John Hume

It was October 5, 1968, in Derry, Northern Ireland.

A civil rights march had been banned. The marchers came anyway. On Duke Street, police drove them off with batons.

Television cameras filmed the violence.

Among the marchers was a thirty-one-year-old man. His name was John Hume.

He was born on January 18, 1937, in Derry, on Lower Nassau Street. His parents were Sam and Annie.

He studied at Maynooth, in Ireland. In 1958, he earned a degree in French and history. Then he worked on a master's degree on the social and economic life of his city.

In 1960, he helped found the Derry Credit Union. It was the first credit union in Northern Ireland. A bank for ordinary people, pooling their money.

He also took part in a housing association, and in a campaign to bring a university to Derry.

The day after the Duke Street march, he co-founded the Derry Citizens' Action Committee. He became one of the faces of a civil rights movement that refused violence.

In 1969, voters sent him to the Stormont parliament. In 1970, he co-founded the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the SDLP. He became its leader in 1979.

On January 30, 1972, Bloody Sunday left fourteen dead in Derry. John Hume was not at that march.

From 1979, he sat in the European Parliament. From 1983, he also sat at Westminster.

On January 11, 1988, he met Gerry Adams, of Sinn Féin, for the first time. The aim: to explore a ceasefire.

Their dialogue had a stated objective: to bring an end to violence.

The years went by. In July 1997, after a joint document by the two men, the IRA renewed its ceasefire.

On April 10, 1998, the Good Friday Agreement was concluded, in Belfast. Then voters in both parts of Ireland approved it by referendum.

On October 17, 1998, it was announced that John Hume would receive the Nobel Peace Prize, with David Trimble. It was presented to him on December 10.

Bill Clinton called him the Irish conflict's Martin Luther King.

In 2001, he stepped down as party leader.

John Hume died on August 3, 2020, in Derry, aged 83. The city where he was born.

His conviction echoes Ubuntu, without being the same thing. For him, Ireland was not a flag, but people divided into two traditions, who had to reach agreement.

He once said he thought, very simply, in terms of helping people.

A street in Derry, one October day, batons in front of the cameras. And, thirty years later, a peace prize for the man who had never stopped talking.