Former Northern Ireland Prime Minister David Trimple died on Monday, his family announced. Protestant and aligned with England, his trajectory was marked by winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998, shared with John Hume, the country’s Catholic political leader, who died two years ago.
According to the family note, released by the Unionist Party of the Uister, Trimble “passed away peacefully after a short period of illness.”
The deal for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize ended more than 30 years of bloody conflict in Northern Ireland.
Negotiations began in 1993, when Hume was part of the first attempts at dialogue with Gerry Adams, then leader of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The terrorist group was responsible for several attacks that caused, until the signing of the peace pact, more than 3,600 deaths.
These early contacts helped pave the way for a joint initiative by the British and Irish governments in 1993, which spawned a peace process and a truce announced by the IRA the following year.
Four years later, in 1998, a historic pact, known as the Belfast Agreement, or Good Friday Agreement, ended 22 months of negotiation and decades of conflict. The Protestant Trimble was the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland that year, which led to him being remembered for the Nobel.
The Swedish award committee considered Trimble and Hume fundamental to the signing of the historic peace agreement and an example for other conflicts in the world. Adams, from Sinn Féin, was excluded from the award, but at the time said he was satisfied with Hume and asked for the party to participate in the Trimble government, which the then prime minister refused.
“He was a man of courage and vision. He chose to seize the opportunity for peace when it presented itself and sought to end decades of violence that ravaged his beloved country,” current Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie said Monday. “He will forever be remembered for the leadership he demonstrated in the negotiations for the Belfast Agreement.”
Brandon Lewis, until a few weeks ago the UK’s minister for Northern Ireland, called the former prime minister a brilliant politician. “The people of the UK owe him an immense debt of gratitude,” he wrote on Twitter.
