As they happened: Tributes paid to John Hume

The funeral of John Hume takes place tomorrow morning at 11:30 in Derry.

The event will be streamed live on the BBC News NI website and there will also be live coverage on BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme from 11:15.

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John Hume always said his only interest was peace, lasting peace, but because he was a nationalist, he was the leader of the SDLP, a lot of unionists, a lot of loyalists were suspicious that there was some sort of political agenda there, leading to a united Ireland - and that there was a pan-nationalist front involving the Irish government.

John Hume was viewed with a lot of suspicion by a lot of loyalists and, in a subsequent documentary around a decade ago, Jackie McDonald, a leading loyalist said at one stage some loyalists regarded him as a so-called legitimate target.

In other words they did consider trying to kill him.

As we know they did not, and the rest is history.

John Hume reached out to loyalists and he became a friend to many, many loyalists over the subsequent years.

At the time of the Hume-Adams talks, I was a young reporter working for the Belfast Telegraph. A Sunday newspaper had broken the news about the secret discussions.

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My job on the Monday morning was to knock on John Hume’s door near the Bogside and try to get an exclusive interview.

John Hume came to the door, he invited me in, he gave me a cup of tea, and he talked about everything but the Hume-Adams talks. He gave me the very latest insights into what was going on in European politics, in Brussels, he showed me some letters he had received from Washington from American senators.

After a while, even though I was a bit of a rookie and I had that kind of respect for John Hume, I did interrupt him and ask: "Is there any chance of talking about Hume-Adams, and the chance of an IRA ceasefire?"

He said: "You may be a young reporter but you’ve got to learn about political context, and I’ve told you all I know about the political context."

I said: "I know about the context, but can you tell me about the Hume-Adams talks?"

He smiled and said: "I just did."

Lesson learned.

A stand-out moment in the history of Derry City FC came in August 2003, when a full strength Barcelona side took on the Candystripes in their home ground of the Brandywell.

Speaking to Evening Extra, Jim Roddy, city centre manager for Londonderry and friend of the late John Hume, explained how the visit by the team, which included future Ballon d'Or winner Ronaldinho, was facilitated by the late SDLP leader.

"Derry City, as can be the case with many soccer clubs throughout the island of Ireland, fell on difficult times financially. John said, ‘here, why don’t we get someone like Barcelona to come and play us’," said Mr Roddy.

"For those of us in the sport, it is a mammoth task, you just don’t believe that a football club, probably the world’s best known football club, and certainly with the world’s best players, would come to a city like ours and play at the Brandywell Stadium."

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Mr Roddy said John told him and the manager of the team at the time, Kevin Mahon, that they were going to take a visit to Barcelona to try and make the visit happen.

He said on arrival in the city, they met with then Barcelona president Joan Gaspart, and after John Hume spoke to him for a few minutes in French, an agreement was reached for the team to visit the city.

Mr Roddy said they then went to the Nou Camp stadium to watch Barcelona, and sat in the president's box.

"Pasqual Maragall, the mayor at the time was saying to John, ‘the crowd is cheering for you’.

"If you can imagine this stadium of 90,000 plus people, and John was standing at the very front of the president’s box.

"He said, ‘who me?’ And John stands up and takes a wave while the crowd there are applauding him. John was such an ordinary man and he was blown away by this. He reached people in ways that many other people will never be able to do."

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Long before John Hume made his mark on the political stage, he was making a name for himself on the sports field.

Former BBC Radio Foyle broadcaster Ken McCormack remembers playing cricket for the Waterside club in Derry when word came through of a young left-arm spin bowler from the other side of the city.

It was John Hume.

“He turned up with a group of lads from the cityside to the Waterside ground one day. Everybody said John Hume was coming. And we had heard about him,” Ken said.

His ability to bowl slow left-arm had been spotted first at City of Derry.

Ken adds: “Anybody that is into cricket will know there is nothing more precious in your side than a slow left arm bowler.

“When they came over to us in the Waterside we were after them - we were out to get John in those days.

“I came up roaring like a hurricane to bowl to him at the wicket, slipped and the ball left my hand.

“It went down like a full toss straight at him. Only that John had moved his head an inch there would have been very little left of him had the ball hit him”.

The pair, he said, often laughed about it in the years afterwards.

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Restaurateur and businessman Donal Doherty says John Hume was held in such high regard that when he walked into his restaurant "service stopped in its tracks”.

“Who you were with didn’t matter, what you were eating didn’t matter, he would talk to somebody he might know, but he wouldn’t pass another table without saying hello to them, he would literally go around the restaurant because he had so much time for people,” he said.

He knew the names of most, and learned the name of those he didn’t.

“It was just remarkable to watch,” Donal says

There was always a bottle or two of John’s favourite wine kept especially for him, he adds.

Donal had worked away for many of the years of the Troubles.

John Hume, he says, “was central in creating the change” that allowed people like him to come home.

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Former Londonderry school principal Grainne McCafferty said that even in the darkest days of the Troubles, “the one thing John Hume gave everybody was hope”.

“John refused to turn out the light, if you want, he kept the light lit, the passion for the future, and for Derry, burning,” she said.

For the older pupils at her school, St Cecilia's College, he was “an inspiration”.

Hume, himself a one-time school teacher, was a passionate advocate for education, she said.

“He would often talk to me about things that were going on in education. There is probably a long connection between the ideals of John and the civil rights movement and the broader foothold into education.

“He challenged everyone to use their potential to move forward."

She said he leaves a legacy of “refusing to turn off hope” that “we cannot let go, he has worked too tirelessly too hard and suffered too much for us to let it go”.

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Cricketers with the Irish and English teams are wearing black armbands during today’s one-day international in Southampton, in memory of John Hume.

