The Day the World Almost Ended

It was the silence which people noticed. For a year, the people of the coastal village of Sandbank in Scotland had become used to the noise of their new neighbours. But on Saturday 27th October 1962, they awoke to nothing. It was a silence which spoke volumes. It signalled that the end of the world was upon them.

Sandbank sits on Holy Loch, which links directly to the sea. Since 1961, their little village was the closest to a new US Navy base, the European site for their submarine fleet. On that October morning in 1962, all the submarines were missing. They had slipped away in the night, and were at that moment out in the North Atlantic. From deep beneath the waves, their commanders were selecting towns and cities deep inside the Soviet Union. Each would be the target of a Polaris missile, far more powerful than the atomic bombs which had obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki seventeen years previously. In those boats, enough destruction existed to kill tens of millions. And they were being prepared for launch.

American nuclear submarines at Holy Loch in Scotland, 1962

In London, the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was making an unprecedented decision. He had summoned his Cabinet to a Sunday meeting, the first since the Second World War. On the agenda was one item. The government would begin to move civil servants and military personnel out of London, into the network of bunkers and tunnels underneath the Cotswold Hills, known as TURNSTILE. This was the first stage of Britain's plans to ensure some government survived the nuclear war that all believed was now virtually inevitable.

Macmillan could also update the Cabinet on his discussions with the American President. He had been speaking daily to John F Kennedy. For it was Kennedy who had, in part, brought the world to the brink of Armageddon. Five days previously, he had revealed to the world that American spy planes had found Soviet nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba, a mere 90 miles from the Flordia coast. Kennedy had already been stung by Cuba; in April 1961, US-sponsored Cubans had tried to invade Cuba to overthrow the new communist government of Fidel Castro. It had been a disaster, and Kennedy had been made to look ridiculous. However, Castro had been spooked by the US-sponsored invasion, and had asked the USSR for help. The USSR could not ignore the only communist country in America's backyard, and so their leader, Nikita Khrushchev, approved the placing of nuclear missiles in Cuba. Now they had been found.

The photo which almost triggered a world war

Kennedy had faced down advisors in his administration and military who wanted to invade Cuba, or bomb the missile launch sites. Instead, he had opted for a blockade, or 'quarantine' of Cuba, to prevent more missiles arriving, and demanded the exisiting missiles were removed. He was clear that any use of the missiles would be considered a direct attack by the Soviet Union on America, and would lead to war between them. He hoped this strong language and a step short of force would be enough. 

Kennedy's speech announcing the discovery of Soviet missiles on Cuba, 22nd October 1962

By Saturday 27th October, it looked as if it had failed. The Soviet missiles were still in Cuba, and were still being prepared for launch. An American U2 spy plane was shot down that morning over Cuba, the pilot killed. Kennedy was running out of options. Castro was asking the USSR to approve the missiles for pre-emptive use against the USA. It seemed as if only an invasion would stop him, but that would mean a third world war. The US communicated to their NATO allies that they needed to be ready to withstand an attack by the Warsaw Pact.

Meanwhile, out at the blockade, US Navy ships were dropping dummy explosives on a Soviet submarine, not realising it had nuclear weapons on board, and that the captain believed the explosives targeting him were real. Another U2 spy plane over Alaska had got lost, and had crossed into Soviet airspace, where it was intercepted by Soviet jet fighters. Not for nothing was this day later called 'Black Saturday' by those working in the White House. The world was teetering on the edge of a nuclear war.

The Soviet submarine B59, eventually forced to the surface by American explosives

It should come as no surprise that the world did not end that Saturday in 1962. Overnight, US diplomats had been busy translating a long letter they had receieved from Khrushchev. In it, he had offered to remove the missiles if America promised never to invade Cuba again. Khrushchev then made a public broadcast, adding the catch that the USA would have to remove their own nuclear missiles from the Turkish border with the USSR. Kennedy replied to Khrushchev's first letter, but ignored the second message in public. It seemed like a long shot.

