JOHN HUME is the leading Irish politician of the latter half of the 20th Century. Like Charles Stewart Parnell, the preeminent figure in the corresponding part of the last century, Hume rarely provokes a neutral reaction.
To admirers, he is the lone wolf politician who forages far and wide, putting the issue of Northern Ireland squarely on the front table in Dublin, London, Washington and Brussels. To them, he is now on the verge of his greatest triumph of all, inventing the dynamic for genuine all party talks that can finally bring an agreed solution to Northern Ireland. In the process they believe he should win the Nobel Peace Prize.
To his detractors, he is a dangerous spirit who currently invades the southern body politic with a whiff of cordite from his close association with Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein. They say he ignores the practical reality that the only solution in Northern Ireland is an internal one, which should be forged by him and the moderate Unionist parties. They think he has been wasting the nation's and the world's time on his quixotic search for peace.
It is an important argument between the Hume vision and that of his detractors. Albert Reynolds, for instance, accepted the Hume analysis that an historic peace opening existed in Northern Ireland, and went on to make his own history by winning an IRA ceasefire. Without Hume's crucial support, Gerry Adams's current attempt to wean a revolutionary army on to a political path would have immediately foundered.
US President Bill Clinton was persuaded in large part by Hume to make his daring leap into the dark with his Irish policy. As adoring crowds in Derry, Dublin and Belfast gave Clinton best two days of his presidency to quote the New York Times, he must have thanked his stars he followed the Derryman's advice.
As is outlined in this book, the four most important attempts to solve the Northern Ireland question since the outbreak of the Troubles were the power sharing assembly at Stormont coupled with the Sunningdale Agreement the Anglo Irish Agreement, the outreach to America that began with Ted Kennedy and Tip O'Neill, and the current peace process. Hume has been at the centre of them all. There is no other Irish, or indeed British, politician who can come close in terms of accomplishment.
Despite this record, his detractors will still find fault with this book. It will be dismissed as the further outpouring of Hume's naive philosophy that somehow a new Ireland, not just a new Northern Ireland, can be forged from a solution to the present Troubles. To his supporters, however, it will be seen as the Humean vision writ large, crystal clear and precise, carefully picking the threads to weave into his tapestry of a rejuvenated island of Ireland early in the next century.
It is a land at peace with itself at one with Europe, reaching out to its diaspora in America and elsewhere. Ireland would be a country "living with its deepest differences", having "created a framework for healing to begin". "That framework, Hume writes, within Northern Ireland or within Ireland as a whole, must reflect the many differences of our people and earn the allegiance of all traditions. Having created that framework, we will work together to rebuild our country, concentrating on what are our agreed common interests social and economic development and tackling unemployment, putting bread con our tables and a roof over our heads."
Contrast that vision with that of Hume's arch critic, Doctor Conor Cruise O'Brien, whose influence in countering Hume's vision has spawned many imitators. O'Brien told the Irish News newspaper in Belfast last week that his preferred vision was an internal settlement in Northern Ireland with internment north and south for those Republicans who disagreed. Hume has argued, correctly, that since partition that approach has been tried repeatedly and found wanting.
The disappointment in this book is that there is not more "about John Hume the private man. Apart from an early chapter on his formative years, there is little information on the man himself, perhaps the best known public face in Ireland. Maybe Hume felt his personality has already been sufficiently examined, particularly in Barry White's excellent work Statesman of the Troubles, but it would have been interesting to see more of the reactions of the private Hume to the monumental recent events.
He is capable of great wisdom for the common good. As we in America lobbied hard for a visa for Gerry Adams in January 1994,, as a way of helping break the political log jam in Ireland, many of the very senior figures in American politics were checking with Hume for the correct response.
For decades, as is clear from this book, America had been John Hume's bailiwick, where he was lauded and accepted in the halls of Congress and the White House itself. Now he had to adjudicate on, whether he should support the Adams visa application, knowing that its success would certainly diminish his own bright star. To his eternal credit, he decided to push hard for it. Senior Republican figures have since stated that the visa "moved the ceasefire up by at least one year. Once again, Hume had been proven right in his judgment.
This book will reinforce the belief that we must continue to listen to this man, the most talented politician of his era. If we do, hiss closing words that "Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter will come together on our small island, and at last the gun will have no role in the politics of our land", will come true much more swiftly.