Opposed violence, he played a key role in peace deal

FORMER SDLP leader John Hume spent his entire political career working to try to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and turn it into a united Ireland.

But he is best known for his efforts to secure peace and a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland which culminated in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Unionists unfairly accused him of riding on the back of the IRA campaign of violence.

But he was unstinting in his opposition to the use of terrorism for any means and made several brave attempts to convince the republican movement that the campaign of violence should be ended.

Born in Londonderry in January 1937, the oldest of six children, Mr Hume came from the first generation to benefit from the 1944 Education Act and went to the local grammar school, St Columb’s College. He went on to Maynooth College, the Catholic seminary near Dublin, to study French and modern history before returning to teach in his old school.

In 1960 he married his wife Pat, had five children and continued to live in the republican Bogside area of Derry despite regular attacks on his home.

His involvement in the 1960s with the Credit Union movement brought him into contact with the issues of the day – housing and anti-Catholic discrimination in a city where Protestants were in the minority but boundary gerrymandering gave them a Unionist majority on the local council.

He first came to political prominence in the civil rights movement in 1968. He was present at the march in October that year which set the spark to decades of violence. But his reputation for non-violence was established on the streets at a time others sought revolution and confrontation.