In Moscow, Khrushchev knew that the situation had spiralled out of control. He had given explicit instructions for force to not be used against American forces, yet that was clearly being disregarded. It would be very easy for the situation to blunder into an exchange of nuclear weapons in which millions would perish. So when Kennedy's offer came in,  Khrushchev took it, without consulting the rest of the Soviet government. It was made easier when the Americans assured the Soviets in private that the American missiles in Turkey would be dismantled as well.

 And so by the skin of our teeth, the world made it through

To the world, it looked as if the USA had outsmarted the USSR. The secrecy of the Turkish missile deal lasted into the 1990s. Kennedy repaired his reputation, which had been badly damaged by his earlier blunders over Cuba. Khrushcehv meanwhile was living on borrowed time. He was deposed in 1964, in part because other Soviet politicans were furious that it looked as if the USSR had backed down. Of course, by that point Kennedy had passed into myth and legend, the victim of an assassin's bullet.

The Cuban Missile Crisis remains the closest the world deliberately came to a nuclear war. Black Saturday, 60 years ago today, was the day the world came closest to ending deliberately. And it was only by a stroke of good fortune that the human race lived to see Sunday 28th October, and all those days since.

2021 in Books

Somehow, it is that time of year again, where I realise I have read some stuff. 

Books read- 32
Pages read- 11,524
Target- 30

• Fiction/Non-fiction ratio- 1:31, perhaps the worst year ever for fiction
  

• Longest Book- FDR, 858 pages
  

• Shortest Book- Marx, 92 pages
  

• Quickest Read- Marx, Beyond Wiping Noses and Richard II: A Brittle Glory, all read in a day
  

• Longest Read- Technically Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest, however that was a Kindle read for being in the tent so took three years. Otherwise, it was listening to The Secret Commonwealth, from Dec 2020 until July 2021.
  

• Most Read Authors- No repeats again.
  

• Ebooks- To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949; Stasiland; Four Princes; The Book of Trespass;
  A Great and Terrible King; Beyond the Red Wall; Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest; Royal Witches; Dead Famous; Bloc Life; Fake History; Germany 1945
  

• Audio books- The Secret Commonwealth; Walking Home

• Useless Fact- How I'm ever going to keep this pace of reading up without lockdowns I don't know...
  

The List

• To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949, Ian Kershaw
• Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, Anna Funder
• Prehistoric Britain, Timothy Darvill 
• Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe, John Julius Norwich
• Inside Story: Politics, Intrigue and Treachery from Thatcher to Brexit, Philip Webster
• Marx, David McLellan
• FDR, Jean Edward Smith
• The Book of Trespass, Nick Hayes
• A History of the Bible: The Book and its Faiths, John Barton
• The Land of the Green Man: A Journey Through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles, Carolyne Larrington
• Everest and Conquest in the Himalaya: Science and Courage on the World's Highest Mountain, Richard Sale and George Rodway
• A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain, Marc Morris
• Beyond the Red Wall: Why Labour lost, how the Conservatives won and what will happen next?, Deborah Mattinson
• A Nation of Enemies: Chile under Pinochet, Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela
• Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest: A hillwalker's journey to the top of the world, Mark Horrell
• Summer of Blood: The Peasant's Revolt of 1381, Dan Jones
• Royal Witches: From Joan of Navarre to Elizabeth Woodville, Gemma Hollman
• The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman
• The Fall of Yugoslavia, Misha Glenny
• Richard II: A Brittle Glory, Laura Ashe
• Why the Germans Do It Better: Notes from a Grown-Up Country, John Kampfner
• Beyond Wiping Noses: Building an Informed Approach to Pastoral Leadership in Schools, Stephen Lane
• The Places in Between, Rory Stewart
• Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen, Greg Jenner
• Hollow Places: An Unusual History of Land and Legend, Christopher Hadley
• Walking Home: Travels with a Troubador on the Pennine Way, Simon Armitage
• Bloc Life: Stories from the Lost World of Communism, Peter Molloy
• A History of the World in 100 Objects, Neil MacGregor
• Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World, Otto English
• Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England, Thomas Penn
• Life in Medieval Ireland: Witches, Spies and Stockholm Syndrome, Finbar Dwyer
• Germany 1945: From War to Peace, Richard Bessel

Luther before the Diet of Worms

On the evening of April 18th, 1521, a hall in Germany found itself packed with people. Many of them were rich and powerful, and probably had better places to be. But none of them wanted to miss the show about to unfold in front of them. They were about to witness the real end of the European Middle Ages.

