Hume’s legacy: peace before party

But the legacy left behind by the man generally credited with creating the current peace process needs to be scrutinized as well as admired if we are to understand the problems with which he wrestled, and judge whether the solutions that he arrived at will stand the test of time.
When Hume’s legacy is mentioned it generally is thought of as consisting of two components. The first is his service to constitutional nationalism, which spans almost four decades. The second is his role in the peace process, most crucially in bringing the republican movement into the political mainstream.
When Hume entered politics in the late 1960s, constitutional nationalism in Northern Ireland was in a fossilized condition. The old Nationalist Party was like a hangover from the Home Rule Party of the early 20th century. For years it had been divided over the issue of abstentionism, and while it had strong support in rural areas, in the working-class Catholics neighborhoods of Belfast more left wing parties were undermining its base. Constitutional nationalism was moribund, unable to mount a serious challenge to Unionist ascendancy, which by the time Hume was becoming active had enjoyed almost 50 years of hegemony.
The creation of the Social Democratic and Labor Party in August 1970 injected new life into constitutional nationalism, fusing it with elements from the civil rights movement and labor. But by the time Hume and his colleagues had launched their party, the greatest challenge to constitutional nationalism would come not from Unionism but from the resurgence of physical force republicanism. This meant that Hume and the SDLP were effectively fighting on two fronts: endeavoring to make the voice of nationalism heard in the corridors of power and at the same time trying to convince nationalists that the nonviolent approach was still relevant to their situation.
It was during this period, which spanned two decades of the worst violence that Northern Ireland had ever suffered, that Hume made his chief contribution to the nonviolent, constitution path. It was not just about ending abstentionism as a policy for good, and taking an active part in local government at all levels. For Hume it was a matter of refashioning political structures to accommodate the new reality of the rising Catholic middle class who were eager to play a political role. By 1972, it was clear to the British that Northern Ireland could not be governed without the participation of nationalists. The SDLP was the vehicle that could make it happen. However, Hume’s vision of the new nationalist politics extended beyond the governance of Northern Ireland. That governance could only work if it recognized at some level the national aspirations of the North’s Catholic population. Out of this came a power-sharing plan with a cross-border dimension. The first attempt to give it a political embodiment failed, with the collapse of the power-sharing government in 1974. But the blueprint remained, and would later be resurrected in the form of the Good Friday agreement.
In the intervening years of despair and bloodshed, it was the achievement of Hume and his party to keep alive a political alternative to violent republicanism. He did this by winning support abroad, chiefly in the United States, and votes at home — the SDLP remained the dominant voice of Northern Irish nationalism until the general election of June 2001, when Sinn Fein won four seats in Westminster to the SDLP’s three. But by that time, the IRA’s political wing had also more or less embraced the constitutional path. Hume is credited it with bringing this about, thus establishing the second pillar on which his legacy rests.
While talks between the SDLP leader and Gerry Adams, the head of Sinn Fein, had taken place in 1988, it was not until early 1993 that a serious, long-lasting engagement between the representatives of the two strands of Irish nationalist thought occurred. When the Hume-Adams talks were made public, not only Unionists but also many in Britain and Ireland excoriated Hume, accusing him of giving terrorism a respectable face. Parts of the media, such as the Irish Independent, who last week wrote editorials praising him for his courage, were at the forefront of attacking him for perhaps what was his most courageous moment. He refused to break off contacts with Sinn Fein even after Adams appeared carrying the funeral of the IRA bomber who had killed himself and nine others in a premature explosion in a Shankill Road fish shop in October 1993. Hume’s talks with Adams are generally seen as crucial to convincing republicans to abandon the armed campaign and launching them on its road to full participation in the peace process.
However, this part of Hume’s legacy must be subject to substantial qualifications. To begin with, it is unlikely that the IRA would have abandoned the armed struggle on the strength of Hume’s arguments alone. It is more the case that the armed struggle was failing and the IRA were forced to consider alternatives. After almost 25 years, the British were still in Northern Ireland and showing no signs of leaving. Already, in early 1989, senior members of the IRA were talking about bringing the armed campaign to an end. Within four years, the Provisionals were in deep trouble in Belfast and the leadership was looking for an exit strategy. Hume provided it. But it was not without political cost to his party.
With Hume’s embracing of the republican movement, SDLP criticism of Sinn Fein became muted. On one occasion, a statement condemning drug use in Derry was suppressed when a Sinn Fein councilor, Hugh Brady, was caught with cannabis, because it would have politically embarrassed republicans. Indeed, telephone taps on Hume’s conversations with leading republicans in 1993-94 startled the authorities because of the evident rapport between leading Provisionals and Hume. Britain’s secretary of state at the time, Sir Patrick Mayhew, when shown transcripts of the tapes was moved to ask if Hume’s legendary opposition to violence had been genuine.
Hume kept a brake on his party’s urge to criticize its nationalist rival, even after the IRA went back to war in 1996. Thereafter, no matter how badly the IRA behaved, the SDLP was restrained in its ability to attack Sinn Fein. This continued into the talks process, which led to the Good Friday agreement. Though republicans had committed themselves to the Mitchell principles of nonviolence, the IRA continued punishment beatings, robberies and various other paramilitary activities. Though local SDLP members were well aware of this, the party staunchly opposed efforts to eject Sinn Fein from the negotiations. In part, they were also responding to pressure from within the nationalist community not to break ranks. When SDLP party spokesmen did attack republicans, local Catholics accused them of threatening the “nationalist consensus.”
Hume put peace process before party politics — that is part of his historical legacy. His defenders say it saved lives. By doing so, he gave the devotees of violence an alternative, and opened a space for them to move from killing and bombing into the political process. However, even those who supported Hume’s engagement with Sinn Fein recognize that it did damage the party. “It’s the reality,” they will comment. The party faced that reality in November of last year when Sinn Fein took an estimated 20,000 votes from the SDLP to become the dominant nationalist party in the suspended assembly.
Hume’s legacy contains a bitter irony. He kept constitutional nationalism alive through Northern Ireland’s darkest years, only to see it become the property of the very party that had for so long opposed it. On two occasions, in 1974 and then in 2002, he saw his political model of conflict resolution fail. In the end, however, the nationalists of Northern Ireland will probably regard this as secondary to the fact that he made peace politically possible. For that, they will remember him.