Consensus can be elusive in a place as deeply divided as Northern Ireland, but the death of its inaugural first minister, David Trimble, has prompted warm tributes from across the political spectrum. The region’s three main newspapers each ran the very same headline on their front pages: “A man of courage and vision.”
As the former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), Trimble will be best remembered as one of the key architects of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement of 1998, effectively bringing an end to the Troubles that beleaguered Northern Ireland for decades.
Trimble’s political career began in the 1970s when he was involved in Vanguard – a party formed in opposition to Northern Ireland’s first (failed) experiment with power sharing between unionist and nationalist parties. Even when elected as an MP for the more mainstream UUP in the 1990s, he earned a reputation as more of a hardliner than a moderate.
