Stephen Walker’s eminently readable overview is strongest when detailing the strain Hume lived under for years
John Hume in Derry in 1970. His constant imperative was to bring violence to an end. That came at a price, including the decline of his own party. Photograph: Leif Skoogfors/Getty ImagesIn 1999, Irish Times journalist Conor O’Clery finished his book Ireland in Quotes: A History of the Twentieth Century with the one he chose as “Quote of the Century”.
There is no cold hand of history here; this is a book from inside the Hume tent with a relentless focus on the man, his words and his champions. True, some of the criticisms from unionists concerning Hume’s language about Protestants in Northern Ireland and his communications with the IRA are included, but while Walker maintains that Hume’s actions “are not immune from criticism”, this contention comes on page 346 of 364 pages of mostly laudatory text.
Walker observes of Hume’s five children that “for the first time they have all jointly told the story of their parents and have spoken with love and honesty”. Throughout Hume’s journey, his wife Pat’s role was indispensable, and she receives due tribute for what was an exceptionally tough task; as Phil Coulter puts it, “there would be no John Hume without Pat”. Mark Durkan, Hume’s protégé and close confidant, drives crucial parts of the narrative.
Walker succeeds, however, in providing a solid and eminently readable overview of the arc of Hume’s career, from straitened times in postwar Derry, one of seven children in a small house with an out-of-work riveter as a father, to seminarian in Maynooth aged 17 to teaching in Strabane and Derry, to involvement in the credit union movement and a smoked salmon business. He was “conflicted” about the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and was uncertain about entering electoral politics.
He was often secretive, depressed and difficult to be with; those who had to endure long drives with him often did so in silence. He was scarred by the failure of power-sharing in 1974 while his SDLP party leader Gerry Fitt was concerned he was “blind to everything but the precious Irish dimension”. His love of being an MEP is recorded, but again, there is little insight provided about his immersion in that world.
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