A minute’s silence was held before the start of the match.

Mr Hume was a cricket fan and in his younger days was a left-arm spin bowler.

Ross McCollum, chair of Cricket Ireland, said: “We were all saddened to hear of the passing of John Hume.

"He was a tremendous man with fantastic vision and a relentless commitment to peace.

“He will no doubt be remembered as a giant of his time, and his legacy will extend for many generations to come.

"On behalf of the Irish cricket community, we pass on our condolences to John’s family and friends.”

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Darren Guy is an Ulster Unionist councillor in Londonderry. His father, Jim, was a unionist mayor of the city in the 1980s.

“My father passed away coming up on 19 years ago now,” Darren said

“At the time when we had just brought my daddy’s body home to the house there was a phone call and it was John Hume. I think he was in Mexico or America at the time.

“But it was greatly appreciated that he had taken the time out, and thought about my dad and made the call to send condolences to my mum and family,” he said.

He said that while some within unionism will hold a different view to John Hume’s political perspective, few can argue with how we advocated for the city of Derry.

“I believe what John did for this town, not only bringing trade, jobs, well-paid jobs, and American companies, but since he left the political scene, there has been no one with the same clout as John,” he said.

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Ray Flynn was Mayor of Boston for much of the 1980s and early 1990s.

It was a time when John Hume was spearheading a drive to see US investment in his home city of Derry.

At their first meeting it became clear John Hume was a “man who was very aggressive about his constituency”.

“John came to Boston after a bit of an absence of an Irish influence in the city. And he re-taught us those values and principles we had heard about as young kids. He knew America was the land of opportunity.

“And he taught me that the most important thing was social and economic justice.”

He brought a different message from Ireland to that which US politicians had become used to, Mr Flynn said.

“All they heard about was the Troubles and the violence and they deplored that. He brought a different message, it was about hope and opportunity and jobs and peace – that connects with the Irish American people.”

Mr Flynn said he has lost a friend with the passing of John Hume.

“The world will not forget what he contributed,” he said.

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Journalist Peter Taylor got to know John Hume well during his 50 years of reporting on Northern Ireland.

“John remained true to his political beliefs from the beginning to the very end but he also remained true to his origins, to his identity,” he told BBC Radio Foyle.

He never moved from his Bogside home despite intimidation, attacks and vilification, Mr Taylor said.

Derry was a special place for John Hume, he said.

"I remember sitting around the piano with Phil Coulter, I think at Phil’s house after a meeting in the Bogside or across the border in Donegal listening to John singing and Phil Coulter playing The Town I love So Well - and I will never, never forget that,” he said.

The journalist said he regrets that he "was never able to see, never managed to see John in his later years".

"He was a remarkable man and I was privileged to count him as one of my friends. John was a very special person," he said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has added her voice to the international tributes for Mr Hume, describing him as a "great champion of peace".

Politicians and others have been paying tribute to John Hume and his long career, from the civil rights movement to the Good Friday Agreement.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was a "political titan" and former US President Bill Clinton praised his "unshakeable commitment to nonviolence".

Mr Hume was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the then leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble.

Lord Trimble said Mr Hume's contribution to politics in Northern Ireland meant that he was "moving into history".

The SDLP has posted a tweet from Dr Joe Hendron talking about John Hume's push for a political arrangement.

It was in his formative years growing up in Derry that a young John Hume forged a lifelong love of sport, especially football.

Back in 1994, he sat down with BBC Radio Foyle’s Sean Coyle to reflect on his childhood and recalled how his love of the beautiful game ended up with a brush with the law.

“I often tell the story that my one criminal record of my life when Liam Kitson and myself – Liam lived at the top of Argyll Street – were playing a heady ( a game involving two players repeatedly heading the ball back and forth) in the street, and we were arrested for playing football in the streets."

John, at the age of 12, was taken to court.

“Because my parents couldn’t afford it, we didn’t have a solicitor, I defended myself and pleaded not guilty.

“The policeman got up and said’ ‘but sure I caught you’.

“I said I wasn’t playing football I was playing a heady”.

John was fined two bob (two shillings).

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But his foray into the legal profession earned praise from the magistrate, who said he had defended himself very well, John recalled.

He told the programme there was a real sense of community to his childhood.

His formative years were characterised by “a lot of rationing, you couldn’t get sweets or chocolate,” he told Coyle and Company.

John recalls the Yanks - US military personnel stationed in the city’s Springtown camp - giving him candy,

He also saw them play baseball, a game they would teach him, and their illegal greyhound racing track – a young John Hume would become “well known as a tipster”.

You can listen to Coyle and Company: John Hume here.

Members of the public have been signing a book of condolences for John Hume at the Guildhall in Londonderry.

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The book was opened on Monday by the Mayor of Derry City and Strabane District Council, Cllr Brian Tierney.

It is also possible to sign the book digitally here.

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"He was someone who brought peace to where I live. He gave me and my generation a future."

Katie O'Doherty has only just turned 16. She was born in Londonderry a few years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

She is part of Northern Ireland's peace generation - a generation, she says, that owes so much to the work and principles of John Hume.

"He was the most inspirational and important figure of the peace process and that was such a historic moment - it helped people move on, helped our city, helped where we live transition to a place of peace," she said.

"He was someone who brought peace to where I live. He gave me and my generation a future."

His influence was felt in many aspects of life in her home town, said Katie.

She is a volunteer member of the Credit Union in Derry, an organisation founded by John Hume.

Pointing out his pivotal role in Derry's civil rights campaign of the late 1960s, Katie said his death marked "a sad day for our city".

"But John Hume is a great inspiration to me and to my generation".

Read more here.

Lisa McGee of Derry Girls fame tweets a tribute to John Hume and his longing for peace.