My tribute to John Hume

John Hume, a founder of the peace process that ended The Troubles period of Northern Ireland and culminated in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, passed away earlier today.

John Hume's political life started when he helped found the Northern Irish civil rights movement, to counter the repression Catholics like him faced at the hands of the Protestant powers that be in Northern Ireland. He served as a member of the Northern Ireland Parliament for 3 years for Foyle (covering the western part of the city of Derry) until the Northern Ireland Parliament was abolished in 1972. He was subsequently elected as the SDLP MP for Foyle in 1983 and served as MP for Foyle until he retired in 2005, and he was also an MLA for Foyle for 10 years. He led the SDLP (which he co-founded with Gerry Fitt) from 1979 to 2001, taking it through a period of significant growth and ensuring that Catholics obtained much better representation in Northern Ireland's Westminster constituencies than before, with the SDLP achieving a peak of 4 seats in 1992. After he retired from leadership of the SDLP, however, its fortunes went south, not helped by a general trend towards both Catholics and Protestants voting for more "hardline" parties on each side. He was also one of the longest-serving MEPs, representing Northern Ireland from 1979 to 2004.

What he will be most remembered for is his determined efforts to ensure a ceasefire in Northern Ireland and ensure peace, which he eventually achieved when the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 was signed between Ireland and the United Kingdom. This culminated in him deservedly winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998, alongside then UUP leader David Trimble, and it also helped bring Northern Ireland into a new era.

So farewell, John. Peace and conciliation will forever be your greatest legacies, and ones that we need more than ever in a world where hardline forms of populism, the climate crisis, and the coronavirus crisis are threatening human civilisation as a whole.

In memory of John Hume, born 18 January 1937, who departed this life on 3 August 2020, aged 83 years.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My analysis of local by-elections from 22/11/18

Readers, the results of this week's British local by-elections were as follows: Enfield LBC, Bush Hill Park: Conservative 1540 (52.4%, +12.7%), Labour 828 (28.2%, -8.3%), Liberal Democrats 313 (10.7%, -0.8%), Green 127 (4.3%, -6.6%), WEP 79 (2.7%), Independent (Oyaloyu) 50 (1.7%). [UKIP did not stand] Westminster LBC, Lancaster Gate: Conservative 913 (47.2%, -1.5%), Labour 684 (35.4%, -1.0%), Liberal Democrats 275 (14.2%, -0.7%), Green 62 (3.2%). Windsor & Maidenhead UA, Datchet: Conservative 525 (56.0%, -3.1%), National Flood Prevention Party 223 (23.8%), Labour 121 (12.9%, -9.1%), Liberal Democrats 48 (5.1%,-13.8%), Green 21 (2.2%). Wirral MBC, Upton: Labour 1490 (61.3%, +3.1%), Conservative 705 (29.0%, +0.4%), Green 151 (6.2%, -0.5%), Liberal Democrats 83 (3.4%, -0.8%). [TUSC did not stand] All changes are since May. The open divisions in the Conservatives, which resulted in a failed attempt to call for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May by the European Researc...
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian ...
Read more

On the French local elections of 2020: Vive le surge de vert!

The French local elections finally concluded yesterday, having been originally scheduled to take place on 15 March; they were postponed due to the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  The most sensational story of these elections was the many triumphs by the main French Green Party, Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV). In major French cities (those with more than 100,000 people), EELV captured the mayoralties of Annecy, Besancon, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, and Tours. They also performed impressively in the munciipal elections for those cities as well. However, in the midst of all this triumph there was one notable setback for them: Eric Pollie, the first Green Mayor of a major French city, decided to contest the mayoral election there as an "Independent Left" (divers gauche) candidate instead. Furthermore they narrowly missed out on unseating former PS leader Martine Aubry from her post as Mayor of Lille; in the second round she held on by 227 votes, a sig...
Read more