The Holy Roman Empire is one of the most misleading names for a country. For starters, it covered modern-day central Europe, centred on Germany, but also including Switzerland, northern Italy, Austria, and the Czech lands. By the early 16th century, it was sometimes also called the German Nation.

It also wasn't much of an empire. Instead, the individual princes, cities, and bishops of the Empire enjoyed enormous autonomy. Seven of them chose the new Emperor- three bishops, and four secular princes. In that respect, at least the name Holy was appropriate.

And so it was to the city of Worms that the Imperial Diet, or parliament, was summoned in the spring of 1521. This was the first called by the new Emperor, Charles V. Barely 21, Charles was also the king of Spain, Duke of the Netherlands, and ruler of the vast Spanish possessions in the New World. This powerful Renaissance prince had called the Diet partly to try and streamline the way that the Empire worked. But the princes were waiting for something far more consequential than administrative reform.

Against this collected might of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was brought a single man. All the princes and bishops, plus the Emperor himself, were facing a lone monk, clad in the black robes of the Augustinian order. They had seen him before. Yesterday, he had been brought before the Diet, and shown a pile of books. He was asked if he recognised them. He did indeed, he had replied. No surprise really; he was the author of all of them.

The second question had proved a lot harder for the monk to answer. He had been asked if he took back their contents. This seemingly easy question, requiring a yes or no answer, had instead been met with a question of his own- could he have time to think? The Diet had given him a day. Now, in the fading light, they required their answer.

This university professor was no obscure cleric. He was the bestselling author in all Germany, in the top three across all of Europe. His name was Martin Luther. Luther had entered the history books three and a half years earlier, when he had started an academic debate. Or rather, he had tried to. Appalled at the brazen sale of indulgences in his native Saxony, conning the faithful into parting with cash to rebuild St Peter's basilica in Rome, Luther had posted 95 ideas, or theses, written in Latin, onto the door of the church in Wittenberg. This was the standard way of starting an academic debate at the time.

He had done far more than start an academic debate. His complaints against indulgences, and the money flowing to Rome, had tapped a deep seam of resentment in Germany. Not with Christianity, but with the relationship with the Church in Rome. His ideas, translated into German, spread like wildfire through Germany, helped by the fact that he had an easy to read, punchy writing style.

For the Church, this could not go unanswered. But this was not yet the defining clash of the early modern period. It was an academic dispute, between priests, conducted in Latin. At first, meetings were held between Luther and various other priests, to debate their ideas. But these meetings became more and more heated. It was clear that what had begun as a debate over the technicalities of salvation was rapidly escalating.

Things did not all go Luther's way. In 1519, he had been badly beaten in a debate at Leipzig against Johann Eck, another theologian who was defending the Catholic line. Eck had, from his point of view, forced Luther into a corner, making him agree with many ideas of prominent medieval heretics. But this ended up being a major own goal. Luther saw for the first time how much his ideas were taking him away from the Catholic beliefs which had been universal in Western Europe for centuries.

The war of words dragged on, with Luther writing increasingly bitter criticisms of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and doctrines, and the Church pushing back. Eventually, Luther was subjected to the worst act of social exclusion that medieval Europe could muster. He was excommunicated by the Pope; that is, thrown out of the Church, put beyond the community, and condemned to suffer for all eternity in the next life. Undaunted, Luther burnt the Papal bull of excommunication in the main square at Wittenberg. What had begun as an attempt to talk around a minor theological issue was now spiralling out of control.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Pope was incensed. Something had to be done to put this turbulent priest in his place. So it was that Luther came to Worms in April 1521. He had been promised safe conduct by Charles V, who had told the Pope that he would deal with Luther; he was certainly not sending him to Rome. On his way, crowds had greeted him like a modern celebrity. In his first appearance before the Diet, Luther had equivocated when asked to retract his beliefs. Now, a day later, his time was up.

