Original subtitles

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

I first became aware of John Hume

when he became widely written about in the news.

First, he was real, and secondly,

he didn't seem to have an agenda other than the one he was pursuing.

He wanted an inclusive peace.

And he thought that non-violence was the best way to pursue it.

He was...

..the Irish conflict's Martin Luther King.

John quickly came to the view that

if I want to influence American policy, somehow or other

I'm going to have to break in to the Washington scene.

Where is the power?

Who has the power?

And how can I enter that zone of power?

John Hume saw an opening.

If you want to solve problems, you have to have power.

And power can only be got through influence.

And the influence in America was very, very substantial.

It was to the top,

to the Capital, to the White House.

Jimmy Carter as president.

Tip O'Neill, Ted Kennedy.

All of those men got a new insight

into what was happening here.

Language, of course,

works in all kinds of directions in John's story.

Because the ability to speak the language of the American

politic better than them is a plus.

When I was elected president and gave my inaugural address,

I called for the United States to be a champion of human rights,

and to promote peace everywhere we could in the world, and obviously

I learned very quickly that one of the main challenges for peace

and human rights was in Northern Ireland,

and its relationship with the rest of Ireland

and also with Great Britain.

Born into a background of injustice and division,

John Hume was a decisive leader of the civil rights movement

in Northern Ireland in 1968.

Elected to the parliaments of Britain, Europe

and Northern Ireland, he resolutely pursued a peaceful path

throughout the Northern Irish conflict.

Hume believed that the partition of Ireland in 1921 was a failure

to confront the colonial legacy between Britain and Ireland,

and that the political structure of the Northern Irish state

was a barrier to resolving the division between the people.

This is the story of how John Hume harnessed the political influence

of the Irish-American diaspora

to address that legacy of division and to achieve peace.

Derry had had a terrible year.

The whole of the North was a cauldron of conflict at that stage.

We had Bloody Sunday and just continual shootings and bombings.

I was teaching, I was the breadwinner.

We had five small children, so, when, in 1972,

he got a phone call from Senator Ted Kennedy,

he just couldn't believe it.

His reaction was, "Well, pull my other leg!"

Ted Kennedy was coming to Bonn for a Nato meeting

and he asked John if they could meet up.

So he went to the Credit Union and he got a loan from the Credit Union

for a flight to Bonn and one night's accommodation.

He identified Hume, in a sense, as a civil rights leader.

It was simply John Hume and Ted Kennedy in the study

of the ambassador's residence, so nobody knows exactly what happened.

But I do know that immediately afterwards,

Ted Kennedy said to Sean Ronan, "That's the man.

"That's the man I will listen to."

This is... Yes, that's Eunice and Bobby and Pat,

and Mother, me and the president and Teddy.

Teddy particularly was interested because, being the youngest

in our family, he'd heard a lot from our parents about our Irish roots.

And he was in a position to do something.

He was just captured by the whole problem and by the difficulties

that John understood so well.

I think his relationship was very close.

I think he trusted him absolutely.

I think he realised that he didn't want a victory,

that he wanted peace.

The sentence that everybody always knew was,

"What does John Hume think?"

Because he was so clear.

I mean, he didn't say, "Well, we're right and you're wrong."

In 1976, John went to Harvard as a fellow

in the Center for International Affairs.

And he spent four months there, and it was during this period

that he did... That he and Michael Lillis from the Department

of Foreign Affairs, they did intense work on Capitol Hill.

Working with John Hume often meant spending a lot of time saying

nothing, because he would say nothing.

He thought his way through every situation with extraordinary

clarity, strategy, and I would say brilliance, actually.

What he discovered in this situation was that there was a

combination of circumstances, particularly from 1976 on,

when Jimmy Carter became president,

and when the Speaker of the House was Tip O'Neill,

one of the most admired and effective senators -

Senator Kennedy - ably backed by Senator Moynihan from New York,

and by the governor of the state of New York, Hugh Carey.

What Hume did was he created

a sort of a combination between those four.

Michael had the diplomatic standing, he represented the Irish government.

But the real voice of what was happening in Northern Ireland

was that of John Hume.

And it was a really happy coincidence that we came together

and what we now call "The Four Horsemen" emerged.

Carey - governor of New York.

Pat Moynihan - senator from New York/

Ted Kennedy - senator for Massachusetts.

Tip O'Neill - very powerful figure.

"Boys", he said, "you must understand,

"the problems in Northern Ireland

"were not created by the people in Northern Ireland.

"They were created in London and in Dublin."

He said, "And the problems in Northern Ireland won't be

"resolved by the people of Northern Ireland.

"We need the cooperation and the help of London,

"Dublin and Washington.

"It's only you in Washington that can make the difference

"and can really pull this together."

When I was elected president, Pat Moynihan in the Senate,

and Ted Kennedy, Tip O'Neill would quote John Hume

and his efforts for a peaceful resolution

of the Irish problem.

I became convinced that the United States should speak out for change

on this issue and called for honouring the desire

of the Northern Ireland people

for peace with Great Britain and for the rest of Ireland,

and also for recognition by the international community.

He described the situation in Derry,

and the unemployment was at 47%,

it was, like, a staggering figure to absorb.

And he described in eloquent detail that people, being unemployed,

had time on their hands and had, really, nothing to do

but engage in this violent situation that existed there.

"What is it all about?"

is the rhetorical question to which people would prefer

not to hear a reply.

This has been the disastrous attitude which generated

the political vacuum.

Not alone is this attitude irresponsible and immoral,

it is also dangerous to us all

because it has encouraged the killers.

When you have someone who's the instructor

and comes with having lived through the turbulence, whose life has been

threatened, he's seen all the dangers, he was the focus of trust.

He was as effective as a single individual as any senator could be.

There's no way to overstate what his impact was in the United States.

All the different venues to whom he spoke, he gave that message, and the

message was, almost every conflict in history

is economic at its base.

It's who controls the jobs,

who controls where the money flows.

That's what wars are fought about.

Sure, it was tribal.

Sure, it was the reaction to years of colonisation,

and it was Protestant and Catholic,

but it was, at the end of the day, economic.

