For ever hold up his peace
C. D. C. Armstrong JOHN HUME: PEACEMAKER by George Drower Gollancz, £16.99, pp. 223 John Hume is without question the most widely admired and influential of Ulster's constitutional politicians. He was the chief architect of last year's IRA ceasefire; for 25 years he has played a leading role in the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the main constitutional nationalist party in Northern Ireland; and for 16 of those years he has led that party. The appearance of Dr Drower's biography presents an excel- lent opportunity for an appraisal of Hume's career.
While Drower deserves credit for his diligence in bringing the story so far up to date as April of this year, it can hardly be maintained that he is a sure guide to either Hume or his times. The author's patent unfamiliarity with Irish politics is pitiful, and the text is littered with mistakes. Suffice it to say that he believes John Taylor MP, recently a contender for the leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party, to be a member of the Democratic Unionist Party. And the errors of omission are if anything more startling still. Conor Cruise O'Brien, Hume's most relentless critic, is not mentioned once: an oversight akin to staging Don Giovanni without the Commendatore.
Worse still, the biography is couched in the language of almost uncritical adulation: such criticisms as Drower advances are not pressed home. Hume is 'the greatest Irish politician this century' — so much for Car- son and Collins, Craig and De Valera. He is 'saintly', capable of 'selfless altruism', and characterised by a 'selfless devotion to public service'. In short Hume is presented as a great Christian politician, an Andreotti of the Bogside. Any political biography which credits its subject with selflessness must be regarded as presenting a case for canonisation rather than a balanced assess- ment. Perhaps this review may offer a few hints to the Devil's advocate.
Hume is a politician, not a saint. Like most politicians he is motivated by the pur- suit of power and prestige. And like most nationalists he never forgets a grudge, nor misses the chance to exaggerate a grievance. Thus in 1972 he called Bloody Sunday 'another Sharpeville'. And he has often repeated the claim that he is the first Catholic to represent Londonderry at Westminster, when he is in fact the fourth. This exaggerated sense of grievance is the key to his political philosophy. Hume often talks speciously of the need for agreement, but his contempt for his Unionist adver- saries — whom he has compared to the Afrikaners — is only too obvious. In Drower's words, Hume has always seen the Irish problem as 'about Unionist politicians threatening British governments'.
Hume's approach to Ulster's problems has always been governed by his commit- ment to the 'Irish dimension'. This means that Dublin has to be provided for in any political settlement for Northern Ireland. Or that, as Conor Cruise O'Brien has put it, 'there must be some symbolic harbinger of a United Ireland to come'. The 'Irish dimension' underlay Hume's insistence that the Sunningdale agreement of 1973 should contain proposals for a Council of Ireland. Most Unionists found this unacceptable, which led to the collapse of both the agree- ment and the power-sharing executive which resulted from it. In 1982 Hume boy- cotted the Northern Ireland Assembly on the grounds that there was no provision for the 'Irish dimension'. Instead, he persuad- ed Garret FitzGerald to establish the New Ireland Forum. The Forum's final report helped shape the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. That agreement was (and is) unac- ceptable to Unionists. Hume's refusal to contemplate an internal settlement for Northern Ireland has impeded rather than promoted consensus.
More recently, Hume has devoted most of his time to reaching an understanding with Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Fein. Hume first held talks with Adams in 1988, but the meetings which eventually resulted in the IRA ceasefire began in 1993. The ceasefire was a formidable achievement, but to many it appeared to be less a move in the direction of peace than part of a growing movement towards a pan- nationalist axis. Certainly it has led to the further isolation of Unionism. And Hume has failed to resolve the contradictions between the statements he has agreed with Adams, and those issued jointly by the British and Irish governments. Since the ceasefire he has played second fiddle to the newly respectable Adams, he has echoed Sinn Fein and the IRA in allocating blame for delays in the peace process exclusively to the Unionists and the British govern- ment.
Hume's career has not been entirely neg- ative in its effects. He deserves respect for his efforts to attract inward investment to Northern Ireland, and to Londonderry in particular. He has secured for constitution- al nationalism a position of local, and global, influence which it lacked before his rise, and which it would arguably still lack under any other leader. But Hume is not a peacemaker. His inflexible pursuit of the `Irish dimension' has arguably helped to prolong the Troubles by 20 years.
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