Trimble struggled to hold his party together as the power-sharing government was rocked by disagreements over disarming the IRA and other paramilitary groups. His main colleagues defected to the DUP, Trimble lost his seat in the British Parliament in 2005 and soon after resigned as leader of the party. The following year he was appointed a member of the upper house of Parliament, the House of Lords.
Power-sharing in Northern Ireland has gone through many crises since then, but the peace settlement has largely endured.
“The Good Friday Agreement is something that everyone in Northern Ireland has been able to agree to.” Trimble said earlier this year. “That doesn’t mean they agree with everything. There are aspects that some considered a mistake, but the fundamental thing is that it was agreed”.