For the men, one out of five of them are out of work,

tearing the soul from a city, shrouding it in hopelessness,

and giving birth to the apathy born of years of idleness

and frustration that has been the sickness of Derry down the years.

He knew words alone wouldn't do it.

He knew that he had to bring some industry,

some jobs into Northern Ireland, so people could work together.

It was kind of... He was a novel voice, and when

we would be on this campaign to bring industry

to Northern Ireland,

we'd be constantly advocating for that, and John would show up,

he'd take the trip across the Atlantic and he'd

encourage that and he'd praise the businesses for coming in.

The articles that John wrote for the Irish Times - I think two articles,

in 1964 - in my view, that set out not just John Hume's agenda,

but that became eventually the Irish nationalist agenda.

There were two or three key points.

One, nothing could be achieved by the use of violence.

That was key.

Second point, we're not talking about reuniting two pieces of turf.

We're talking about uniting people.

And that unification has to begin in Northern Ireland.

And it can only happen... Whatever happens can only happen by consent.

And as far back as 1964, John had set that down.

If one wishes to create a united Ireland by constitutional means,

then one must accept the constitutional position.

There is nothing inconsistent with such acceptance

and a belief that a 32-county republic is best for Ireland.

We instantly hit it off because we had similar philosophy.

You know, what I always felt was economic injustice

creates a lot of problems.

And giving people hope and opportunity and dignity,

they would always be interested in hearing American politics.

He was fascinated with Martin Luther King,

and, of course, Martin Luther King was a strong presence in Boston.

I'd tell John stories about how I saw Martin Luther King

out in the Roxbury neighbourhood, marching into downtown Boston.

John would be fascinated with that.

He'd want to know the whole background

and how the people responded to him.

ARCHIVE: And throughout the nation, even in Canada,

there were marches through the streets of towns and cities.

In New York's Harlem, more than 15,000,

half of them white, filed sombrely through the streets in quiet

but agonised protest.

The events in Selma had been brought to a climax by a night-time attack

on a white Boston minister by white men.

He died two days later.

The American media could easily relate to what was happening

in Northern Ireland, particularly in '68, '69.

It was almost a copy of the civil rights movement

in their own country.

Now, it was obviously much more complex, and the complexities

were not easily understood in the United States.

People understood civil rights.

You know, housing, electoral reform, discrimination.

All of these things were understood.

What was not easily understood was, where was Northern Ireland?

Why was it part of the United Kingdom?

What was the background?

Why did people want

a united Ireland?

The fact that we are now launched on a massive campaign of passive

resistance, if Faulkner thinks that the taking down of barricades here

today means that the people of this area

have withdrawn their opposition to the regime, then of course

he's being very deluded.

Is it your opinion that the barricades should go back up again?

Well, it's my opinion that we should...

Hey, hey, hey!

It's my opinion that we should launch a massive... Hey!

INDISTINCT SHOUTING

We know what works in the world is inclusive politics,

inclusive economics, inclusive social policies.

But the more people are polarised and distrusting,

in particularly if they're shooting guns,

the more difficult it is to say,

"I'm for inclusive cooperation, I'm for peace."

And John just held the line.

We Unionists built, effectively, Northern Ireland.

And we built a good house there.

But it was a cold house for Catholics.

The Unionist point of view would have regarded the

civil rights movement as being unnecessary.

Unionism could not accommodate this demand for equal rights.

They fragmented, they imploded, factionalised.

They found solidarity, reassurance in a new form of intransigence.

They saw IRA conspiracies everywhere

at a time when the IRA barely existed.

They provoked the revival and recruitment of the IRA,

the force in history which they hated and feared most.

In 1971, the Northern Irish government

began a policy of interning Catholics,

without evidence and without trial.

Over 300 Catholics were taken

from their beds at 4:30,

five o'clock in the morning,

and put in various places.

Some in Magilligan Prison.

The protests were huge - intense anger about internment.

John arranged a march in Magilligan.

GUNSHOTS

SHOUTING

Could you tell me on what authority

that you're holding us back here from...?

This is a prohibited area. You're not allowed in a prohibited area.

Under what law?

Would you ask those men to stop firing rubber bullets

at women, please? They will not.

They'll stop it providing you keep away form the wire

and don't try to enter this prohibited area.

Under what law is this prohibited,

or under what authority is it prohibited? Can you tell me?

It's prohibited by the police and by the government.

But the police tell me that it's you that is in command here,

not them.

I'm in place with the military here. This is a military area.

Under the authority of the government,

this has decreed a prohibited area.

And are you proud of the way your men have treated this crowd today?

This crowd has tried to come into a prohibited area.

You, as a member of parliament, should try to stop them.

You shot at them with rubber bullets and gas.

The crowd was marching over there, the leaders were going

to speak to you. Before we even got there, you opened fire.

That's right. Fire was opened after they came through the wire.

No, it was not. No, it was not.

Fire was opened as the crowd was coming across the beach.

Mr Hume, I'm not here to enter into an argument with you.

Oh, I'm not here either.

But I wouldn't be very proud of the conduct of your men today.

A crowd of people, and they're totally unarmed people,

as you can see for yourself.

If you lead your people away, then we'll go away, too.

Yeah, but we want to march in there.

You're not allowed to march in here. Why not?

It doesn't belong to you. It's prohibited.

It doesn't belong to you. You can't prohibit it.

It's been prohibited by your government. Whose government?

The government of Northern Ireland. Not OUR government.

And that's why you're here, because it's not our government.

There was a number of possible reactions to what had happened at

Magilligan. One was John's reaction.

To say, "Well, if that's the way it's going to be,

"we want to draw back from it, that these people are going to kill us."

John didn't seem to grasp that what had happened at Magilligan made

a big march in Derry the following week absolutely inevitable.

John was very worried about this,

and he asked Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association

to cancel it.

He made it known that he would not

be participating in the march.

He had no difficulty

in his own security,

but it was trying to guarantee the safety

of everybody else on the march,

and he felt it was a chance that he couldn't take,

having seen the Paras on the previous Sunday.

