Peace Itself Is the Prize
Kelly, Mary Pat
PEACE ITSELF IS THE PRIZE A Nobel for John Hume Mary Pat Kelly t was a great day to be in Derry. All week, specI ulation about the Nobel Peace Prize had been a part of every conversation as...
...Iodine...
...Which was a good thing, because there were none going for that young teacher drawn into the electoral fray by a sense of responsibility to the people of the city who had shaped him...
...Again Hume repeated that although international recognition for the peace process in Northern Ireland would be a wonderful thing, because it could help strengthen that process, he had not entered politics thirty years before expecting prizes or rewards...
...wee," Humes recalls, "that no one noticed me watching to see which dog would get a shot from Dr...
...His father could find no employment in a city where Catholic men were denied jobs while their wives worked in shirt factories to support their families...
...The island of Ireland without its people is just a piece of earth--it's a divided people that must be united through agreement and respect for diversity...
...He did and entered Saint Columb's College, a grammar school (grades seven through twelve...
...John Hume's answer to those who alluded to the possibility was, "The peace itself is the prize...
...Marines, based in a camp near his street during World War II, when they attended races at the illegal greyhound track nearby...
...He would cite these as the reason he founded Derry's first credit union and then helped spark the credit-union movement throughout Ireland...
...As late as the night before, Hume waved off any attempts at handicapping the race...
...As congratulations came from others who had contributed to the peace process--Irish President Mary McAleese, Taoiseach Bertie Ahem, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bill Clinton, and Senator George Mitchell--their language reflected a lesson learned: reconciliation, healing process, accommodation of difference, the coexistence of both traditions...
...In addition, Hume helped form a cooperative that built hundreds of new units-a feat government had said was impossible...
...Hume, as a young teacher living at home where his father as the rent payer had the only vote, had watched the Unionist mayor of Derry cast forty-seven votes--one for himself and the others allotted to him because of the businesses he owned...
...Until the announcement in Oslo at 10 A.M...
...But to quote Heaney again, John Hume "stood his ground with integrity...
...When it became obvious that he should stand as a candidate for the Northern Ireland Parliament, Hume hung back...
...Since 1979 he has represented Northern Ireland in the European Parliament (see Commonweal, December 14, 1984 for a discussion of his second campaign for Europe), and since 1983 he has served as member of the House of Commons for the constituency of Foyle, which includes Derry...
...For those who wanted a fuller expression of his thought, there was his book A New Ireland (Roberts Rinehart) and virtually every positive document on Northern Ireland produced by the British, Irish, and U.S...
...As Heaney goes on to say, "He never seemed in a hurry, never spent time scoring points, and always trusted the capacity of his political opponents as well as his constituents to take an extra trusting step...
...He gave both supporters and opponents a new way of thinking and speaking...
...Hume was obviously enjoying himself as he went from Derry that morning and gave a previously scheduled address to school girls in Belfast...
...He was enterprising enough to act as a tipster for the U.S...
...John Hume wanted young people to live for Ireland, to shed their sweat, not their blood...
...This does not negate the lighter side of that boy...
...These were the phrases they used, and they were Hume's...
...So on February 24, 1969, Hume won the first of many elections...
...He still considers this one of his proudest accomplishments: "If I had done nothing else in public life, my work with the credit unions would satisfy me...
...They taught us all to play baseball...
...Commonweal | ~ November20,1998...
...Identify yourself by what you are instead of what you are not...
...When a friend toasted "you know what," he shook his head...
...For Hume himself, the prize was for the people of Northern Ireland...
...I see it not as an award to myself but as a very powerful international approval of the peace process...
...He often referred to a nationalist rally he had gone to with his father as a child...
...There can be no such thing as victory in a divided society...
...governments during the past twenty years bore his imprint...
...When journalists would become impatient with hearing these phrases over and over, Hume pointed out that he was a teacher and would continue to repeat the lessons until the students understood...
...Difference is an accident of birth...
...His Aunt BeUa, his sisters, and the "mates" he grew up with in the Glen remember him as a great singer and storyteller...
