John Hume was an Irish nationalist politician from Northern Ireland, widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the recent political history of Ireland, as one of the architects of the Northern Ireland peace process.
31 Facts About John Hume
2.
John Hume served as a Member of the European Parliament, and a Member of the UK Parliament, as well as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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John Hume is the only person to receive the three major peace awards.
4.
John Hume was named "Ireland's Greatest" in a 2010 public poll by Irish national broadcaster RTE to find the greatest person in Ireland's history.
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John Hume was born in 1937 into a working-class Catholic family in Derry, the eldest of seven children of Anne "Annie", a seamstress, and Samuel John Hume, a shipyard worker.
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John Hume had a mostly Irish Catholic background; though his surname derived from one of his great-grandfathers, a Scottish Presbyterian who migrated to County Donegal.
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John Hume was a founding member of the Credit Union movement in the city and was chair of the University for Derry Committee in 1965, an unsuccessful fight to have Northern Ireland's second university established in Derry in the mid-1960s.
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John Hume became the youngest ever President of the Irish League of Credit Unions at age 27.
9.
John Hume became a leading figure in the civil rights movement in the late 1960s along with people such as Hugh Logue.
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John Hume was a prominent figure in the Derry Citizens' Action Committee.
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John Hume became an Independent Nationalist member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1969 at the height of the civil rights campaign.
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John Hume was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1973, and served as Minister of Commerce in the short-lived power-sharing Executive in 1974.
13.
John Hume stood unsuccessfully for the Westminster Parliament for the Londonderry constituency in October 1974, and was elected for Foyle in 1983.
14.
State papers that have been released under the 30 year rule that an Irish diplomat eight years later in 1979 believed John Hume supported the return of internment.
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In 1977, John Hume challenged a regulation under the Civil Authorities Act 1922 which allowed any soldier to disperse an assembly of three or more people.
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John Hume served as one of Northern Ireland's three Members of the European Parliament and served on the faculty of Boston College, from which he received an honorary degree in 1995.
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John Hume was directly involved in secret talks with the British government and Sinn Fein, in an effort to bring Sinn Fein to the discussion table openly.
18.
John Hume continued dialogue with both governments and Sinn Fein.
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John Hume is credited as being the thinker behind many political developments in Northern Ireland, from the power-sharing Sunningdale Agreement to the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Belfast Agreement.
20.
John Hume won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 alongside the then-leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble.
21.
When Trimble became First Minister, it was expected that John Hume would take the role of Deputy First Minister, being the leader of the second largest party, the SDLP.
22.
On his retirement from the SDLP leadership in 2001, John Hume was praised across the political divide, even by his long-time opponent, fellow MP and MEP, the Rev Ian Paisley.
23.
John Hume held the Tip O'Neill Chair in Peace Studies at the University of Ulster, currently funded by The Ireland Funds.
24.
On 4 February 2004, John Hume announced his complete retirement from politics and was succeeded by Mark Durkan as SDLP leader.
25.
John Hume did not contest the 2004 European election, nor did he run in the 2005 general election, in which Mark Durkan retained the Foyle constituency for the SDLP.
26.
John Hume was a supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reformation of the United Nations.
27.
John Hume held the position of Club President of his local football team, Derry City FC, which he supported all his life.
28.
John Hume was a patron of the children's charity Plan International Ireland.
29.
In 1960, John Hume married Patricia "Pat" Hone, a primary school teacher, whom he had first met two years earlier at a dancehall in Muff, County Donegal.
30.
In 2015, John Hume was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, of which he had first displayed symptoms in the late 1990s.
31.
John Hume died in the early hours of 3 August 2020 at a nursing home in Derry, at the age of 83.