Commanding voice who was a leader and moral figurehead

The death of John Hume, the foremost architect of what became the Irish peace process, was not unexpected, but it is no less sorrowful a moment for that.

Hume was one of the commanding figures of Irish nationalism, on a par with great statesmen such as Charles Stewart Parnell and Daniel O’connell.

That he came to prominence in

Northern Ireland during the violent upheaval of the Troubles, and yet he never wavered from his belief that force to achieve Irish unity was totally unjustified, is a testament to his shining character as a man.

Hume’s only weapon was his voice but it was a hugely powerful one, which was one reason why the IRA considered murdering him during the Eighties.

Hume used his voice to give expression to ideas which were anathema to Irish republicans, not least his insistence that there must be respectful accommodation with his Unionist neighbours, even when those same neighbours may not have trusted or even liked him. It took Irish republicanism decades to catch up with that principle, and many of them still give the impression of being half-hearted about the importance of democratic consent.

Hume was a brilliant orator, whose lyrical, lofty style was often mocked by his detractors as “Humespeak”, but it was a vivid manifestation of his overarching conviction that language and dialogue were the answer to differences.

As head of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Hume was a political leader, but more than that he was a moral figurehead who, together with his long-standing deputy, Seamus

Mallon, who also died earlier this year, held the line at a time when the very idea of Irish unity had been stained with blood by the Provisional IRA and its political mouthpieces.

Without them both, Northern Ireland could easily have spiralled into the abyss.

The two men were very different, as Mallon acknowledged in his memoir published last year. Hume could be stubborn. He was always a loner, doing things his own way without consulting his colleagues in the SDLP − or successive Irish governments, for that matter − and he didn’t care a hoot if, as many of them did, they had misgivings about his approach.

It’s arguable that the 1998 Belfast Agreement may not have been possible at all if Hume hadn’t steadfastly ignored all the doubters.

Throughout, Hume faced sustained criticism in some quarters of the Irish and British media for his efforts to bring the IRA in from the cold, including from me.

Many of the things his critics warned about have indeed come to pass, not least the rise and rise of a jubilant, unrepentant republican movement, and there will be plenty of time in the coming years to debate his legacy in the round.

What matters at this moment is honouring a man who was easily the most respected, indeed revered, politician in modern Ireland.

John Hume came up through the civil rights movement, and the genuine grief in Ireland at his death is not only because a great statesman has died but because he was a good and decent man who was always on the side of ordinary people and their right to live in dignity and peace.

‘It’s arguable that the 1998 Belfast Agreeent may not have been possible if he hadn’t ignored the doubters’