John Hume would have been ‘frustrated’ and ‘appalled’ by Stormont impasse and lack of socio-economic delivery

That’s according to Colum Eastwood who was asked by the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (NIAC) to ‘put himself in the shoes’ of the late Mr. Hume during a briefing session on Wednesday.

“He would be frustrated though I think that the principles that underpinned the GFA were, I think, about us all working in partnership, us working the common ground, every day, us not walking away when things got difficult, and I think that would frustrate him.

“The fact that we had three-and-a-half years when Sinn Féin walked away. We've had - what have we had now - over a year anyway since the DUP walked away, and the whole point was you had to compromise and work the common ground and do that every day, so when you didn't get what you wanted you weren't supposed to just walk away and pull the whole edifice of government down.

"The idea that the first response almost is to pull the edifice, the very structures of government down, I think would appal him and I also think he would have been very frustrated that we didn't use - even when the Assembly and the Executive were up and running - we didn’t properly use those institutions to change people's lives because John was a social democrat as much as he was anything else,” said the SDLP leader, who was taking part in NIACs inquiry on the effectiveness of the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr. Eastwood told the committee he believed that 25 years on from the accord peace is secure. He described those groups still violently opposed to the dispensation arrived at in 1998 as facing against ‘the democratic wishes of the people of our country’.

“I don't think we are ever going back despite some of the challenges we face and we've seen not so long ago there is still a very real threat there by some people who just can’t get on board with the people of Ireland and want to still turn their faces against the democratic wishes of the people of our country but peace was achieved, peace is secure in my view. It always has to be minded. We have to work it,” he said.

John Hume has been plotting a path towards the Good Friday Agreement from as early as the mid 1960s, said Mr. Eastwood, when he had recognised ‘the principles of two compteing identities, two competing nationalities that needed to be understood and you needed to work together’.

“He was driven by and I think we are still driven by a real desire and zeal to lift people out of poverty and to give them opportunity. That's where the civil rights movement came from which the SDLP grew out of. [It] was that need to get rid of an old corrupt government at Stormont that was keeping people down economically. He always said our problems are economic as much as anything else.”

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