John Hume with his beloved Derry city in the background. The proud Derry man had to do Daniel O’Connell’s work all over again writes Dr Martin Mansergh
For most people in Ireland, John Hume was the guide throughout the northern conflict who advocated the necessity of a peaceful political resolution. It was one that demanded a fundamental rebalancing of institutions to reflect the fact of a divided society and to promote the agreement and sharing needed to hold it together. He was a constant influence with all Irish governments from 1969 to 1998, but he was also the principal voice listened to in Brussels and Strasbourg as well as Washington and New York. Even in quarters that often disliked or disagreed with the message that he was constantly propounding, most ended up accepting with some modifications the Hume strategy, the British government, the Ulster Unionists and the republican movement.
As many have observed, John Hume will share in history with Daniel O’Connell the honour of being the foremost champion in their time of the constitutional nationalist tradition. Catholic Emancipation won by Daniel O’Connell, having marshalled with able lieutenant’s formidable popular support, led over time to the unravelling of other inequalities and injustices and to an ultimately irresistible claim for self-government not achievable in his day. The partition settlement, which allowed Northern Ireland to present itself as a unionist monolith, set northern Catholics back to where they had been before 1829, electorally powerless. Mr Hume had to do Daniel O’Connell’s work all over again.
Opposing
Up to the 1960s, all methods of opposing majority rule, whether political, abstentionist or paramilitary proved equally ineffective. The Catholic Church, together with cultural organisations like the GAA, held the community together, maintaining a solid Irish identity in the face of attempts to make it go away. Post-war developments in Britain, like the welfare state, the National Health Service, the spread of secondary education, provided benefits across Northern Ireland, and strengthened the material base and confidence of the nationalist community. John Hume, initially a leading light in the credit union movement, was a product of this environment. The civil rights movement that began in apartheid South Africa and the United States, where the battle for equality is still being fought out, was the key that unlocked the door to fundamental change in Northern Ireland. John Hume was at the centre of the mainstream civil rights movement, that wanted reform, not revolution, romantic or otherwise. He did not confuse the struggle for independence of 1916-21 in the rest of Ireland that was overwhelmingly nationalist with a paramilitary campaign in majority unionist territory.
Already in 1969, John Hume was full of ideas for reforming the politics of Northern Ireland and eliminating the discrimination that held nationalists down. He and others came together to form the SDLP, which combined civil rights and social democratic ideals with a progressive constitutional nationalism that included a pluralist religious identity. Opponents of reform were not able to discredit the SDLP by any association with violence. It also held up objectives and ideals, including those of constitutional change, that anyone at home or abroad could support without reservation.
Agreement
Unfortunately, the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973-4, with the central elements of power-sharing and an Irish dimension, was 25 years ahead of its time; hence Seamus Mallon’s quip that the Good Friday Agreement was Sunningdale for slow learners. It was brought down not only by loyalists, but also by republican fundamentalists. For the following 20 years, unionists sought to evade devolution, if it was not going to be majority rule, which left the SDLP without a forum. It was during this period especially that John Hume engaged in lobbying of the US Congress, of the EU and the Irish Government to raise the Northern Ireland issue to an intergovernmental and international level. He championed the New Ireland Forum of 1983-4, designed to bring constitutional Irish nationalism north and south together, recognise the equal validity of unionism, and spur on substantive negotiation between the governments. This culminated in the Anglo-Irish Agreement, backed by international financial support for peace and reconciliation, which gave the nationalist community the same access to government through the Irish Government, using the Secretariat at Maryfield. The agreement heightened the prestige of the SDLP, and helped prevent any danger that the nationalist community would provide majority electoral support for Sinn Féin, while they backed the IRA campaign.
Mr Hume was impatient to build on the Anglo-Irish Agreement, not just as an instrument of reform, or as a means over the longer term of enticing unionists back into power-sharing arrangements, but as a way of bringing violence to an end, given the check that the agreement delivered to the armalite and ballot box strategy. From 1988, the SDLP entered dialogue with Sinn Féin, at first publicly, then privately at leadership level. The Church, mainly through Fr Alec Reid of Clonard Monastery acting with the encouragement of Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, used its moral authority to encourage secret contacts, and to help devise an alternative purely political strategy consistent with republican principles.
Endorsement
The endorsement of the Good Friday Agreement by the electorate in both parts of Ireland was an exercise in concurrent self-determination advocated by John Hume to replace the 1918 general election outcome constantly cited as the ideological justification of the post-1970 IRA campaign. The Good Friday Agreement was the fulfilment of John Hume’s life work, for which, along with David Trimble, he was deservedly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Irish peace process has served as an inspiration to those trying to bring to an end intractable territorial conflicts round the world. 20 years later, it has remained the template for further progress on top of further development of the agreement. Mr Hume’s view of the importance of the European Union has been underlined by Brexit.
John Hume had the invaluable support of his wife, Pat. He led a party that enthusiastically followed him. The country took its lead from a man who had exposed himself to danger from both sides, but whose ideas have largely come to prevail.