Death of a statesman | thearticle

The death of John Hume, the Northern Irish statesman and Nobel Peace laureate, from complications arising from dementia is a reminder of the hidden affliction that blights the later stages

of too many lives. At the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday (or Belfast) Agreement, Pat Hume said of its architect, the man to whom she was married for sixty years: “It’s very sad. His

memory has just gone. John does not remember very much about the Agreement of 1998, or about the Anglo-Irish Agreement or Sunningdale or anything else. He doesn’t actually remember the peace

process now, that he spent his entire life on.”   It was perhaps just as well that Hume could not hear the hollow tributes of those in Sinn Fein who had tried to intimidate him. Gerry

Adams, whose secret meeting with Hume in 1988 was a turning point in the peace process, hailed the news of his death by claiming to have made common cause with him: “It seems particularly

apt for these strange and fearful days to remember the phrase that gave hope to John and so many of us through dark times: ‘We shall overcome.’” At the time, there was neither “we” nor “us”.

Throughout the Troubles, Hume was a target for Adams’s friends in the IRA. His home in Londonderry was picketed, two of his cars were destroyed and in 1985 his house was firebombed while

his five young children were inside. A lesser man would have got the message and desisted from his attempts to persuade Republicans to give up violence and talk to Unionists and the British

Government. Hume never gave up, even though terrorists tried to torpedo the peace talks to the bitter end. His calm charisma, together with the patient persistence of his Unionist

counterpart David (now Lord) Trimble, finally brought both Republicans and Loyalists to the table. After the Belfast Agreement finally sealed the deal, Adams, McGuinness and Sinn Fein

proceeded to supplant the moderate party Hume had led, the SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour Party), as the voice of Nationalism in the Province. Whatever Adams may say now, no gesture of

gratitude from his quarter was forthcoming during Hume’s lifetime. There was certainly no love lost between them. Too many of Hume’s friends had been murdered by the IRA as “traitors” to

their cause of driving the British out by force. The official number of sufferers from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia in the UK is 850,000, but the true figure is undoubtedly

higher. Many people are afraid to come forward to be diagnosed; others live with dementia in ignorance, unaware of their condition until it can no longer be ignored. Dementia has already

overtaken all other causes of death, including cancer, and it also renders victims more vulnerable to other diseases, including Covid-19. As the population ages, so degenerative diseases are

bound to become more common, but many people mistakenly assume that the symptoms of dementia are inextricable from old age. On the one hand, younger people can and do suffer from

early-onset Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia; on the other, many people live to a great age without suffering from either. Dementia is not inevitable and although it is still incurable, its

progress can be slowed down by medication, therapy and good care. Lifestyle and diet are also vital. The prospect of treatments for the various forms of dementia is still remote, but if a

fraction of the resources presently spent on cancer and heart disease were devoted to dementia, the breakthroughs would soon follow. The scourge of so many millions, especially in the

Western world, ought not to be accepted as the inevitable destiny of the elderly. Just as John Hume refused to resign himself to the triumph of terror, instead moving heaven and earth to

overcome the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland, so we have a duty to resist the temptation of fatalism in the fight against dementia. That disease has just deprived us of the man whom

Bill Clinton called the Martin Luther King of Northern Ireland. Once we have defeated the coronavirus pandemic, we should turn our society’s attention to this more insidious threat. If John

Hume could overcome the men of violence, we shall surely overcome dementia.