Luther began by saying that yes, he knew his language had sometimes been extreme, and for that he was sorry. But the ideas contained in them, he was less willing to take them back. Only if they could be shown to be contrary to Scripture or to reason would he retract, otherwise this was bound up in his conscience. Popes and councils had both been shown to be mistaken in the past. Conscience, he told the Diet, was above the authority of Popes, councils, and the Church; indeed, it was a direct line to God. According to tradition, he finished his refusal to back down by telling the Emperor, and the assembled princes and delegates "Here I stand, for I can do no other. So may God help me, Amen."

The Diet erupted. Eck, present once again, told Luther he was acting like a heretic. Voices began to cry out "Into the fire," the traditional form of execution for those whose beliefs did not conform to the Church's. There was a precedent. A century before, the Czech priest Jan Hus, who had shared many of Luther's beliefs (his had been a name Eck had invoked in his trouncing of Luther in the Leipzig Debate) had been summoned to appear before the Council of Constance, a great reforming Church council, to explain his ideas. The cardinals and bishops had been so appalled by what they heard that they ignored their promise to Hus of safe passage home, and had him burnt at the stake.

Amidst all the chaos, only one person's view mattered. Charles V was weighing his choices. On the one hand, he saw himself as the premier Christian prince on Earth, the secular wing of a partnership with the Pope. Luther's ideas were clearly heterodox, and could not be allowed to stand. On the other, Charles was a man of his word, and he didn't want to anger the German princes and cities by being seen to bow to the orders of a foreign ruler. It had been blind obedience to the papacy which had got them into this mess in the first place. He also must have had in his mind the reaction to Hus' execution. When word got back that its famous son had gone to the stake, Bohemia rose in revolt against the Empire. It had taken the better part of a century to end the fighting, and the Church there had been allowed a considerable degree of autonomy.

So Luther was allowed to leave. Instead, on May 25th, Charles published the Edict of Worms. Luther was declared a heretic, his works were banned, and he had the protection of the law removed from him. This was tantamount to a death sentence.

That is, of course, if he could be found. Luther had already left the Diet, and on the road back to Wittenberg he had been kidnapped, and had vanished. The burgeoning Protestant community was distraught. The Lament for Luther wailed "Oh God, is Luther dead? Who will expound the Scriptures to us as clearly as he could?"

It turns out, Martin Luther would. Those who had seized him had been agents of the Elector Frederick of Saxony, his prince and patron. Luther was spirited away to Wartburg Castle. There, he grew a beard, and went by the name of Juncker George. Disguised, and safe, he began to work on a German New Testament. There really was no stopping the Protestant Reformation now.

This was probably inevitable. Unlike earlier heretics, Luther had the major advantage that he lived after the invention of the printing press. His books and pamphlets could be made and distributed faster than they could be stopped. And improving literacy rates meant that more and more people could read them. Had Charles V ignored his promises, and sent Luther to the stake at Worms, it probably wouldn't have saved medieval Catholicism. But it would have deprived history of one of its major thinkers, and one of its more dramatic episodes.

 

A 19th century rendering of the Diet of Worms

2020 in Books

It's that time of year again, when I list all the words I managed to read. For some reason, this year there's a fair few more of them...

Books read- 36
Pages read- 15,950
Target- 35 (amended up from 27 because, you know, lockdown)

• Fiction/Non-fiction ratio- 10:26- A better year for fiction, but only marginally...

• Longest Book- A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, 1184 pages.

• Shortest Book- The Ascent of Rum Doodle, 192 pages.

• Quickest Read- A three way tie between The Ascent of Rum Doodle, Stasi Child and Just Mercy, each of which took me three days.

• Longest Read- KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, August 2019-August 2020.

• Most Read Authors- A tie this time: Diarmaid MacCulloch, one his book on the English Reformation under Edward VI, and the other his mammoth history of Christianity, and two John le Carre novels.

• Ebooks-  KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Stasi Child, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn, Norton of Everest: Soldier and Mountaineer, Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of the English Republic, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, The Norman Conquest, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation.

• Audio books- La Belle Sauvage, First Man In: Leading from the Front.

• Useless Fact-A grand total of four other people read the biography of Edward Norton. 367,424 others read Just Mercy.

