John Hume

John Hume, civil rights activist, founding member of the SDLP and leading politician in Northern Ireland during the long period of the Troubles, gained worldwide recognition and respect for his  principled opposition to the use of violence as a means of resolving the deep divisions between the people of Northern Ireland, between those who favour Irish unity and those who favour maintaining the union with Britain. His constant message was the need to heal sundered relationships between the people of Ireland, north and south, and between the people of Ireland and Britain. This book of essays assesses Hume’s role throughout the Troubles as he campaigned in Ireland, Europe and the US to influence politicians and opinion makers in the cause of justice and peace. The essays discuss the political background to his entry into public life in 1960s Derry as a champion of the credit union movement, the civil rights campaign, the Sunningdale Agreement, the failed efforts to establish a power-sharing executive, the trauma of terrorism, the hunger strikes, his role in Europe and the US, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Hume-Adams dialogue and the Good Friday Agreement.


Contributors include: Paul Arthur, Arthur Aughey, Austin Currie, Seán Donlon, Mark Durkan, Marianne Elliott, Cathy Gormley-Heenan, Maurice Hayes, Pat Hume, Brigid Laffan, David McKittrick, Seán O’Huiginn, Éamon Phoenix and Nancy Soderberg.


Editors Seán Farren and Denis Haughey were two of John Hume’s closest SDLP colleagues. Both served as ministers in the first partnership administration in Northern Ireland following the 1998 agreement. Seán Farren is the author of The SDLP – the struggle for agreement in Northern Ireland, 1970–2000 (2010).


‘This collection of essays with a foreword by Bill Clinton about John Hume’s life over four decades in politics and peace-making is a timely tribute to the principal architect of the Good Friday Agreement and the peace we now enjoy … This is a true story of a unique politician, woven from a range of perspectives, not all eulogies … Like many great civil rights leaders, such as King and Mandela, he was blessed with a tough mind and a tender heart; a true peacemaker’, Liz O'Donnell, Irish Independent (December 2015). 


‘Seán Farren and Denis Haughey have known John Hume since the early days of the SDLP … If the 212 pages of this splendid book do not provide an exhaustive review of John Hume’s exceptional career, it surely constitutes a comprehensive one. Hume emerges from these pages as the indefatigable activist that he was … a statesman who can rightfully assume his place in a triumvirate of twentieth-century Nobel Peace laureates who embraced a commitment to nonviolent political reform: Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and John Hume’, Thomas Hachey, Irish Literary Supplement (Fall 2016).