Vision of hope delivered country from intellectual straitjacket

Hume transformed language of nationalism in the North and legitimised peace as an achievable aspiration, writes Edward McCann

MY first vote in an election was for John Hume. It is a big step when you cast your ballot for the first time — a sign that you are now truly a grown-up with a say (and not just a stake) in how your society is run.

The year was 1994 and it was two months before the Provisional IRA declared its first ‘complete’ ceasefire. There was much speculation that a ceasefire might be coming, but things were still pretty grim.

Just 10 days after the vote, one of the most infamous atrocities of the Troubles occurred when loyalist terrorists burst into a pub in the rural hamlet of Loughinisland, killing six people. Seven others were murdered in that month — at a time when there was a feeling that the IRA was winding down its campaign.

I had grown up during the Troubles and, like all teenagers in Belfast, had not known anything else. The violence could ebb and flow. If you lived in the right area and were lucky you could lead a more or less normal existence — to a point.

The Troubles seeped corrosively into every aspect of life and you could only really avoid it if you went around with your eyes closed.

The weird and often warped society that existed in that era has been dissected brilliantly in Anna Burns’s majestic novel Milkman. It was deeply dysfunctional and paranoid, tribal and traumatised. She writes about: “The right butter. The wrong butter. The tea of allegiance. The tea of betrayal. There were ‘our shops’ and ‘their shops’.”

It was a place where even the most mundane of things was politicised.

For me, Hume was hope. I may have been a cynical teenager, but I saw in him a man with integrity and intellect — a man who was respected not just in the North but in Dublin, London, Washington and Strasbourg.

The latter aspect was very important as he widened our often much-too-narrow horizons. Strasbourg, in particular, seemed a very long way away in 1994.

Ian Paisley had infamously denounced Pope John

Paul II in the European Parliament and was bundled out of the chamber as he heckled him as the “Antichrist”. Not a great way for Northern Ireland to make an impression in Europe.

Hume, in contrast, seemed at ease in Europe and even spoke French.

Of course, Hume had his critics, and not just among Northern unionists. Republicans would denigrate the party he co-founded and led, the SDLP, as ‘the Stoops’, a party of supposedly middle-class softies who ‘stooped down low’.

However, Hume’s vote in that election in ’94 dwarfed that of Sinn Féin. He received almost 30pc of the overall ballot — the SDLP’s highest vote up to that point.

He was voted in by nationalists from all backgrounds and social classes. They could see that the

IRA’s continuing campaign was morally repugnant and counterproductive.

One consequence of the backlash against the IRA was an undercurrent of resentment among some people in the Republic towards anything to do with the North. This sometimes manifested itself in the pages of the Sunday Independent.

Understandably, there were legitimate concerns among many unionists and some nationalists over Hume’s talks with the Provos while their campaign of violence continued.

These people were entitled to their view and it’s an important function of any newspaper to challenge consensus or assumptions — and the Sunday Independent has done this superlatively over many years.

In my view, both at the time and now, however, the paper went too far in its attacks on Hume and some of its coverage seemed to have a vindictive nastiness that undermined sometimes genuine concerns.

There was an undercurrent of antipathy towards Northern nationalism of whatever hue, which would grate with me as someone who has worked on both sides of the Border throughout my career.

There was also a simplistic view that talking to the IRA meant you were somehow consorting with them, or that nationalist aspirations were somehow illegitimate and that the Republic should have nothing to do with the North — as if the conflict could be hermetically sealed.

Others will disagree with this analysis, and that is their entitlement.

Hume characteristically and single-mindedly talked about peace after his success at the polls in 1994. He said: “We will continue to work at the peace process, by which we mean a total cessation of violence, followed by an accord that will have the agreement of all people.”

Within four years there was an agreement of all people (or at least most people), even if it was imperfect.

Hume did not get everything right, but he could see the bigger picture. His transformational vision helped take Irish nationalism (on both sides of the Border) out of an intellectual straitjacket. The Republic removed its territorial claim in the form of Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution. Sinn Féin accepted a role in governing the North.

Both accepted the principle that there could be no change in the constitutional status of the North without majority support. This was within the context of equality for both traditions in the North. These moves were tacit recognition of Hume’s view that nationalism was about people and not territory.

Hume’s ultimate victory is that all mainstream political opinion in nationalist Ireland speaks his language now. To those who claim or claimed that he legitimised the IRA, I would say rather that he legitimised peace as an achievable aspiration.