Word: humes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Hume has consistently carried his quest for a non-violent solution to the Ulster conflict from the negotiating table to the city streets of Derry and Belfast. While a Stormont parliament member, Hume often risked his own life quieting Catholic protestors, keeping exchanges of insults from escalating into violence. Today, of course, all Protestant and Catholic marches are open invitations to violence and have been banned by the London government...
...Today, Hume says his party places its hope for a political settlement on an Ulster government with proportional representation in the executive for Catholics and Protestants along the lines of the short-lived Power Sharing executive of 1974. The government, in which Hume served as Minister of Industry and Commerce, collapsed in less than five months, after Ulster-wide strikes by Protestant trade unions. Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister, declared the Protestant strikes "a deliberate and calculated attempt to use every undemocratic and unparliamentary means for bringing down the constitution of Northern Ireland...
...Hume blames the experiment's failure directly on the British. "The British government had control of security, we didn't. We feel that if they had acted at the beginning of the strike, the strike would have had no success. But the longer they waited the bigger became the bandwagon, and in the end they just stood by and let the experiment collapse." All of the members resigned. "Still," Hume says, "the agreement showed that a sharing of power between the two sections of the community could work, and work well...
While in the U.S., Hume says he discovered that many Irish-Americans do have a sense of the complexities of the situation in Ulster, although he says most of the Irish-American leaders who want to help "are careful about what they say." Some Irish-Americans, however, are even more extremist than the native Irish themselves. "Their fanaticism grows with their distance from their homeland," Hume says, and their monetary support of the violent tactics of the IRA "contribute to an already deep and intractable problem...
...Hume says that his two months at the University was valuable for him in that it gave him "time to think and study." Although the CfIA stint did not really affect his political outlook, Hume says, "I go back refreshed, hoping I can make a good contribution to resolving the crisis...