The List

• The President is Missing, Bill Clinton and James Paterson
• The Long '68: Radical Protest and its Enemies, Richard Vinen
• Where Power Stops: The Making and Unmaking of Presidents and Prime Ministers, David Runciman
• Austerity Britain, 1945-51, David Kynaston
• The Black Death: An Intimate Story of a Village in Crisis, 1345-1350, John Hatcher
• Piers the Ploughman, William Langland
• The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel
• The Ascent of Rum Doodle, W.E. Bowman
• Gorbachev: His Life and Times, William Taubman
• Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries, Robert Harris
• The Ministry of Nostalgia, Owen Hatherley
• Excalibur, Bernard Cornwell 
• A Most Wanted Man, John le Carre
• La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman
• Doctor Who: Fear of the Dark, Trevor Baxendale
• The English Civil War: A People's History, Diane Purkiss
• Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall, Hester Vaizey
• The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are, Michael Pye
• My Life, Our Times, Gordon Brown
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson
• Hidden Histories: A Spotter's Guide to the British Landscape, Mary-Ann Ochota
• First Man In: Leading from the Front, Ant Middleton 
• KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Nikolaus Wachsmann
• Stasi Child, David Young
• A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Diarmaid MacCulloch
• The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Timothy Snyder
• Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn, Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire
• The Brothers York: An English Tragedy, Thomas Penn
• Norton of Everest: Soldier and Mountaineer, Hugh Norton
• Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of the English Republic, Paul Lay
• Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century, John Higgs
• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Hallie Rubenhold
• Between the Sunset and the Sea: A View of 16 British Mountains, Simon Ingram
• The Norman Conquest, Marc Morris
• Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation, Diarmaid MacCulloch
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John le Carre

Death at the Altar

On this day 850 years ago, in 1170, Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered by four knights inside Canterbury Cathedral itself. It was an event which appalled medieval Christendom, elevated Becket to sainthood, and left a deep impression on the English imagination.

 

Lestnytgh, lordynges, bothe grete and smale,
I xal you telyn a wonder tale,
How Holy Cherche was browt in bale
Cum magna iniuria.

The greteste clerk of al this lond,
Of Cauntyrbury, ye understonde,
Slawyn he was with wykkyd hond,
Demonis potencia.

Knytes kemyn fro Henry kyng,
Wykkyd men, withoute lesyng;
Ther they dedyn a wonder thing,
Ferventes insania.

They sowntyn hym al abowtyn,
Withine the paleys and withoutyn;
Of Jhesu Cryst hadde they non dowte
In sua malicia.

They openyd here mowthis wonder wyde:
To Thomas they spokyn mekyl pryde,
'Here, tretour, thou xalt abide,
Ferens mortis tedia.'

Thomas answerid with mylde chere,
'If ye wil me slon in this manere,
Let hem pasyn, alle tho arn here,
Sine contumilia.'

Beforn his aunter he knelyd adoun;
Ther they gunne to paryn his crown;
He sterdyn the braynys up and doun,
Optans celi gaudia.

The turmentowres abowtyn sterte;
With dedly wondys thei gunne him hurte.
Thomas deyid in Moder Cherche
Pergens ad celestia.

Moder, clerk, wedue and wyf,
Worchepe ye Thomas in al your lyf;
For lii poyntes he les his lyf,
Contra regis consilia.

 

 A medieval English carol, recorded in the 15th century MS Sloane 2593. Translation from https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2011/12/song-for-st-thomas-becket.html?m=1

 

Listen, lords, both great and small,
I shall you tell a wonderous tale,
How Holy Church was brought in bale [into sorrow]
By a great wrong.

The greatest cleric in all this land,
Of Canterbury, you understand,
Slain he was with wicked hand,
By the power of the devil.

Knights came from Henry the king,
Wicked men, without lying;
There they did a terrible thing,
Raging in madness.

They sought for him all about,
Within the palace and without;
Of Jesu Christ had they no thought
In their wickedness.

They opened their mouths very wide:
To Thomas they spoke in their great pride,
'Here, traitor, thou shalt abide,
To suffer the pain of death.

Thomas answered with mild chere, [in a meek manner]
'If ye will me slay in this manner,
Let them go, all those who are here,
Without injury.'

