More than any other person, John Humeplayed midwife to the peace process that began when he initiated a dialogue with Gerry Adams. As the final piece falls into place, he reflects on a long, hard journey.
It will shortly be nine years since the people of Ireland voted overwhelmingly for the Belfast Agreement. In doing so, the people were voting for peace, partnership, progress and prosperity.
We were voting to replace the conflict and confrontation that were the hallmarks of our divided past with the co-operation and consensus that can be the benchmark of our shared future. We were choosing to work together in our common interests to build a new, agreed and better Ireland. That is what we must now do.
Throughout the past nine years, the democratically expressed will of the people of Ireland has repeatedly been frustrated. It is my deep hope that restoration of the Assembly, Executive and North-South Ministerial Council will now finally allow us all to implement the Belfast Agreement and get on with the real work of transforming our country, North and South, for the better.
I very strongly welcome the fact that both the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin have committed to the full implementation of the agreement. But I deeply regret that we were prevented from making much greater progress much sooner.
Both the DUP and Sinn Féin should have been working to deliver the agreement long before now. As we look towards what we all hope will be a much more positive future, I hope that all the delays and false dawns are behind us and that all our brighter days are ahead of us.
Over the last three decades and more, the SDLP has been a strong, clear and totally consistent voice for partnership, equality, non-violence and real progress.
In our first major policy document in 1972, Towards a New Ireland, the SDLP stated that if we were to find a solution to the problems in Northern Ireland, we would have to address three key sets of relationships: between nationalists and unionists in the North; between the people of the North and the people of the South; and between the people of Ireland and the people of Britain.
We argued consistently for the creation of democratic institutions that would both respect our legitimate differences and allow us to work together in our common interests.
We suffered opposition, abuse and attack from all sides for advocating this way forward. But we stayed strong and did not waver because we always believed that our approach was the only one that could create lasting peace and stability in Ireland.
Our analysis went to the heart of the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974, which provided for powersharing in the North and a strong council of Ireland. It is a terrible tragedy that both the DUP and the Provisional movement opposed the Sunningdale Agreement and helped to bring it down. In doing so, they consigned the entire community in Northern Ireland to many lost years, countless lost opportunities and, worst of all, thousands of lost lives.
Given that the nature of the problem in Northern Ireland did not change over the years, nor did the SDLP approach. Our analysis remained consistent through the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the talks in the early 1990s and right up to the negotiations that led to the Belfast Agreement, which, as we all know, follows the same fundamental template as the Sunningdale Agreement.
In the talks in the late 1990s, the SDLP was clear that the final word on any agreement reached between the parties would be left, not with the politicians, but with the people. As a result, in the referendums on the Belfast Agreement, all the people of Ireland, North and South, spoke for the first time in our history on how we wish to live together. Overwhelmingly, the people voted in favour of the Belfast Agreement. It is the duty of all true democrats to honour the will of the people and implement the agreement in full, for all.
In making the agreement work now, the DUP and Sinn Féin are working the same basic institutions and arrangements they worked to undermine more than 30 years ago and refused to accept until very recently. They are also accepting that the SDLP's policy, analysis and approach throughout the years were correct.
The time has come for all of us to grasp the opportunity for a better future the agreement created. I hope that is what we will focus on in the months and years ahead. As we work to implement the agreement, we will all be working together for the first time to build the new Ireland our people all deserve.
It will be an Ireland that will have the total loyalty of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter, an Ireland where we will work with each other in all our interests to transform our country for the betterment for all of us.
Where conflict, division and deprivation will be the footnotes of our tragic past and economic prosperity, social justice and true equality will be chapter headings in the new society we must build together.
• John Hume, a Nobel Prize winner, is the former leader of the SDLP. The Hume-Adams talks led to the IRA ceasefires and eventually to the Belfast Agreement.