PIPE MUSIC PLAYS

I remember Tip coming to Derry,

to the homestead of Tip's grandmother,

situated in the most beautiful part of Donegal,

where you have the Swilly laid out in front of you,

and the sea was glistening

and all the relations were gathered, and Tip was deeply moved.

I suppose he thought, of the young Eunice Fullerton,

who had left home, not knowing if she would ever be back again,

and heading off to this big, big country.

His father's father had worked in brickyards in Ireland,

and when he came to America he landed, naturally enough, Cambridge

because there were brickyards in North Cambridge,

and so the folks that came from that area of Cork

found themselves emigrating to that side of Cambridge.

And that was the history of it.

And a couple of generations after that came Tip O'Neill.

He certainly knew the history of the Irish

and what the Irish-American condition was, and he was old enough

and early enough in American history to understand

the British and what they felt

about the Irish coming to America.

Certainly I'm talking about the Brahmins

and the patrician Yankees here in New England

and how they treated the Irish -

and others, frankly, coming in from other European nations.

The Irish were Democrats, the Irish-Americans were Democrats.

They always had great sympathy for the underdog. Tip certainly did.

And within Massachusetts, you had this amazing rivalry

between Irish Catholics and White Anglo-Saxon Protestants -

a struggle that went on for 200 years for control.

The Protestant elite, the Wasps, were identified with England,

and so Tip identified with Ireland as the underdogs.

"No Irish need apply. No Catholics need apply."

We grew up with that as kids.

We heard those stories from our parents and from our grandparents.

So we sought... We sought peace,

we sought unity, we sought justice.

But he always used to talk about the fact that the IRA had this

strong emotional grip within his

neighbourhoods in North Cambridge,

which it did in many, many working class neighbourhoods in Boston.

So that, I think, is how he first got introduced

to the whole notion

of Irish independence

and being on the side of

the Irish Catholics in the North.

There was a bank run by the Yankees in North Cambridge which bypassed

all the ethnics, all the Irish and Italians, and never gave them loans.

And so my father went to the bank president and said, "You know,

"you've got it on deposit, all the Irish money

"and all the French-Canadian money from our neighbourhoods.

"There'll be a run on your bank if you don't start

"loaning the money out."

And so, the next day, the bank started loaning the money out.

Tip took his lead and Tip took his politics

and Tip took the view of what John was saying.

I would say, in those days, Tip was taking far more from John

than he was from the Irish government, quite frankly.

ARCHIVE: The car bomb was left just outside the front door.

Even when I think we tired of it in Ireland,

it was still hitting the international news,

so, for Tip O'Neill and for senior politicians in America,

it was on their desk every day.

Hume had an extraordinary effect on O'Neill in particular,

as of course he had on Kennedy and the other two.

But O'Neill was the most powerful of the four of them.

He was the second most powerful politician in the United States,

and he took this on as passionately

as any basic American priority.

When he went to the States, one of the models that he

talked about a lot, written

on the grave of Abraham Lincoln,

"E pluribus unum."

"From many, we are one."

And he felt that here were people

who had had to leave

the place of their birth because of

conflict, because of intolerance,

and they went to the States

and they were able to come together under the one constitution.

And he felt that this was the model.

"Why can we not get over our differences?

"Why can we not come together?"

John Hume turned to me and said,

"You know what the most amazing thing is about the United States?"

And I said, "Well, I'd like to know."

And he said, "That it's one country."

It was just a great moment for me to see,

through his filter, just how

important we were as a model.

Those who have tried to bring down this Executive

and who, in fact, have succeeded, will, in the long-term, in my view,

be the losers, because our view remains solid

and rock-like in the SDLP

that the only way to solve the problems of Northern Ireland

is not through conflict between the different sections of our people

but through partnership.

That is the only way forward.

It would now appear that the representatives of the

majority of the people in Northern Ireland have rejected that concept.

I think that is a tragedy.

For the first time in the history of this country,

a long and bitter history, at least for five months, Catholics

and Protestants sat together to administer, and we would hope

that the day will not be too long distant when they can do so again.

Mr Hume again visited New York on Friday, November 19, 1976,

and attended a luncheon.

Included among the guests were Mr Graham Hovey

of the editorial board of the New York Times,

Mr James Chase, managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine,

and Mr Edmund McDowell, editorial writer of the Wall Street Journal.

John Hume called in the Secretary-General of

the United Nations on the 18th of March.

Those visits to America did him good as well,

because politics here, during those years, were in limbo.

And when he went to the States, he was energised,

and when he could see that politics do work,

and came back, ready to start again.

The President of the United States, in order to pass

his legislative programme, he needed the support of Tip O'Neill.

Tip O'Neill had a very different view on many of these issues

from Carter, but they negotiated.

Obviously, if you're at the State Department and you're

worried about Nato, you're worried about the Soviet Union,

you're worried about the special relationship with London,

you don't want to take on, kind of, a side issue that's been

going on for 800 years, not going to go anywhere.

For several months, we were negotiating what was called

the Carter Initiative, largely led by John Hume.

The battle flowed back and forwards,

and frequently it seemed that the British were winning.

That would have meant that President Carter could not have said

anything about the North except what the previous presidents had

said, which was, "None of our business.

"We can't get involved."

The British had nothing against power-sharing,

but they didn't want the President to say anything which suggested

that the US could take an interest in the problem of Northern Ireland.

So this statement, therefore, was hugely important

when you look at it in a historic context, because it's

the background to all the things that have happened ever since.

You know, it's a rare thing for the United States to take

a position against the policies of Great Britain, government,

because some people, many, most people consider that to be an

internal affair, just for the people in London to decide, ultimately.

The State Department was not in favour of what I did,

as you may know.

But I didn't really consult with them too thoroughly.

"To heck with the State Department,"

because this was about bigger issues.

It was one of the important moments in which the United States

took an issue of importance to

an ethnic community

and turned it on its head, and helped with the education of people.

But it was very important for me

to express myself personally to the

prime ministers of Great Britain, to let them

know that this was not just a superficial

statement on my part, but I really meant it,

and it was an important part of American policy.

So that's why I talked mostly to Jim Callaghan,

and then after a couple of years he was replaced as Prime Minister

by Margaret Thatcher, and I'd also discussed it with her.

