I think about John Hume a lot. And currently, that has expanded.
John Hume is a political giant. A Nobel Prize winner, he worked for peace in Northern Ireland all his political life. He was part of the Civil Rights movement in the late Sixties, and as the Troubles exploded he led the marches for peace. He kept walking all the way to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
While others shot and murdered and maimed, or advocated armed action, Hume was a democrat who wanted a better way.
Others have had their moment of glory for changing Northern Ireland, for proving what was possible, but Hume is frequently overlooked. Yet it was Hume’s brilliance, his dogged smarts, his ability to listen and build consensus, the fact that he acted like a damn grown-up that really moved things on to seal the Good Friday Agreement. And don’t forget that it is the Good Friday Agreement that is proving the bulwark against a No-Deal Brexit.
There is a lot to be thankful to John Hume for. He thought of tomorrow.
Sadly, he won’t know. Dementia has taken him. He cannot, his wife Pat said last year, even remember the peace process. Which makes me feel fury at the indiscriminate viciousness of that condition. And also because he can’t intervene and have a word with the small-fry dominating our present.