Before his altar he kneeled down;
There they began to cut off his crown;
They stirred the brains up and down;
He hoped for the joys of heaven.

The tormentors began their work;
With deadly wounds they began to hurt.
Thomas died in Mother Church
Attaining to heaven.

Mothers, clerics, widows and wives,
Worship Thomas all your lives;
For 52 points he lost his life,
Against the king's counsels

Alternatively, watch Brian Blessed in The Black Adder do much the same thing.

A Return to the City on a Hill

It seems like a very, very long time ago, in a world which does indeed seem far away. But it is only four short years since I wrote this pair of posts:

The Dark Night of the Soul in the City on a Hill

Night in the City on a Hill

It is safe to say that the American republic has not had its best years since that day. Every week of the Trump presidency has been such a rollercoaster, it would be impossible to try and recount all of it. The coronavirus catastrophe, which has killed more Americans than most wars the country has ever fought, is the best, most vivid, most raw example of that. The whole presidency has been bad, both for those in the United States, but for everyone around the world. Yes, many of the worst fears have not come to pass. The system of checks and balances the US prides itself on has by and large held. Trump remains the only president to preside over a government shutdown when his party was in full control of government. Many of his gestures were just that, gestures.

But you cannot argue these have been four good years. Indulging white supremacists, authoritarians, conspiracy theorists, climate deniers, and all-round lunatics hasn't done anything for the United States. The world stage has cowered in fear that he subscribed too much to the madman theory, and his ripping up of the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal is just downright dangerous. Above all, Trump shows that democracy is not inevitable. Americans believed it was, and so they didn't mind when the beast made its way into the White House. He has sewn carnage in his wake. The United States is a young country. It is still younger than Athenian democracy was when it was conquered by Alexander of Macedon, and only half the age of the Roman Republic when Caesar led his armies across the Rubicon and brought it crashing down. It is not inevitable that the poster child of democracy around the world will remain as such. Trump is the symbol that yes, it can happen here.

I think what has surprised me the most is that anyone cares. Plenty of countries are run by authoritarian strongmen, by quasi-fascistic lunatics who shouldn't be allowed to run a race let alone a nation. Their mismanagements and outrages go unremarked day by day. For some reason though, those of us who live in democracies hold the USA to a higher standard.

Maybe it’s because we live in the world it created. The world we live in is culturally American, and is defined by global institutions and power structures which were set up by the United States. We do care when it lets us down. It will go on doing that, even under a President Biden. But it will be ten times worse under a second term Trump.

If Joe Biden wins tomorrow, that isn't the problem solved. Trump, as has been written many times by many people, is a symptom, not the disease itself. But if he wins again, that message will almost be worse than him winning in the first place. Consigning Trump to the ash heap of history is a powerful message that it can happen here, and it can be undone.

I can see all the evidence that points to Trump losing. And yet I cannot truly believe it. As John O'Farrell said of those who despaired that Labour would win in 1997, in the face of similarly overwhelming evidence, we are like brides who have been abandoned at the altar, and cannot accept that they will ever be happy again. In the words on Fox Mulder's office wall in the X-Files, I Want to Believe.

Everything I said in those posts four years ago still stands. If America still sees itself as the city set on a hill, a shining light to the rest of us, then it bloody well better show it. Once again, we all have to go through that long, dark night of the soul with them.

Good night, and good luck.

The Life and Times of John Hume

A few years ago, I was mentoring a trainee teacher. It was… a painful experience. About halfway through a lesson, I was sat taking notes, when a student asked him ‘Sir, who do you think is the most important historical person?’ Quick as anything, he answered ‘Martin McGuiness, who was an Irish Nelson Mandela. He did more than anyone to bring peace to Northern Ireland’

I put my pen down, stunned. I could just about see where the Nelson Mandela analogy came from, in that McGuinness had been a violent revolutionary who had turned to the democratic system to advance his interests. But he had not done more than anyone to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland in the mid 1960s was a powder keg. Ever since partition in the 1920s, the unionist majority, predominantly Protestant, had clung to their overwhelming power in part by political manipulation to exclude the nationalist, mainly Catholic minority, from jobs, housing, and the equal right to vote. Slight moves by the governing Ulster Unionist Party to improve the lot of nationalists had produced a hysterical reaction from some unionists, including Ian Paisley. On the other side of the divide, various civil rights movements were starting to spring up, advocating civil disobedience, inspired in part by the images from the Deep South of the United States.

