Rude Health
The SDLP leader felt his native city often got a raw deal and he constantly fought its corner, writes
Dr Maurice Gueret’s take on the week
THE people of Derry have somewhat of a reputation for being whingers.
Natives of Northern Ireland’s second city, of which I am one, are often accused, mostly by people from Belfast, of having a chip on our shoulders.
They say all we do is moan.
We say we have a lot to moan about.
Belfast gets everything, we argue, and we get nothing.
Ah, give over, they say. It was against this background of so-called ‘Derry whinging’ that John Hume first emerged into the world of politics.
The year was 1965 and the decision had been taken by Northern Ireland’s unionist-controlled government to locate the second campus of the University of Ulster in the unionist town of Coleraine instead of nationalist Derry. It was a decision which sparked great anger in Derry and led to a huge cavalcade from the city to the Stormont government building.
At the head of the cavalcade was John Hume who, although still only in his 20s, had already been heavily involved in community activism through his work in setting up Derry’s first credit union.
The university protest ultimately failed, but the flame of political passion had been ignited within Hume and would never be extinguished.
Fast forward almost 30 years to August 31, 1994. The day the IRA announced a ceasefire, a historic development which was the outworking of the talks process between John Hume and Gerry Adams.
On that day, I was only a few weeks into my jour
nalistic career as a junior reporter with the Derry Journal. It was a day when Hume was in great demand by the world’s media. However, they were made to wait as he walked into the Journal office to speak first to his local paper.
It showed the importance of the people of Derry to him. The city was always at the heart of his political work. Harking back to the 1965 university controversy, Hume felt that Derry often got a raw deal and constantly fought its corner.
There is no better example of this than the story of
how Seagate Technology came to open a plant in the city. Hume was in California in the early 1990s and was told that the world-renowned computer company was looking to establish an operation in Ireland.
He organised a meeting with a senior Seagate executive in a pub and convinced him to come and take a look at Derry. Within two years, Seagate had opened a plant in Derry and, today, it is the city’s biggest employer with a workforce of around 1,400 people.
One man who was standing outside St Eugene’s
Cathedral on Wednesday at the former SDLP leader’s funeral said he had been working at Seagate for the last 25 years. A secure job, he said, which had allowed him to put his two sons through university.
He had come to St Eugene’s to show his appreciation to Hume for making this possible. This is just one of many stories of how the people of Derry benefited from Hume’s work. In a small way, some of them got a chance to repay him in recent years.
After he retired from the political frontline, Hume would often be seen walking on his own around the city. It was an open secret in Derry that his health was slowly being impacted by dementia. I know of many stories of people stopping him to ensure he was OK and then taking him home if he was in a confused state.
While John’s illness was a deeply private and undoubtedly difficult experience for the Hume family, it was as if the people of Derry were also helping to care for him.
The last time I was in his presence was a couple of years ago when his wife
Pat kindly invited me to their home to speak about a BBC programme I was involved in.
It was clear that, by then, dementia had its full grip on John.
During our chat, Pat casually flicked through a box of documents to see if there was anything of interest.
From the box she pulled out the original letter that Father Alec Reid had sent John in 1986, asking him to meet with Gerry Adams in secret to talk peace.
I was amazed to get to hold and read this letter. It struck me that this historic document should have been framed and on display in a museum.
Instead, it was sitting in a box of memories in the Hume household. That was typical of John and Pat. It was never about them; it was always about working for the greater good.