Tribute to John Hume

 

John Hume was a fighter and a peacemaker, consummate and confident. It is a sobering realisation of how John Hume’s death marks the passing of the political titan who won a Nobel Peace Prize for fashioning the agreement that ended violence in his native Northern Ireland. The entire nation is in a deep state of shock. He came at a time when nationalism was a declining force in the new Europe. He was both the architect and the builder behind the Good Friday agreement that kept hopes alive during the darkest days of the Northern Ireland Troubles. 

In thinking about his achievements, I found the words coming to my mind were, “I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.” This was the commitment that drove Hume’s life. He helped found the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party out of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement and created an atmosphere that enabled the IRA and loyalist ceasefires of 1994. Even while advocating for a united Ireland, Hume, the Catholic leader of the moderate SDLP believed change could not come to Northern Ireland without the consent of its Protestant majority and together with David Trimble, Protestant leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, ended the sectarian violence that left more than 3,500 people dead.    

John Hume believed that lasting peace could only be built through empathy, tolerance, and democracy. By introducing the principles of nonviolence as a framework for political transformation, he remodelled the entire politics in Northern Ireland and helped through the Troubles to a better tomorrow. Will the current generation realise how much impact he had in restoring peace?