Reuters
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NOS News•yesterday, 22:24•Amended yesterday, 22:56
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Former Northern Ireland politician David Trimble has died aged 77. Trimble won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998, along with John Hume, for his role in ending the civil war in Northern Ireland.
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“It is with great sadness that the family of Lord Trimble announce that he passed away peacefully earlier today after a short illness,” said a statement from the family distributed by the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).
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Trimble was born in 1944 in Bangor near Belfast. Before entering politics, he taught at the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University in Belfast. He left academia in 1990 to enter politics.
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Trimble led the Protestant UUP between 1995 and 2005, and played a pivotal role in bringing about the Good Friday Accords in 1998. This ended decades of bloody struggles between Catholic Northern Irishmen who wanted to join Ireland and Protestants who were loyal were in London. Trimble became Northern Ireland’s first Prime Minister in 1998 and remained so until October 2002.
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‘Political giant’
From 2006 he was in the upper house for the Conservative Party. Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said he was “deeply saddened” by the death and called Trimble someone who played “a crucial and courageous role” in bringing about peace. The current leader of the UUP describes him as a “political giant”.
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Trimble was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with John Hume, the leader of the Catholic Social Democratic workers’ party SDLP. Hume passed away in 2020.
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