Two names will always stand out as the architects of the Peace process in Ireland. That peace process began some time in the mid-1980s and led to the cessation of armed action by the IRA, the British and the pro-Union Loyalists in 1994-96. The cessations of armed conflict led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 which republicans regard as a blueprint for a resolution of the long conflict with the British. There were others involved behind the scenes but these two courageous men made the greatest contribution. Those two names are Gerry Adams and John Hume (died in 2020). Gerry Adams belonged to a strong republican family in West Belfast. He was active in the civil rights campaign in Belfast and was soon identified by the Unionist and British authorities as leadership material. He ended up interned in Long Kesh in 1971 along with hundreds of republicans from all over the six counties. Soon he was engaged in much debate and discussion within and without the prison. After he was released in 1974 he and others began reorganising Sinn Fein as a socialist republican party seeking support in working class areas. He became the President of Sinn Fein and was regarded as an effective strategist with a sharp political brain. He was also a good writer.
John Hume, who had studied in Maynooth for a few years with then History Professor Tomás Ó Fiaich, became involved in the early civil rights protests in Derry around 1968/69 and was regarded as an articulate spokesman with leadership qualities. When in 1970 some of the leaders of the civil rights movement decided to organise a political party to replace Eddie McAteer’s Nationalist Party, John was chosen as the deputy leader of the new Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). Gerry Fitt, the Republican Labour MP for West Belfast was chosen as the leader. Other members included Austin Currie, Ivan Cooper and Paddy Devlin, who were already elected to Stormont. In those early days they became the opposition to the unionist government led by Brian Faulkner.
After Stormont was abolished by the British government in 1972, the SDLP resorted to building their base in each of the North’s six counties. They received much support from the Catholic hierarchy and Catholic priests as well as from the Dublin government and the Irish News and the Dublin media. Even though they had attracted a few Protestants like Ivan Cooper in Derry, they were increasingly seen as leaders of the middle-class Catholic population and as more acceptable to the Catholic middle class than Sinn Fein or any of the republican groups. These small parties supported armed struggle as a tactic in what they called a war of liberation.
From the outset, the British and Dublin political classes were determined to isolate the republicans. They were condemned not only for their support for armed actions but for their socialist outlook.
In 1973, the SDLP were involved in talks with the British and Irish governments and the Ulster Unionist Party at Sunningdale in England – which was a big effort to further isolate republicans. These talks led to the formation of a power-sharing administration based in Stormont which was brought down within months by a violent unionist/loyalist backlash led by Ian Paisley and supported by loyalist paramilitaries.
John Hume had decided to devote his life to politics and was elected first to Westminster for Foyle and then to the European parliament as one of three representatives from the north of Ireland. He travelled many times to Washington believing that the Irish-American lobby could eventually be important in any efforts to find a resolution of the conflict in the North.
John was articulate and sociable and made some friends in political circles in the USA and Europe. When Gerry Fitt retired from the party in 1979, John was chosen as leader and Seamus Mallon as deputy leader of the SDLP. He had a somewhat strained relationship with Seamus Mallon which became even more strained when it became known that he was meeting with Gerry Adams without any prior consultation with his party. Mallon had no time for Gerry Adams or the republican movement. Some others in the SDLP thought like Mallon, but Hume continued with his dialogue and ignored the critics in the party and in the media.
John Hume felt he had enough support in the SDLP and also at the higher echelons of the Catholic hierarchy to agree to meet with Gerry Adams who had been demonised in the media and even prevented from appearing on RTÉ and the BBC. John believed in the need for dialogue with republicans in order to bring about peace. He was fairly confident that his efforts would bear fruit. He approached the talks calmly and with confidence in his own ability to persuade and argue his point of view. In all of this he was supported by his devoted wife Pat (RIP) and by his family.
When John received an invitation from Gerry Adams to engage in dialogue he responded positively. He knew that Gerry Adams, as President of Sinn Féin, was the accepted leader of republicans and certainly the most articulate voice of modern republicanism. As the dialogue continued John realised that for an IRA cessation to be achieved it would be necessary to build a broad-based nationalist front which included the Dublin government. It would then be possible, he believed, to win support for this strategy in Washington that would be enough to convince the IRA leadership that it was time to call a halt to the armed campaign and proceed to achieve their aims by political means.
When a ceasefire was achieved John believed that Sinn Féin would then have to be included in any future negotiations with the British on the basis of their electoral mandate. Their mandate would have to be accepted by the governments
in Dublin, London and Washington. John Hume was probably the only person in Ireland who could bring that about and to his credit he stuck with it against much vicious criticism in the Dublin media.
Lady Luck also played a part in bringing about the IRA ceasefires. By an almost miraculous set of circumstances the Taoiseach at the time was a pragmatic Albert Reynolds from Longford, a former Showband impresario with many contacts in the North; the US president was Bill Clinton who had a keen interest in the Irish conflict; and the British Prime Minister John Major was different from the previous dogmatic Mrs Thatcher whose intransigence had been responsible for the deaths of ten republican prisoners on hunger strike in 1981.
The result of John’s dialogue with Gerry Adams was the IRA ceasefire, announced on 31st August 1994. This brought an end to thirty plus years of continuous armed conflict in the North and opened the way for a peace process which led to the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement in April 1998. This was indeed a significant achievement on the part of John Hume and Gerry Adams. It was welcomed by the vast majority of the Irish people. It was a great relief to the working class republican people in the six counties who had suffered the brunt of state violence.
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