So I let it be known, both to the British leaders

and also to the general public,

and to my Irish supporters in the United States, that

I had one policy towards Ireland, and that was peace,

human rights and an absence of violence.

"To Ted Kennedy...

"I discussed Northern Ireland with PM Thatcher,

"and will report results of our conversation next time I see you.

"Jimmy."

Well, the British relationship with Ireland was incredibly

troubled for all the obvious reasons,

but then you had the American influence,

which was a very strange thing for British politics,

because at one level, for example, Margaret Thatcher,

a huge ally of Ronald Reagan.

At another level, you know, there were people in America,

even people on the Republican side of American politics,

willing to support and finance republicanism in Northern Ireland,

which obviously had a completely different complexion to it.

I suppose, if you go back even to the 19th century,

you find a concern in British circles about the impact

of Irish immigrants in the United States.

As they saw it,

the monster of Irish nationalism had escaped the confines of the island.

It was now frolicking in the United States

and being a spoiler again and again to what they saw

as the relationship between the two Anglo-Saxon sister democracies.

You had a series of efforts by leaders of Irish nationalism,

responding to the enormous Irish-American

interest in Anglo-Irish relations

and in the cause of Irish freedom.

What they wanted, of course,

was to get the United States to pressure the British to be

flexible, to be helpful, or even to give in to Irish demands.

And that would have to involve the President of the United States,

the Secretary of State and the State Department.

But those three offices in the United States,

which actually make up the foreign policy of America,

were completely controlled by the British.

There was a huge block in America,

including a fair number of Irish-Americans,

who didn't want us to do this,

didn't want us to put our relationship with the UK at risk.

The so-called "special relationship" had been used to basically

freeze us out, even though America had the largest diaspora and

the largest Northern Irish diaspora in the world by a large margin.

In the early '20s and before, political leaders went to

America to raise money for the cause of Irish freedom,

but John Hume had a structure and a strategy to what he was at.

And he did mobilise the Irish-American

influence in the Senate and on Capitol Hill.

And once he got his foot in that door, he kept it open.

What John Hume and Michael Lillis achieved was to get

the Americans to agree to come to the table

and to be part of a process, but we did not

and we were very careful not to ask the Americans to take sides.

It balanced the situation out.

We didn't get, of course, from our side, everything that we wanted.

That's not possible in diplomacy ever.

But we actually got a voice and considerable influence.

This was resisted, I would say,

in the most bruising possible way by the British.

The IRA had great support here in the United States.

The widows and orphans fund, which also went to purchase weapons.

There were lots of incidences where weapons flew

directly from here to there.

"Brits out. Bloody Sunday.

"Why are these guys counselling something else?"

So, it was a risk for them.

And in Boston, where you had all these jars on the bars,

collecting money for the IRA, it was a risk for Tip and Ted,

and it was also a political danger to them.

By the time I joined Senator Kennedy's staff in 1985,

we were writing annual statements called The Friends of Ireland,

as opposed to the other group in the Congress that was more

aligned with Sinn Fein.

When I got to Washington, Tip O'Neill created what was

called The Friends of Ireland.

And it was a membership made up of congressmen who would support

the Irish government, support John Hume, support Tip O'Neill.

And I eventually... I joined it as soon as it was formed.

Every year we'd put out competing statements.

Theirs was harsher on the British

and more supportive of Sinn Fein's agenda.

And when I wouldn't support the IRA and join the Biaggi Committee,

I'd say I was greeted on a number of occasions less than friendly.

Banners - "Charlie Dougherty is a traitor."

"Charlie Dougherty is pro-British."

And I remember standing outside John's home.

They stuck a pole with a mirror under his car,

and Pat was obviously... She said, "This goes on every morning."

They were very concerned somebody would have planted a bomb.

So, John was dealing with a much

more dangerous, high-level...

Multiple kinds of parties involved.

The 1980s were a time in the United States

when we were still in the peak

years of the Cold War,

and when foreign policy had been reduced to kind of very

simple algorithms.

"Good guys, bad guys" was the essential point.

The Irish debate was also seen as a fight between good and evil.

And if you take it as a good-and-evil fight,

it's very hard to find a middle ground.

All the foreign news was generated outside the United States.

Northern Ireland, basically, the news coverage came through London.

So, the news coverage of what was happening in Northern Ireland

was very heavily influenced by the British view.

And that was particularly obvious after Bloody Sunday,

when the British had essentially

fed to the journalists in London

a particular line about what had

happened in Derry on that Sunday.

And that duly turned up in the US media.

There was very little we could do in Washington or New York to

change that.

But what was possible was to get

in touch with the editorial types,

the people who wrote the editorials,

and in particular the people who

wrote columns, opinion columns.

It was easier to write about the bombing,

bombs and the bullets, and the conflict and, "Why are Catholics

"killing Protestants and Protestants killing Catholics?"

as if it was some sort of medieval story.

So, to turn that around and make it into a failure of policy,

which it was - and John pointed that out,

that there actually was a better way forward, and here it is.

And he just kept on telling that story until enough people

believed him and began to write it in editorials.

He would go and meet the editorial board, have lunch with them,

talk about Ireland.

And it was particularly helpful, if

John Hume happened to be visiting,

to bring him along, because, again,

that gave legitimacy.

Over the years,

a small but very influential

group of journalists emerged who

became specialist on Ireland.

People like Michael Kilian - Chicago Tribune, Mary McGrory

in the Washington Post, Ron Apple in the New York Times.

Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill up in New York. You had Kevin Cullen

at the Boston Globe. Marty Nolan, David Nayan.

A bunch of Irish names sprinkled throughout

journalism in the United States.

And our first reaction was to be sympathetic,

anti-British. "Brits out".

So there was a process of education that had to be undergone, not

just for American political leaders, but also for the American press.

HELICOPTER BLADES WHIR

May I make one point about the hunger strike in the Maze prison?

And I want this to be utterly clear.

There can be no political justification for murder

or any other crime.

MURMURS OF SUPPORT

The Government will never concede political status to the

hunger strikers,

or to any others convicted of criminal offences in the province.

