JOHN HUME'S great-grandfather was a Scottish Presbyterian, assternly devout in his Protestantism as Ian Paisley and his UlsterFree Presbyterians are today. Like Paisley, Hume reveres theScottish connection.
Sam Hume, a Berwickshire stonemason, emigrated to Donegal in themid-19th century, married a Roman Catholic and raised his childrenin his wife's faith. The Paisley line, on the other hand, neveryielded to 'Popery' and clung to the Scottish connection as alifeline to Britishness.
Hume and Paisley offer an interesting contrast. Both are bulkyand beetle-browed, hectoring in public and mildly spoken - thoughinvariably dogged - in private. They can be witty: 'When Paisleystarts to speak {in the European Parliament, of which both aremembers}, I immediately switch over to the headphones to the niceFrench girl translating him.' Paisley enjoys this sort of banter.But whereas Paisley would never jest about his origins, Hume doesit frequently.
Lord {Alec Douglas} Home, another Berwick man whose surname ispronounced 'Hume', once said to the SDLP leader: 'I always wonderedif we were related.' Hume grinned. 'Not a chance,' he said. 'Yourlot were always non-U.'
Where they differ most of all is in the style of theirrespective missions. The Democratic Unionist leader has been abanner-and-drum man all his life. Hume is an assiduous, oftensecretive networker with important political friends throughoutEurope and America.
His 30-year journey from small-town obscurity to internationaleminence has exhausted him - and damaged his health, perhapsirreparably. His attempts to draw Gerry Adams to the peace tablewere until recently as widely criticised - 'talking to terrorists'- as they are now loudly praised, though no one could convincinglydismiss Hume's abhorrence of terrorism. Since he is on a loyalistparamilitary death list, he does not know what his personal futureholds.
Hume was born in what he calls Derry and his Protestantneighbours called Londonderry in 1937. When I saw him earlier thisyear in his native city, he showed me his grandparents' tiny,terrace house in Lower Nassau Street, on the city's northernoutskirts. 'My father and mother had one room in that house, andthat's where I was born, the first of seven children,' he said withwhat seemed to be pride. His father, Sam, was a former soldier,clerk and shipyard riveter. His mother, 14 years younger, was AnnieDoherty, whose family came from Fahan on Lough Swilly in Donegal,out of which, in 1607, Ireland's leading chieftains sailed intoEuropean exile (the so-called Flight of the Earls).
By the time John Hume was four, the growing family had settledin another small, rented house (toilet in the yard) in a steep,cobbled street with a view of the Donegal hills across the border.In June 1945, the last of the Hume children was born into thisovercrowded accommodation; Sam and the four boys sharing one room,Annie and the three girls in the other.
Among Hume's memories of that time is his father emphasising thefutility of extreme nationalism. 'You can't eat a flag,' he toldhis sons. Recalling this maxim, Hume reminded me: 'The SDLP are theonly party in Northern Ireland that doesn't use a flag. We haveadopted the European socialist emblem - the rose.'
At primary school, Hume was an altar boy and did a newspaperround to boost the family income. He was clever - and pushy. At StColumb's College, a Catholic grammar school (one of the fewCatholic institutions in a city dominated by a Protestantminority), he excelled at French and football, then trained for thepriesthood. 'In those days,' he told me, 'it was almost expectedthat the eldest son would go into the priesthood.' Three yearslater, however, he dropped out of Maynooth seminary and, havingtaken a degree in French and history, took up teaching.
It wasn't enough. Hume began to emulate his father. 'He was thelocal scribe, writing letters to officialdom for neighbours whocouldn't compose their own.' Hume began to organise quizzes in pubsin the Bogside and other poor neigh bourhoods where unemploymentwas 30 per cent, to 'lift the unemployed out of their apathy'according to a former school friend.
In 1960, after a three-year courtship, Hume married Pat Hone,the daughter of a handyman from the Waterside area. A formerteacher who now organises his office and appointments, she isdeeply concerned about his workload's effect on his health. 'Isn'tshe a wonderful woman!' he said. They have three daughters and twosons, all university graduates.
Had Hume opted for a business career, it is likely that he wouldhave been successful. In their teaching days, he and his wife foundtime to run a small smoked salmon business. He helped set up ahousing association and a credit union - a community banking systemto encourage saving and money management - in London derry. Thehousing association now has 16,000 members and pounds 17m in funds.Since then, his skill in helping to attract European and Americanindustries to the city has enhanced his reputation for businessacumen.
But politics prove more attractive. In 1968, as a leader ofDerry Citizens' Action Committee, he was in the vanguard ofCatholic demonstrations for a fairer deal from the Unionistgovernment at Stormont. Self- help, civil rights and constitutionalnationalism were what he preached. 'A united Ireland, if violenceis rightly to be discounted, can only come about by agreement. Itis the people of Ireland who are divided, not the territory.'
He spent a year at Stormont as an Independent MP, and then in1969 helped form the SDLP - largely Catholic, but with asignificant Protestant minority - and steered the party through theTroubles towards 'the European democratic socialist tradition'. Indoing so, he has attracted severe criticism as well as plaudits.The New Statesman & Society recently noted his 'wordiness andthin-skinned egotism' (though acknowledging him as 'a formidablenegotiator-fixer'). His dealings with Gerry Adams prompted ConorCruise O'Brien to say that 'in supping with the Devil, he is usingtoo short a spoon'. The Unionists see him, at worst, as Adams''accomplice'; at best, as Adams' 'dupe'.
He is sensitive to criticism, though this may be due to the factthat, in Northern Ireland, even a mild distortion of a politician'swords can be fatal. IRA supporters have destroyed two of his cars.Five hooded men tried to firebomb his home in 1987. Now, the samepeople might be moved to shake his hand. Whatever the motives oneputs on his dialogue with Adams, it pushed the British and Irishgovernments into a fresh search for an accommodation with militantrepublicanism. Last February, a ceremony in Londonderry's Guildhallhonoured Hume's 25 years' service to the city as an MP, MEP andself-help missionary. The Protestant bishop described him as 'atrue democrat' and 'the key to Derry's resurgence'. Today many inUlster talk of a Nobel Peace Prize.
Last week, Hume was being hailed in some quarters as analchemist. But the process he is widely credited (or blamed) forinitiating is far from over. He knows that. Yet at everyappropriate opportunity, he will rummage in his pocket for a smallcoin, a US cent, and run a fingernail under the Latin inscription -E pluribus unum (one from the many). 'That's what I'm trying toachieve.'
(Photograph omitted)
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