Trimble told by Blair to ‘get lost’ over timing of border poll, records show

Former UUP leader David Trimble was effectively told by Tony Blair to “get lost” over the timing of a border poll, according to previously confidential reports.

Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the UK government is obliged to call a referendum in Northern Ireland if there is evidence of a shift in public opinion in favour of Irish unity.

Files released by the Irish Government as part of the annual release of state records show that Mr Trimble was repeatedly engaged in a campaign in 2002 to hold such a vote on the same day as upcoming elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly – which was at that point looking set for May of the next year.

The records from the National Archives in Dublin show that the SDLP and the Irish government were heavily against the idea.

In March 2002, the UUP leader publicly supported the idea of holding a border poll, adding that it would “call the republican bluff”.

The move was seen partly as a bid to drive turnout in the Assembly elections, although questions were raised about whether this would benefit the DUP over the UUP.

Mr Trimble said it would put the issue to bed for “another generation” – amid an expectation based on demographics that the vote would go in unionists’ favour.

The call came at the same time that he described the Republic of Ireland as a “pathetic, sectarian, mono-ethnic, mono-cultural State”.

His campaign for the poll continued publicly and privately for months.

In the files, Irish officials record that the SDLP believed that holding such a vote on the same day as the Assembly elections would be a “sectarian blood bath” – and that the party would be setting out its total opposition to the proposal.

The records, taken from a call between an Irish diplomat and SDLP leader Mark Durkan’s main adviser Damien McAteer, show that the party wanted to hold a border poll midway through the term of the next Assembly.

While separate documents show that the Irish officials believed the UK government to be “equivocal” on the matter, Dublin said the coinciding of the poll with the Assembly elections would be “deeply polarising and destabilising”.

Concern was raised that the move would boost votes for the DUP and Sinn Fein, while Mr Durkan is recorded as saying the proposal would create a “theme park for flags”.

Mr Blair’s chief of staff Jonathan Powell spoke with a high-ranking Irish official in the department dealing with the peace process on September 13.

Michael Collins, the official who would go on to be Ireland’s ambassador to the US, wrote in a confidential memo: “On the border poll idea, Powell said that Blair told Trimble to ‘get lost’.

“Powell said that they were still concerned that Trimble was sleepwalking into a crisis with his party.

“They were not convinced that he would escape and he could still be hit by the grey suits as early as tomorrow at his party executive meeting.”

In any event, Mr Trimble’s plan to hold a border poll on the same day as the election never materialised.

This is partly because he and other unionists collapsed the powersharing institutions one month later, in the fallout of a controversy arising out of the PSNI raiding Sinn Fein’s offices in Stormont in search of files.

The institutions would not be restored until 2007, while Mr Trimble stepped down as UUP leader after losing his Westminster seat in the 2005 general election.

There has been no such border poll held since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

Throughout the 2024 general election campaign in the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald called on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to set out the “tipping-point” circumstances which are required for his Government to call a referendum on Irish unification.

Earlier this year, Sir Keir said he was committed to the principles of the Good Friday Agreement.

However, while in opposition, he said a referendum on Irish unification was “not even on the horizon”.

– This article is based on documents in 2024/130/15