Suddenly, with the hunger strikes, I mean, the mythology of total

victim, total tyrant oppressor, was resurrected with a vengeance.

You had the hunger strikers on one hand, the morbid deathwatch going

60, 70 days for a young person.

You know, it would engage anyone on humane grounds.

You had the imagery of, you know, with it echoes of Terence MacSwiney,

echoes of Christ's Passion, echoes maybe of ancient Celtic

systems, where the hunger strike was the ultimate weapon of protest.

On the other hand, you had Mrs Thatcher incorporating,

for the Irish Americans, the worst stereotype of English cruelty.

You had huge demonstrations, which the

British didn't dare fly their flag, for example.

Massachusetts asked the State Department to remove

the British Consulate.

As I recall, it wasn't like you began to shift allegiances.

That there was just intransigence

about dealing with this at all was infuriating.

And so you began to say, "Look, I'm approaching...

"The Hume approach makes sense, but this is outrageous."

I would not support the hunger strike.

So there was a big rally in my district, I'm told 5,000 people.

At a major crossroads, which was like the heart of the district,

and then they marched down to where I lived. We weren't home.

The police had said, "Take your family and go away."

So we were told 5,000 people marched by, carrying coffins,

saying I was supporting the British and killing Irish patriots.

And that got a little dicey.

"I regret the death of Bobby Sands.

"I regret it particularly since it was so unnecessary

"and could have been avoided.

"The British Government wanted Bobby Sands to die or to surrender.

"The Provisional IRA wanted Bobby Sands to have a victory or to die.

"The unionists wanted Mr Sands to die.

"The only people who wanted Mr Sands to live were the ordinary

"people of Northern Ireland."

BAGPIPES PLAY

For 11 years, I went to meet the President on St Patrick's Day

and we got that excess, we'd take up nearly the whole day of 17th March

with the President of the United States.

Irish Taoiseachs and Irish presidents and Irish everybody had

that huge influence, but that all started with John and Tip.

I had met Ronald Reagan when he was running for the presidency.

And I asked him, as I would ask anyone with a name like that,

how far back his Irish connections went.

To my surprise, he said, "You know, I've often looked into it,

"but I'm not sure that we have an Irish connection."

And with a lot of help, we were able, eventually, to get the

shipping records, obviously trace the President back to Ballyporeen.

He had said to me during the election campaign,

"If you find that I'm Irish, I will mark it on the first

"St Patrick's Day if I'm in the White House."

So, as soon as he arrived in Washington, I got in touch

with him and invited him to lunch at the embassy on St Patrick's Day.

And obviously, among my many guests,

I had Tip O'Neill, Ted Kennedy, Hugh Carey, Pat Moynihan.

During the lunch, Tip O'Neill said to President Reagan,

"Next year, I'll do the lunch, if you would come to it."

There was a tradition in Washington that the President never

visited the hill except to make his State of the Union

speech once a year.

But on the spot, the President, Reagan, agreed with O'Neill,

"Yeah, I'll come, you give a party next St Patrick's Day, I'll come."

And ever since then, the Speaker has had a lunch on St Patrick's Day,

and so far every president has attended.

There will always be a special kinship between our two countries.

And that is why we are here today.

That is why Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill kicked this off many

years ago, to show that admiration and to celebrate this kinship.

It is an act of defiance to poke fun at your opponents

and then to break bread with them.

Most of the support for the Irish, including economic support,

historically came out of the Congress from Irish-American

members more than the White House.

Even when President Kennedy was there, it was John McCormack,

the Speaker of the House, who always had a big Irish force.

It is always a privilege to join you for this wonderful

St Patrick's Day celebration.

And with names like Obama, Biden, Ryan, McConnell, you can

rest assured that the old sod's stranglehold on power

in Washington is as strong as ever.

LAUGHTER

Back in 2008, the Corrigan Brothers even penned a song

called There's No-one As Irish As Barack Obama.

This is true.

As the lyrics go, "From Kerry to Cork,

"let's hear it for Barack from old Moneygall."

And somehow that line did not result in cries for my birth

certificate on the campaign trail.

LAUGHTER

But we do enjoy this luncheon.

And I want to thank Speaker Ryan for continuing it.

It's a welcome break from politics as usual.

A moment when we all trade in our red

and power blue ties for our green ones.

I always imagine every Taoiseach leaving this lunch

marvelling at how cheerful and bipartisan Washington is.

LAUGHTER

There are two things at least on which Democrats

and Republicans in America, they heartily agree.

One is that we take seriously our responsibility to be good to

Ireland's sons and daughters, because so many of us are Ireland's

sons and daughters.

The other is that we strongly support a peaceful

and prosperous Northern Ireland,

and America will always remain a partner in that process.

There are those here who have fought long

and hard to create peace in Northern Ireland,

and understand what happens when we start going into these dark places.

I think it's just worth remembering how

John Hume took down the emotional

temperature of the Troubles,

just enough so that reason could be heard.

MARGARET THATCHER: A de-unified Ireland, that is out.

A confederation, that is out.

Joint authority, that is out.

I think that Mrs Thatcher, at that time, was in very much

her black-and-white phase,

that everything was good and evil, and so on,

and that she changed over time.

And I would like to think that our editorials admonishing her

not to throw in the sponge on this played some small part

in showing that there were other voices in the room.

Here, I have to give credit to something I never thought

I would do - in this respect, at least - to Margaret Thatcher,

because it was Mrs Thatcher who,

during some of the worst times that I had to write about Ireland,

helped initiate the dialogue

that led ultimately to agreement with both sides.

When she signed the agreement with Garret FitzGerald,

I think unionists were initially shocked,

almost disbelieving that someone like

Margaret Thatcher could do this.

On reflection, I think that the Anglo-Irish Agreement, er,

was the catalyst within unionism for a realisation that, in the end,

we were going to have to sit down and negotiate

with nationalists to find a way forward.

That if we wanted to get rid of what we described as this diktat -

in the form of the Anglo-Irish Agreement - imposed upon us,

then there was only one way we were going to move it,

and it wasn't by protest. It was by negotiation.

What had happened was that

the political leader of the Tory Party who

most effectively and in almost incarnate terms

represented the unionist position

betrayed that position in the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Where do the terrorists operate from?

