William David Trimble, Baron Trimble, was an Irish politician who was the inaugural First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002, and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party from 1995 to 2005.
40 Facts About David Trimble
2.
David Trimble was Member of Parliament for Upper Bann from 1990 to 2005 and Member of the Legislative Assembly for Upper Bann from 1998 to 2007.
3.
David Trimble was elected to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention in 1975, and joined the UUP in 1978 after the VPUP disbanded.
4.
David Trimble was instrumental in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, and won the Nobel Peace Prize that year for his efforts.
5.
David Trimble was later elected to become the first First Minister of Northern Ireland, although his tenure was turbulent and frequently interrupted by disagreements over the timetable for Provisional Irish Republican Army decommissioning.
6.
David Trimble resigned the leadership of the UUP soon after being defeated at the 2005 general election.
7.
David Trimble did not stand again for the Assembly, which finally reconvened in 2007, instead leaving the UUP to join the Conservative Party.
8.
David Trimble was the son of William and Ivy Trimble, lower-middle class Presbyterians who lived in Bangor, County Down.
9.
David Trimble attended Bangor Grammar School from 1956 to 1963.
10.
David Trimble then studied at Queen's University of Belfast from 1964 to 1968, where he was awarded the McKane Medal for Jurisprudence.
11.
David Trimble began that year as a Queen's University of Belfast lecturer, subsequently becoming Assistant Dean of the law faculty from 1973 to 1975, a Senior Lecturer in 1977, and Head of the Department of Commercial and Property Law from 1981 to 1989.
12.
David Trimble resigned from the university in 1990 when he was elected to Parliament.
13.
David Trimble became involved with the right-wing, paramilitary-linked Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party in the early 1970s.
14.
David Trimble ran unsuccessfully for the party in the 1973 Assembly election for North Down, coming last.
15.
David Trimble was elected to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention in 1975 as a Vanguard member for Belfast South, and for a time he served as the party's joint deputy leader, along with the Ulster Defence Association's Glenn Barr.
16.
The party had been established by Bill Craig to oppose sharing power with Irish Nationalists, and to prevent closer ties with the Republic of Ireland; however David Trimble was one of those to back Craig when the party split over Craig's proposal to allow voluntary power sharing with the SDLP.
17.
David Trimble joined the mainstream Ulster Unionist Party in 1978 after Vanguard disbanded, and was elected one of the four party secretaries.
18.
David Trimble served as Vice Chairman of the Lagan Valley Unionist Association from 1983 to 1985, and was named chairman in 1985.
19.
David Trimble was one of the few British politicians who urged support for the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the civil war in the 1990s.
20.
On 8 September 1995, David Trimble unexpectedly won election as leader of the UUP, defeating the front-runner John Taylor and three other candidates.
21.
Many Irish Catholics viewed it as insensitive, while many Protestants felt that it was a sign that David Trimble was defending them.
22.
Shortly after the election, David Trimble became the first UUP Leader in 30 years to meet with the Taoiseach in Dublin.
23.
David Trimble was seen as instrumental in getting his party to accept the accord.
24.
David Trimble was appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in the 1998 New Year Honours.
25.
David Trimble was elected on 25 June 1998 as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Upper Bann.
26.
David Trimble was elected First Minister of Northern Ireland on 1 July 1998.
27.
The Ulster Unionist Party retained only one seat in Parliament after the 2005 general election, and David Trimble resigned the party leadership on 7 May 2005.
28.
On 11 April 2006, it was revealed that David Trimble would take a seat in the House of Lords as a working life peer.
29.
David Trimble announced on 17 April 2007 that he had decided to join the Conservative Party in order to have greater influence in politics in the United Kingdom.
30.
In May 2010, David Trimble joined the Friends of Israel Initiative, a non-Jewish international project supporting Israel's right to exist.
31.
In 2016, David Trimble supported the Leave side in the UK referendum on EU membership.
32.
David Trimble cited a study which found that economic growth in the UK reduced after the decision to enter the Common Market, and reduced further when the UK went into the Single Market.
33.
On 14 June 2010, David Trimble was appointed an observer to the Israeli special independent public Turkel Commission of Inquiry into the Gaza flotilla raid.
34.
Richard David Trimble is a maths teacher at Graveney School in London.
35.
Lady David Trimble served as a member of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, and later the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, before standing unsuccessfully in the UK parliamentary election of May 2010 for the Conservatives and Unionists.
36.
Nicholas David Trimble was co-opted in 2016 to replace Alexander Redpath as a Councillor representing Downshire West on Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council.
37.
David Trimble admitted in July 2019 that he was "forced" to change his position on same-sex marriage and partnerships after voting against them, because of his lesbian daughter Vicky, who married her girlfriend Rosalind Stephens in Scotland in 2017.
38.
David Trimble died on 25 July 2022 after a brief illness.
39.
At a ceremony in Paris on 8 December 1999, David Trimble was appointed an Officier in the Legion d'Honneur by the French Government.
40.
In 2002, David Trimble was awarded the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.