Madam, - As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement, the person who deserves most recognition is former SDLP leader and Nobel Laureate John Hume.
His decency, courage and tenacity have shone like a beacon of hope. His courage over 30 difficult years makes him a genuine Irish hero. In the darkest days it was not easy to preach a message of political accommodation and peaceful politics, especially in the face of IRA violence, British foolhardiness and unionist intransigence.
In the end Mr Hume never had to waver or budge. Everyone else had to change their minds about killing, discrimination and the refusal to share power.
An Irish TimesEditorial headed "John Hume's Century", published on December 30th, 1999 on the brink of the new millennium, said: "The shape and spirit of the new Ireland are John Hume's. . .it owes no greater debt than to the man who insisted that living for Ireland is better than dying for it; that it is more challenging of the human spirit to learn to live with one's adversaries than to subdue them; that when people sit to reason together, nothing lies beyond their capacities. John Hume has wrought the very basis of Ireland's future."
- Yours, etc,
Cllr TIM ATTWOOD, (SDLP, West Belfast), Andersonstown, Belfast.