From the Irish Republic,

that's where they come from!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Where do the terrorists

return to for sanctuary?

To the Irish Republic!

And yet, Mrs Thatcher tells us

that that Republic must have some say

in our province! We say, never!

Never! Never! Never! Never!

The improbable development of Mrs Thatcher

signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement,

which was a tremendously significant step

in terms of Anglo-Irish relations,

that that essentially came from her exasperation

that every time she got together with Ronald Reagan

to manage the Free World between them, or...

her to manage the Free World through him,

he would tiresomely come up

with this Irish issue.

And in that, Reagan was channelling

Tip O'Neill and Ted Kennedy who, in turn, were channelling John Hume.

Dear Mr President, I understand that you will be meeting with

Prime Minister Thatcher...

I want to personally share with you my deep concern that the Forum,

which is the best hope for a peaceful,

lawful and constitutional resolution to the tragedy of

Northern Ireland, may be in serious jeopardy...

During my meeting with Mrs Thatcher at Camp David,

I made a special effort to bring your letter to

her personal attention and to convey your message of concern...

The President then offered his support to

the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Mr Reagan had told the Taoiseach

that on St Patrick's Day,

all Americans and people of goodwill everywhere

honour the Irish by helping them build a peaceful

and prosperous future.

..Important and it's a distinct honour to receive

the traditional shamrock,

and to wear it as an expression of shared hope

for peace and goodwill in the year ahead.

She, herself, of course, came to dislike it greatly

because it went against the grain.

Afterwards, she said, through one of her closest associates,

Lord McAlpine, "It was the Americans who made me do it."

It was a mistake that unionism didn't recognise earlier

the importance of that influence.

The way in which Hume would use the pressure point of Washington

to apply pressure on London, er, to do business with Dublin,

almost to the exclusion of the unionists. So, erm,

I don't think that we really caught on to that soon enough.

And it was only in the latter years that we began to recognise that

there was no point howling at the moon for John Hume

and his influence in Washington - we needed to be on the Hill.

We needed to be in Washington,

giving the counterbalance to that influence and saying, look,

any solution in Northern Ireland

has to be one which both sides can endorse.

The eruption of the Troubles, the enormous turbulence there was,

particularly maybe in Derry in the early years of the Troubles,

forced him to reflect very deeply on

where the exit was from these dilemmas.

There was, broadly speaking,

in Northern Ireland, a hope that

the moderate element of the population could,

erm, isolate the extremists.

It had everything going for it.

It had everything going for it except one thing -

that it had been tried in all possible variations

and had never worked.

John got a huge nationalist vote.

John got a huge republican vote.

Many people who were supporters of the armed struggle,

they equally were supporting John Hume. And I think

John had that in his understanding that, you know,

he was representing all of these people.

And that, erm, you know, I think he...

That's how he was able to have those, you know,

secret meetings and connections.

But the secret meetings didn't come out of nothing.

I mean, I think John knew all along

that some day, in some way, you

had to pull all of this together.

I welcome the opportunity of facing them,

of meeting them face-to-face, to say to them that I believe that

violence is destroying this country, and to ask them to stop it.

Where many other people might have quit,

he would intensify his efforts.

He just believed that he was on the right side of history

and that he had read the Irish psyche properly.

I think that anybody who has followed closely

the events of the last couple of days would not interpret

what I am doing as any disrespect to the memory of people

who have died in Northern Ireland. Rather, the opposite -

an attempt to stop any further people dying.

You can't make peace if you don't talk to the warriors.

And you don't have to approve of what they're doing.

And you certainly don't, by talking to them,

approve of what they're doing.

We wasted years. You know, we...

Not through any foolishness on our part,

but I suppose through naivete.

What stood by us and the peace process was that

we probably met privately, without anybody knowing,

for about 18 months. So we developed a sense of each other.

This was going on too long. You know, the violent campaign -

whether you call it the British Army violent campaign

or the IRA campaign, or the UDA or the UVF campaign -

simply went on too long.

And Long Kesh was containing

a large number of men who were growing old,

certainly dark into middle age.

And I think John realised that, you know, that pugnacity

was wearing down, that it wasn't worth it any more.

And I think that by bringing in the Irish-Americans,

he was able to open a window and say, look, there IS a future

beyond walls and barricades.

He did it not by describing the IRA

and Sinn Fein as terrorists,

but describing how the goals of nationalism and republicanism

could be met differently

and could be met by a process of engagement

if, you know, the Americans

were to use their influence with the British.

I was an MP at this time, you know, I had a mandate,

so it was ridiculous that my voice was banned and I was censored.

And that, you know, just talking was prohibited

and, indeed, was disguised as

a moral imperative that you couldn't talk.

John went against that.

There's only two possible outcomes of our dialogue.

One is that we will fail, which means that nothing has changed,

or that we will succeed, which means that there will be

an enormous transformation in the situation.

The startling shift that happened at the time of Hume/Adams

was not in contradiction to what Hume had been advocating before.

It was, rather, that a recalcitrant constituency

had been recruited to it.

The only road to the future for a divided people

is dialogue of all its representatives coming together

as soon as possible and facing up to the challenges...

APPLAUSE

..and reaching agreement,

because only on agreement can we have the lasting stability

from which comes lasting peace.

Out of instability comes all sorts of symptoms,

the worst of which are violence and killing of innocent human beings.

So let us send that strong and clear message.

Total opposition to violence, and total and absolute support

for dialogue of all parties, round the same table,

as soon as possible.

The traditional posture of Dublin has been to claim that unity

is the only solution, but what does it mean?

For too long, it has been left undefined

and interpreted by unionists as

"conquest of the North by the South".

Unity, to many, has become, incredibly, a dirty word.

Ireland must be one of the few places on Earth where people

seriously suggest that it is wrong to unite people.

Many of the things that we now regard as the common stock of

concepts in Anglo-Irish relations go back to Hume.

The three sets of relationships, the Irish dimension, and so on,

were essentially either defined by Hume in those terms

or related to a definition that Hume had put forward.