One of those who joined the Derry Citizens’ Action Committee was teacher John Hume. Hume was elected to the Northern Irish Parliament as a nationalist, and helped to form the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party in 1970. He was present at marches against internment without trial, and against the increasingly heavy-handed police and army actions of the early 1970s.

 The street politics of Derry, late 1960s and early 1970s

 
The future of the nationalist movement did not look to be in electoral politics. What had begun as street protests and marches for better conditions was rapidly descending into armed conflict, as hatred at the Stormont government, the police, and increasingly the army was fuelling the rise of the Provisional IRA. Equally appalling was the actions of loyalist paramilitaries, who used fear of the IRA to justify appalling sectarian killings. At times, Northern Ireland seemed to teeter on the brink of total collapse. It was a hard time to be calling for peace and reconciliation.

Hume stuck to his (metaphorical) guns. He joined a hunger trike and sit in outside Downing Street in 1971, to highlight the plight of nationalists suffering at the hands of the Stormont administration. He was part of the team who helped to negotiate the Sunningdale Agreement in 1973, a false dawn of power sharing even as the carnage escalated. After becoming an MEP in 1979, and an MP in 1983, he cultivated links with the Irish-American political community, seeing the advantage that American influence would bring. Margaret Thatcher said the landmark Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, which conceded that the Republic of Ireland had a role to play in the future of Northern Ireland, was brought about in large part by American pressure.

From Downing Street sit in to the Oval Office

But it is for his willingness to talk to anyone who could bring about peace, even at risk of talking to those who would murder, for which John Hume will be remembered. In 1988, in an incident which seemed to be the very depths of depravity, mourners at an IRA funeral were killed by a loyalist gunman. At their funerals, two soldiers who drove into the procession were dragged from their car and beaten to death in the street. A picture of a Catholic priest kneeling over the soldiers, administering the last rites, was beamed around the world, epitomising the abyss into which Northern Ireland had sunk.

In the pocket of Father Alec Reid was a letter. It was from Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA. At the time, Adams was seen as so dangerous, so vile, that his voice was not allowed to even be heard by the British people, to deprive him of the "oxygen of publicity," as Margaret Thatcher put it. The letter was being sent to John Hume. Two less likely allies couldn't be imagined. But, thanks to the work of Father Alec Reid, the two men were corresponding. The letter set out the position of Sinn Fein for an end to the 'armed struggle,' and asked the SDLP leader for his take on them. It marked the start of the ‘Hume-Adams process,’ by which the IRA and Sinn Fein were gradually nudged away from the Armalite and towards the ballot box. First of all in secret, then in the open, these talks helped to persuade the IRA to declare a ceasefire in 1994. Unionist fury and scepticism was seemingly confirmed when the ceasefire collapsed in 1996, with a huge bomb in the London Docklands. But Hume kept going, amidst the derision.

It took a new government in Westminster in 1997, with a large enough majority to not be beholden to unionist votes, for the Northern Ireland peace process to really get going. I’ve told that tale before, so won’t do so again. But it was John Hume and David Trimble who shared the Noble Peace Prize in 1998, not Adams or McGuiness.

The years since have not been kind to Hume, or the SDLP. He suffered from the onset of dementia, to the point that he had no memory of his role in the history of the 20th century. The SDLP has seen itself overtaken by Sinn Fein, the former hardmen of violence, as the main party of nationalism in Northern Ireland. But the very fact that disagreements in Northern Ireland are played out politically, and not with bullets and bombs, is testament to the lasting impact of people like John Hume, who imagined and argued for a world of peace when it seemed virtually impossible to attain.

My feedback for that lesson largely consisted of outlining this story. And telling my trainee to think before he blurted out such sweeping statements. I feel that the former teacher, turned politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner, would have approved.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/20/john-hume-steered-northern-ireland-peace-process For the views of the late Seamus Mallon, that other senior SDLP giant, and his take on the significance of John Hume.