The Ireland Funds : News : People

Senator Maurice Hayes

John Hume

Senator Maurice Hayes, Chairman, The Ireland Funds Advisory Committee writes about the appointment of John Hume to the Tip O Neill Chair in Conflict Studies and Reconciliation at the University of Ulster

The appointment of John Hume to the Tip O Neill Chair in Conflict Studies and Reconciliation at the University of Ulster marks both a milestone and a benchmark in the Irish Peace Process. On the one hand, having relinquished the leadership of the SDLP (of which he was a founding member) John Hume, along with Seamus Mallon (also retiring as Deputy First Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive) have passed the baton to a younger generation of leaders whose task will be to consolidate the peace progress which his vision made possible.

"Peace Making is not an event, but a process"
- John Hume; Nobel Peace Prize Winner (joint)

On the other hand, in his new academic role, he will be able to share his wisdom and his experience with others in Ireland and further afield, to begin to write up and publish his reflections on politics and peace making, to contribute to the international dialogue on peace keeping, and to provide a base for visiting distinguished academics and politicians.

The Tip O Neill Chair is located at the Magee Campus in Derry of the University of Ulster. It was inaugurated by President Clinton on his first visit to Northern Ireland, with funding provided by The Ireland Funds. The Chair has now been refunded for a period of three years, again by The American Ireland Fund, to honor the work of John Hume and to enable his continued contribution to peace and reconciliation.

In one sense, the appointment marks the end of an era in the peace process, the age of the explorers and pioneers. In another, it is simply a milestone on the road to peace making! Progress, even significant and exciting progress, but not yet finality. What the work of the Chair symbolizes and John Hume's continued commitment to it represent, is that peace making is not an event, but a process.

Peace does not simply break out on D-day plus one, after which everything is sweetness and light and people settle down happily together. In the real world, peace making and reconciliation is a long and tedious process, requiring constant re-commitment. On the road to peace there will be moments of joy, but also times of disappointment as the process bumps along the bottom, or even appears to go backward.

Recent outbreaks of sectarian conflict and violence in Belfast are a case in point, as are Unionist doubts about the integrity of the IRA cease-fire in the light of events in Colombia and elsewhere. There is a tendency in Northern Ireland, where there is a well-developed culture of victim-hood on both sides to see the glass as half-empty, even when it is filling up. However any reasonable person standing back and looking at progress over the past seven years cannot fail to be impressed by the changes that have taken place, and few, even of the most implacable critics of the Good Friday Agreement would contemplate going back to what preceded it.

Peace making is a long and slow business because memories are long, because people have been hurt, and have hurt themselves in hurting others. Also, because of their different conditioning and experiences, different groups have varying expectations of what peace means to them, and they will move, at different speeds from suspicion to trust to reconciliation. A problem of an agreement like the Good Friday Agreement is that they are generally made by elites, by political leaders who have stretched themselves to reach consensus. In doing so, they may often have gone a good deal further, on both sides, than their followers would desire or approve.

The second stage in peace making, therefore is the important one in which leaders seek to convince followers that the deal they made is the best possible and should be supported. This is particularly true of those in second-rank leadership positions who are capable of influencing others. In Ireland the agreement was endorsed by referendums, North and South.

Although to the overall level of approval in the North was over 70%, this masks the different levels in the two communities. While 94% of nationalists, North and South, endorsed the Agreement, approval among unionists was not much over 50%. Skepticism in the unionist communities has been rising: they would say because of external events, others would say from a lack of conviction in the leadership for whatever reason, the realization of support within the broader unionist ranks is an urgent priority.

Memory too has its own scars to heal, as communities and individuals remember more the pain they have suffered than the hurts they have inflicted. Thus we see scared children abused on their way to school, despairing communities who see no alternative to protest. Reconciliation, healing, is the work not of months or years but of a generation.

John Hume will not sit idle in his Chair. There is work for him to do, and for all.