Everything that is agreed politically has to be reducible

to language in some shape or form.

I mean, it cannot be so nebulous that nobody can say what it is.

So, on that definition, everything does come back to language.

But Hume's contribution to that

went beyond merely accepting the importance of that.

It involved an active role in defining concepts,

redefining concepts, in a way that meant they were capable

of accommodating more elements

than the traditional formulations.

We worked very hard in many of the negotiations,

often hours and hours of endless discussion over one sentence,

one paragraph, getting the language right,

getting it in the right order, getting the nuances right.

Because, of course... And some people criticise some of what became

known as the "constructive ambiguity" in some of the language

that is used, but you needed to have a language that both sides

could attach themselves to.

In the speech, in John's speech to the empty...

..to empty seats, the famous speech, he says, er, he says,

"One day, we will understand the meaning of the words we use today."

So words matter to this man.

The right of the Irish people to self-determination was unquestioned,

but that they were divided about how to exercise that,

now, that seems almost hair-splitting,

but when you reflect on the practical implications,

it was an enormously fruitful definition

because it meant the reality of partition

reflected a difference between Irish people

about how their undoubted collective right to self-determination

was to be exercised,

then the solution to the problem lay in persuasion

of the people who didn't want a unified approach

by the people who did.

These things don't happen overnight.

And in the European Council, they were envious of the fact that

small little Ireland had such access to the White House.

Well, Hume travelling to the States

was putting another piece of the jigsaw together

that would eventually form the picture in which

American President after American President

sent over their envoys and their assistants

and their influence to try to help to bring about a solution.

Ladies and gentlemen,

my friend, the President of the United States, Barack Obama,

the Taoiseach of Ireland, Enda Kenny,

and his wife, Fionnuala.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

UPBEAT MUSIC

Those luncheons around St Patrick's Day

really created great opportunities.

Not the luncheon itself, that's the public event.

It's the meetings that happened all around that.

A lot of meetings in what they call a hideaway office.

John and the President, or other people. Certainly, the Taoiseach

may be there, the Foreign Ministers, the aides.

So you could really have some very serious conversations.

What needed to be done, what positions to take,

how to frame it. But there was nothing like being there,

eyeballing each other, trying to figure out

how best to move this process forward.

I cultivated all the party leaders

of all the parties in Northern Ireland.

We invited them all to St Patrick's Day.

We urged them to sing together, talk together.

A lot of diplomacy happened in the United States

on the St Patrick's Days.

I knew, when I became President, that I would have

a political opportunity, if I were willing to assume the risks.

And it wasn't just the risk of alienating the British,

it was also the risk that I would stick my neck out

and IRA violence would continue,

innocent civilians would continue to die,

and I would look like I'd been played for a fool.

And that, over the long run, had a bigger downside.

But I trusted Hume's instincts.

He said, "You know, I can only take this so far.

Someone with credibility

"with the harder-line Republicans has got to be here."

Now, I am standing here and telling the government

that I believe that we have a real process of lasting peace

and a total cessation of violence,

on the basis that I have just stated.

And I'm saying to them, hurry up and deal with it.

Will the member give way? And... No, I'm not giving away any more.

Hurry up and deal with it.

He grabbed me by the wrists and held my hands and said,

"Look, you can do it, you're near it, it's possible, and keep going.

"Lloyd George couldn't get there, others couldn't get there,

"but I really believe we can get there."

And I could tell something was going on in the fall of 1993

because I was hearing from... The...

Irish National Caucus people were...

You know, I had a pretty open-door policy

and they all were telling us something was happening.

And I kept hearing it over and over and over again.

And then I would press the US government,

the British government, the FBI,

the CIA, our Justice department,

all of whom uniformly came back and said, "No.

"There's no division in the IRA, there's no-one who's seriously

"pushing for a ceasefire, including Adams. Don't believe them."

I naturally gravitated to John because he was widely trusted

across the board in our Congress -

and I needed some support in Congress to do this -

and he tended to legitimise

the notion that America should do more.

The person I kept asking was John Hume who,

in the spring and summer of 1993 said,

"Not ready yet, don't get involved, don't give Adams it easy yet."

By the fall, the two had married

and Hume saw that Adams needed the support of coming here

to the United States, to talk to the IRA supporters

here in the United States, to get support for the ceasefire.

He could not deliver the ceasefire without the support of the US.

Then the Joint Declaration came,

which essentially took away the political reason

for the violence of the IRA, because now they had a democratic way

to get an independent Ireland.

When we actually decided to do it,

it was a Sunday morning

and Warren Christopher spent about half an hour on the phone

to the President about how cooperation with the British

would end, and it was the wrong thing to do, and terrorism -

the first World Trade Tower attack had just happened.

The issue leaked quite quickly and, um, the British,

we hadn't had time to tell the British, and I have never seen

angrier British in my life! That was probably the most dramatic.

John Major did not take our call for a week.

There was some broken china there. You know, I had a lot of trouble

with the British for a brief period when I got involved.

But I think the fact that John was there saying

there is a way out of this, there is a peaceful way out of this,

there's an inclusive way out of this, there's a way for a role

for the UK to continue and a role for the Irish Republic,

and a shared power situation in Northern Ireland,

it made it a whole lot easier.

There WAS a disagreement.

Downing Street was utterly clear that the White House had indicated

they would not give Gerry Adams a visa to fundraise

in the United States while violence continued.

And I think President Clinton came under a great deal of pressure

from others, and a visa was granted.

And I think, subsequently,

he would have conceded that that was a mistake.

The British Government has a different view of

this whole history. That is to say, um,

there was opposition to what I'll call the Clinton initiative,

which was the most concrete decision by the American government

to play a role in what would happen in Northern Ireland,

in contravention to what the British government would have preferred.

I had this view that, as we approached the 21st century,

this historical struggle

was a leftover from a bygone age

that should be capable of resolution.

I mean, the Republic of Ireland had become a confident nation.

We were in the European Union, they were in the European Union.

This was a struggle in the North that neither side, in the end,

could win by force. So, surely,

in the interests of people, it should be...

There should be a rational way through.

When you read Gladstone's comments,

when you reach Churchill's comments,

and when you are in the presence of Tony Blair,

they knew that American opinion counted.

