David Trimble (15 October 1944-25 July 2022) was First Minister of Northern Ireland with Seamus Mallon from 1 July 1998 to 1 July 2001, preceding Reg Empey, and again from 6 November 2001 to 14 October 2002 with Mark Durkan, succeeding Empey and preceding Ian Paisley. Trimble was a member of the liberal Ulster Unionist Party.
Biography[]
David Trimble was born in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland on 15 October 1944 to a family of Presbyterian Ulster Scots. An alumnus of Queen's University in Belfast, Trimble became a lawyer in 1969, and he became a member of the law faculty there; he befriended fellow faculty member Edgar Graham, who was assassinated by the Provisional IRA in 1983 during The Troubles. Trimble would become a right-wing Ulster unionist politician during the 1970s, but he later joined the progressive Ulster Unionist Party. In 1995, he defeated John Taylor, Baron Kilclooney to become the leader of the UUP, and he decided to negotiate with Sinn Fein in 1997 to put an end to The Troubles. On 10 April 1998, Trimble negotiated the Good Friday Agreement, sharing power with the Irish republicans and ending the era of violence. From 1998 to 2001 and from 2001 to 2002, he was First Minister of Northern Ireland, but his 2005 defeat in the general election led to him resigning as UUP leader. Named a life peer in the House of Lords in 2006, he joined the Conservative Party in 2007 and died in 2022.