...Any news about it...
...And so at 10 A.M...
...Afterwards, they gave me sweets to take home...
...on October 16, no one would know for sure...
...He had been stirred by the speeches, the music, the flags and banners...
...Surely, he said, the committee had already notified the winner...
...This was when Hume's efforts to bring about an IRA cease-fire through talks with Gerry Adams were misunderstood and attacked...
...Her recently published novel is Special Intentions (Du Four Editions...
...But there was still the fear of jinxing the outcome so that oblique references were the order of the day...
...I was so Mary Pat Kelly is a writer and filmmaker...
...My life changed because I passed an exam," he says...
...At Mass that Sunday, Pat and John Hume heard Paul's letter to Timothy: "Stay with this task whether convenient or inconvenient--correcting, reproving, appealing---constantly teaching and never losing patience...
...Perhaps only Pat Hume really knew what reservoir of inner strength he had called on to stay the course...
...People can't eat a flag...
...Hume modeled his civil rights activities on those of Dr...
...But his father warned, "Stay away from all that, son...
...He analyzed the problem and came up with principles that sound so simple that critics sometimes miss their profundity...
...Yes, and Derry celebrated, glowing at the pictures of John and Pat Hume on every front page, and happy that Pat had spoken to the television reporters, something she usually prefers not to do...
...I told the Marines, that's the winner--bet on him...
...But progress in jobs, housing, and education depended on representation...
...The British Labor government had introduced free education in 1947 for those who qualified by scoring well on the "11+" exam...
...Perfect-- teaching again...
...Because David Trimble had taken that "extra trusting step" and said "yes" to peace, he would share the prize with Hume...
...after all, the announcement was now only twelve hours away...
...Hume attended with Seamus Heaney, who would win the 1996 Nobel Prize for literature...
...Annie Doherty Hume did piecework at home while raising her seven children...
...A young French journalist replied that no, this was one secret that did not leak...
...John Hume remembers the exorbitant rates of interest she and her sisters paid shopkeepers for food and clothes bought on credit...
...Next came housing...
...Later Hume said that if talking to one man could save even one life, he had to try--the cease-fire and the Good Friday agreement were the rewards of his efforts...
...He served as the president of the Credit Union League of Ireland from 1964 to 1968...
...Irish patriotism has too often meant dying for Ireland...
...Housing had to be taken out of the hands of politicians...
...Simultaneously came the crusade for "one person, one vote...
...Heaney recalled this early connection: "When I knew John Hume at Saint Columb's College, Derry, in the 1950s, he already displayed the qualities that led him to this new eminence...
...She talked of how John had continued on through the difficult times of the mid-1990s...
...As he reformed and rebuilt his city, however, logic told him that without peace no real progress was possible...
...Martin Luther King, Jr., and a commitment for nonviolent change was his "principled and definite mental center...
...on October 16, while on his way to a conference on economic development in Derry, John Hume got the news that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize...
...Accommodation of difference is the only answer...
...He also mentioned Derry...
...Because of gerrymandering and a local electoral system that granted votes only to those who paid property taxes, Catholics had little voice in the municipal government that decided who would get a house...
...Despite great personal attacks on his integrity and humanity, John never wavered in his commitment to peace...
...Given my city and what my city has suffered throughout all of these years, and indeed before these years, I believe it is a great statement in support of Derry as well...
...It's an instruction John Hume has always followed...
...All week, specI ulation about the Nobel Peace Prize had been a part of every conversation as headlines in the Belfast papers tipped John Hume as the most likely recipient...
...All the while, though, he was aware of the injustice that blighted the lives of his family and neighbors...
...Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams's reaction to the announcement of the prize speaks to his appreciation of Hume's steadiness: "There would be no peace process but for his courage and vision...
...The first Commonweal 112 November20,1998 civil rights marches had this as a goal...
...You had the impression of somebody with a very steady moral and intellectual keel under him, somebody reliable and consistent, who operated from a principled and definite mental center" (Irish News, October 17...
Vol. 125 • November 1998 • No. 20