And Gladstone forewarned, he said,

"You cannot win this argument in America."

Tony Blair, when he spoke, he said,

after all these years of incendiary commentary back and forth

and bickering and arguing here from Congress,

where British ambassadors were regular summonsed

to Capitol Hill, he said,

"I want to thank you for helping to get us through this morass."

Sometimes, you get points in politics

when it's appropriate to put the past behind you.

This was, I felt, such a moment,

not just for the British relationship with

the Republic of Ireland, but also with the British relationship

with America over this issue.

John Hume opposed the MacBride Principles,

which were designed to reinforce

equal employment opportunities for American companies

investing in Northern Ireland.

John Hume reacted to the MacBride Principles in a very hostile way.

He had early on adopted the view

that what Northern Ireland required was an increase in

foreign direct investment,

economic growth as a way of solving all local conflicts,

and he feared that the MacBride Principles, if applied,

would lead to the flight of foreign capital from Northern Ireland.

And it's one of the few major strategic errors

that John Hume made in the course of his political career.

I understand why he made it, but I still judge it to have been

a major strategic error.

Not only because he was, in effect,

opposing the logical consequences

of a civil rights principle,

but because, in effect, by opposing it,

he left this political space open for Sinn Fein to capture.

He went on solo runs.

But sometimes, very disturbing for other members,

he could not take criticism well.

He wouldn't take it at all.

But that was changed.

He always preferred to be on his own.

He always enjoyed company,

but much preferred working alone.

It caused difficulties.

Well, I don't think John felt so locked into history

as most of the people around him did. I mean, he saw

all the importance of it and he understood,

in a very visionary way, how important it was,

but I think that once he decided that there must be a future

as well as a past, a lot of people moved away from him.

President Clinton sent an envoy to Northern Ireland,

who led the all-party negotiations for a peace settlement.

The envoy determined to start with John Hume's formula

of seeing the conflict in its wider context.

Well, one strand involved the relationship within

Northern Ireland, between the two communities.

So you couldn't really solve the issue without establishing

a new and firmer basis for the relationship

between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

That was a second strand.

Going further, you couldn't

take out of the discussion the reality that Northern Ireland

is part of the United Kingdom.

So there had to be

included in the discussion

the relationship between Ireland

and the United Kingdom.

That was the third strand.

Once that was understood

and accepted by all, there was

the possibility of devising a way

that embraced all three strands.

And that was the...

political genius of John Hume,

because it was that architecture

that made possible getting an agreement.

The night we were in Derry together in 1995

and the whole town square was full,

and all the streets up the hill, behind the old wall,

people knew it was the beginning of something really special

because, by then, the ceasefire had come and we were ready to roll.

Because I felt that we were riding along a surge of history

that really had begun in the vision of one man.

Hillary and I are proud to be here, in the home of Ireland's

most tireless champion for civil rights,

and its most eloquent voice of non-violence, John Hume.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I know that, at least twice already,

I have had the honour of hosting John and Pat in Washington,

and the last time I saw him, I said,

"You can't come back to Washington one more time

"until you let me come to Derry."

And here I am!

CHEERING

In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement was signed

and roundly endorsed in referenda

on both sides of the Irish border,

and the Northern Irish Troubles ended. The agreement's provisions

for a power-sharing government,

North-South cooperation,

the principle of non-violence

and consent to constitutional change had all been described

in John Hume's 1964 articles.

Hume's strategy had become a political reality.

He knew very well that he might be creating political circumstances

in which his party could never be the majority party,

and which the public could never reward him politically because

once there was a united government, people would be tempted to vote for

the people they thought would most fiercely advocate their position.

He did it anyway. He did it because

the worst form of imperfect democracy

is better than continued hatred and killing.

It was typical of John Hume that he should have been preparing

to launch a jobs drive for his beloved Derry when he heard that

he and David Trimble had won the prize.

I see it not as an award to myself,

but as a very powerful international approval

of the peace process in Northern Ireland,

and a very strong international approval of peace for all of

the people of Northern Ireland.

It was a great day, with great scenes.

David Trimble was obviously being recognised that night as well.

They all gathered - the Trimble crowd and the Hume crowd -

gathered in the hotel bar,

and they were singing each other's songs in this pub.

I mean, you bring these guys together any place other...

..than Ireland somewhere and they gravitate to each other.

I don't think any of the presidents that came after me

lacked an interest in the benefits of resolving the Irish problem.

Of course, when it was finally successful,

well, then, the whole world celebrated.

And later, you know, when I dealt with other issues where...

..peace seemed impossible,

I always used the Irish example. Well, if we can do it in Ireland,

we can do it almost anywhere in the world.

I think if you really wanted to make

a parallel between

Northern Ireland and Bosnia,

or Northern Ireland and the Middle East, it's education.

Lack of education leads to

the most emotional decision making.

It's reason, not emotion,

you need to resolve problems.

And that means, of course,

everyone being educated together.

The Bogside has become a tourist attraction.

We get loads of people going around parties being led around by guides.

I listened in to one of these guys

giving schoolchildren from Southern Ireland

an account of the history of the Bogside,

in which John Hume didn't figure

until the Hume-Adams Talks.

I mean, that's the level of

the distortion of history

which supporters of the IRA

sort of are involved in now,

because they have to - they can't tell the truth.

It's forgotten now, but it will...

..become clear as history is written.

His major achievement was the creation of the new agenda

back in 1964.

And the way he was able

to steer that through

Dublin, London, Brussels, Washington,

and eventually persuade Sinn Fein.

It is a remarkable achievement in one lifetime.

He was teaching in St Columb's,

involved with Credit Union.

Inside was a man who had something

big to do,

so he had to go elsewhere.

And he did that in America, he did that in the European Parliament.

There is a greatness about his political life, and what he did,

and what he helped to change.

I would put him in the same breath

as Parnell, Daniel O'Connell.

In the world we're living in today,

where there are so many forces trying to take down

that elemental human and humane view,

John Hume and the results achieved in Northern Ireland

stand as a stunning rebuke

to the people who choose violence.

GAELIC MUSIC