Politics

Brian Reade: Courageous Hume puts our self-serving politicians to shame


The campaign to shun Mediterranean beaches and enjoy a traditional British holiday has gone down with some like a bowl of Saturday night kebab-flavoured sick.

And that’s just the hosts. Lake District residents claim wild, young tourists have turned it into Magaluf, Dartmoor is kicking out hordes of fire-starting, faeces-spreading campers, and the Cornish are so fearful of outside contamination, three of them unfurled a banner on a road bridge which read: “Turn around and f*** off”. Proper ’ansum me luvver.

My Visit UK pitch to my ­daughters was a tough one. ME: “We’re going to Derry where we’ll look at murals about the Troubles and walk the route of the Bloody Sunday march, then Belfast where we’ll tour the Falls and Shankill and stay in the Titanic Quarter.”

THEM: (Glum) “So we’re basically going for a death tour in the rain?” ME: “Erm, yeah. But you’ll learn a lot and you’ll love it because the cities are buzzing and the people are lovely.”

They did love it and the Northern Irish people were as warm as ever. In fact, I doubt there’s a place in Britain where the locals are more willing to give English tourists a peaceful welcome.

John Hume in 2013

Which isn’t something that could always have been said. It’s not that long ago that the only decent Belfast hotel for visitors was The Europa, modestly called “the most bombed hotel in the world” as, between 1970 and 1994, it was hit 33 times.

Back then, Northern Ireland wasn’t so much a staycation option but the No 1 stayawaycation venue in Europe. It’s completely different today.

A difference that has much to do with a giant of a man who died days after I returned home. A man etched on a famous Bogside mural alongside Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa, of whom the tour guide said: “To the people of Derry, John Hume is all of those others rolled into one. Because he brought us equality and peace.”

Only in his death, as key figures involved in the Good Friday negotiations state how crucial he was to the outcome, has it become clear that peace would not have been achieved in Ireland without Hume’s courage, intellect, compassion and single-minded belief that people from opposite traditions could live together in relative tranquillity.

At a time when our current political leaders seem weak, opportunistic and consumed with self-interest, you realise how badly we need more John Humes.

Last year, Derry Girls’ writer Lisa McGee dedicated an episode of her sitcom, in which the 1994 ceasefire was the backdrop, to the Nobel Peace laureate and former SDLP leader.

She said Hume’s spirit was always with her when she was writing the scripts because he brought the hope
that shaped her joyous characters and brought self-belief back to her city.

Today there is a huge mural of the Derry Girls on the side of a pub which is even more photographed by tourists and locals than the historic ones at the Bogside.

That’s down to Hume’s dogged determination to bring normality and optimism back to his homeland.

And thanks to the most famous Derry Boy we can all laugh again about this beautiful but troubled city, along with the Derry Girls.

What a legacy. What a man.





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