During the summer of 1969, Hume stood for and won the seat in the Northern Ireland Parliament at Stormont representing his native Bogside. In their recent book, Ireland: A Terrible Beauty, Leon and Jill Uris describe John Hume as "the best political brain on the island...a dedicated, unshakeable man," an evaluation at which Hume modestly says he has no idea how they arrived. While in the Stormont parliament, however, Hume demonstrated brilliance as both constitutionalist and politician. In early 1970, Hume was instrumental in forcing the Unionists to disband the B-Specials, a unit of the government's Royal Ulster Constabulary which had done a great deal with their repeated partisan Protestant stands to heighten tensions between the Catholics and Protestants. Later, he proved almost singlehandedly that the British troops' presence in Ulster was unconstitutional and forced the London government to enact legislation "legalizing" their presence.

Hume has consistently carried his quest for a non-violent solution to the Ulster conflict from the negotiating table to the city streets of Derry and Belfast. While a Stormont parliament member, Hume often risked his own life quieting Catholic protestors, keeping exchanges of insults from escalating into violence. Today, of course, all Protestant and Catholic marches are open invitations to violence and have been banned by the London government.

Today, Hume says his party places its hope for a political settlement on an Ulster government with proportional representation in the executive for Catholics and Protestants along the lines of the short-lived Power Sharing executive of 1974. The government, in which Hume served as Minister of Industry and Commerce, collapsed in less than five months, after Ulster-wide strikes by Protestant trade unions. Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister, declared the Protestant strikes "a deliberate and calculated attempt to use every undemocratic and unparliamentary means for bringing down the constitution of Northern Ireland."

Hume blames the experiment's failure directly on the British. "The British government had control of security, we didn't. We feel that if they had acted at the beginning of the strike, the strike would have had no success. But the longer they waited the bigger became the bandwagon, and in the end they just stood by and let the experiment collapse." All of the members resigned. "Still," Hume says, "the agreement showed that a sharing of power between the two sections of the community could work, and work well."

While in the U.S., Hume says he discovered that many Irish-Americans do have a sense of the complexities of the situation in Ulster, although he says most of the Irish-American leaders who want to help "are careful about what they say." Some Irish-Americans, however, are even more extremist than the native Irish themselves. "Their fanaticism grows with their distance from their homeland," Hume says, and their monetary support of the violent tactics of the IRA "contribute to an already deep and intractable problem."

Hume says that his two months at the University was valuable for him in that it gave him "time to think and study." Although the CfIA stint did not really affect his political outlook, Hume says, "I go back refreshed, hoping I can make a good contribution to resolving the crisis."

The Protestant and Catholic women's peace movement in Northern Ireland began this fall in the wake of the tragic death of three children hit by an IRA member-driven car being chased through Belfast streets by British army vehicles. Hume says the movement is a "completely spontaneous outcry for peace" which may lead to an atmosphere in which political negotiations can resume. Hume believes as much as 95 per cent of the Ulster population now abhor the violence of the extremists.

Hume suggests the British government has a major responsibility for finding a solution. "They're the sovereign government. They've got all the authority and all the power." But he says he fears that a number of factors--the growth of Scottish and Welsh nationalism, Britain's ever-increasing economic woes, and the growing number of Britons who are simply fed up with the whole Ulster affair--may result in a postponement of British attempts to seek a settlement, or even worse, the withdrawal of British troops before a political settlement is reached.

Hume believes civil war--an outright bloodbath--could very well follow such a withdrawal.

"The IRA feels that the British should simply get out of Northern Ireland. We think that's a dangerous view," says Hume. "Everybody wants troops removed. No one likes soldiers on their streets. But the people who are prudent and wise want troops removed in the context of a political settlement so that there's something left behind to insure that there's peace and order." A short year ago, Leon and Jill Uris wrote, "There is no way that the British could continue as a respected people after a desertion that could bring civil war." Today, Hume claims, that desertion--respectable or not--is a much more serious possibility.

Just as the British appear to be relinquishing a sense of responsibility for the Ulster conflict, most observers agree that the Irish Republic's support for the Catholic minority in Ulster is now moderated by a growing realization that the problems of the island would not simply disappear if the Republic and the province were united. The position of Hume's party now echoes the view of Irish Republican Prime Minister Liam Cosgrave: no unification can occur without the consent of the Ulster majority.

For John Hume, however, the question of Northern Ireland's exact relationships with Britain and the Irish Republic remains secondary to the larger problem: "The central ongoing problem for us on the island of Ireland will remain the relationship between the Catholic and the Protestant Irish," Hume says. "This problem will remain, regardless of what happens to the British."

"I want to see an agreed Ireland. An Ireland in which the people of Ireland, North and South, Protestant and Catholic, are agreed on how it's to be governed. And once that basis is found, I believe that working together over the years we will gradually erode the mistrust and fear of the times and replace it with confidence and trust. This will lead to a new Ireland based on normal political divisions and not outdated, sectarian prejudices."