John Hume Interview (page: 5 / 8) Nobel Prize for Peace	Print Interview

Mr. Trimble, given what was going on in Northern Ireland, this was a very difficult position to take. You obviously had some confidence, even back then, that you could make a difference.

David Trimble: I was grateful for the opportunity to make a difference. The political violence really started in 1970-1971. The political difficulties start a little bit beyond that. In the mid '70s, certainly, at the time of the Constitutional Convention, '74-75, many people would have said of Northern Ireland that it's obvious what the outcome is going to be.

You could sketch on the back of an envelope what the outcome was going to be. The detail would have to be negotiated. You would have to have the right opportunity to bring this about. You need to have the right combination of personalities. We nearly did it in '75. Unfortunately, it took another 20 years before we had the right combination of circumstances and personalities. It's important to bear in mind the difficulty of the situation. It was actually, to use someone else's phrase, a low intensity situation.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The fatalities were actually lower than the fatalities that would have happened in any comparable city in the United States at any one time during that whole time. Through the 1970s and '80s, Northern Ireland actually had a lower crime level than any comparable industrial area. It had political violence, but that was happening at a level where there wasn't the same high level of intensity. And so consequently, you might say there wasn't quite the same pressure on society to make the compromises that were necessary. A lot of people were comfortable with the situation that existed, and that is part of the reason why it had lasted so long.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. So yes, in the 1990s, there was a difficult situation. My main frustration was the fact that -- knowing that political progress was possible -- we were, yet not been able to achieve that which I knew to be possible because of various difficulties, some personal, some of a political nature. So, it took a long period of time before the chance that had been there in the 1970s recurred, and even then it took a talks process that lasted, with interruptions, from 1991 to 1998, to produce an agreement. And now we're four years after the agreement, nearly --well, more than four years after the agreement -- and we still haven't actually changed an awful lot, in some respects. So, the talks took an awful long time. The implementation post-agreement is taking a long time, and that is one of the frustrations about this, that it has taken so long to reach the point of having the political breakthrough. But, even after that, we are still struggling in terms of the implementation of the agreement. So, the main frustration comes from the slowness. Yet, I suppose when the historians come to look at it, they might actually find that the slow pace has had some benefits too, in enabling people to adjust and to change attitudes. But, from one's point of view of being directly in conjunction with events, the slowness has been a bit frustrating, too.

Mr. Hume, you initiated dialogue with Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin, which was a highly controversial move. You endangered your own life. Why was that such an important step, in your view?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. John Hume: The IRA and Sinn Fein, what was called the Republican movement, were engaged in violence in order to attempt to solve our problem, and I was strongly opposed to that violence. And, of course, there was violence as well from the Unionist side, the loyalist paramilitaries, and of course, I felt it's everyone's duty to do everything they could to get the violence stopped. And of course, thousands of British soldiers in our streets couldn't stop the violence. And, when I started my dialogue, I was, of course, was very heavily attacked for it. But, as I made clear at the time, if thousands of soldiers in our streets can't stop the violence, if I can save one single human life by talking, it's my duty to do so. And, I engaged directly in dialogue with Gerry Adams. And, of course, the dialogue arose out of the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985, and my party, we were very heavily involved in the creation of that agreement.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

We published a policy document in April 1981, and if you read that policy document, you're reading the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985. We argued strongly that, given the three sets of relationships, the British and Irish Governments should come together and set up institutions, and those institutions were set up in the Anglo-Irish agreement.

The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to see Irish unity. The British Government then agreed to say, "Well, if that happens, we legislate for it." That removed the fundamental reasons that the IRA had always given for the use of violence. The historian in me knew what created the IRA and that movement. They believed that Britain was in Ireland defending their own interests, therefore the Irish had the right to use violence to put them out. My argument was that that type of thinking was out of date. I then came out with a statement and said, "Britain has now declared their neutrality on the future of Ireland, and therefore, violence has absolutely no role to play." By keeping up that statement, I eventually got a message back that the Sinn Féin people would like to talk to me about it.

I engaged in the talks with Gerry Adams, and the basic request to me was to prove what I was saying was true. I kept both the British and Irish Governments fully informed of my dialogue with Gerry Adams, and in the end, I asked them to prove what I was saying was true, which led to the Downing Street Declaration, which made very clear that the British had no selfish economic or strategic interests in remaining in Ireland, and that if people agreed on Irish unity, they would legislate for it. That led straightaway to the cease fires, and led also to the dialogue with all parties and the two governments around the one table.

In coming to that agreement, my party had a clear philosophy throughout. In Northern Ireland, we should have institutions that respected the differences of the people and that gave no victory to either side. In other words, we always argued for partnership government, or power sharing, as it was called. Representatives of all sections of the community should be in government, and there should be a council of ministers between Ireland, north and south, that was our strategy. We argued strongly for that and that was eventually agreed. I always say that in my approach to that agreement, I was very heavily inspired by my European experience, because I was a member of the European Parliament.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I always tell the story of the first time I went to Strasbourg in 1979, to the European Parliament. I went for a walk across the bridge from Strasbourg in France to Kehl in Germany. And I stopped in the middle of the bridge and meditated -- 1979 -- that if I had stood on this bridge 30 years ago, I thought, at the end of the Second World War, and at the end of the first half of that century, which was the worst in the history of the world, two world wars, and about a hundred million people slaughtered, who could have dreamt then that in the second half of that century, those same peoples would unite in a European Union? But, they did.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. European Union is the best example in the history of the world of conflict resolution. Therefore, it's the duty of every area of conflict to study how they did it, and that's what we did. And, of course, the three principles at the heart of that are the three principles at the heart of our Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. Principle number one: respect for difference, no victory for either side. Number two: institutions which respect our differences, an assembly elected by a proportional system of voting, so that all sections of the people are represented, and an executive government elected by the assembly by a proportional system so that all sections are in government. Then the third principle, which in my opinion is the most important principle, which I call the healing process. We then work together, all sections of our people working together in our common interests, which is the principle that when our party was founded way back in the early '70s, was central to common interests being real politics, economic development of our people, something which is in the area of agreement for all sections of people. And, now we are doing that, working together. That's the beginning of the healing process, as I say. We're spilling our sweat together and not our blood.

My belief is that as we do that, over the years, the barriers of the past -- the distrust and prejudices of the past -- will be eroded, and a new society will evolve, a new Ireland based on agreement and respect for difference, in which Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter will be living together in agreement and mutual respect. That's the strategy that myself and my party have pursued and are pursuing.

John Hume Interview, Page: 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8