Alan Preston, May 2021
Eamon Dunphy has defended his past criticism of John Hume for holding secret talks with Sinn Féin during the height of the Troubles.
Looking back on his career during an interview on RTÉ Radio 1, Mr Dunphy was asked about being part of a Sunday Independent campaign that vilified the late SDLP leader for meeting with Gerry Adams during the 1980s.
Mr Dunphy told presenter Marty Morrissey that he believed Mr Hume to be “a great man”, but that it was right to question his choices at the time.
“I had campaigned against terrorism, killing people to advance the idea of a united Ireland,” he said.
“Maiming people, destroying peoples’ lives, putting bombs in pubs. Putting bombs outside McDonald’s in Warrington killing two five-year-old children.
“I was against that, I’m against terrorism. That was going on during the Hume-Adams talks. And I thought that John Hume and other mainstream politicians should talk to the IRA on condition that the IRA ceased their activity during those talks.
“And they didn’t, John Hume talked to them unconditionally. I thought that was wrong. What do you do, for example, when a bomb goes off in Enniskillen and people are maimed and murdered and you go and talk to the people responsible for that the next day?
“I thought you were conferring some kind of legitimacy on those murders.”
Mr Dunphy continued: “I think John Hume was a great man and what he did for Ireland was magnificent.
“He internationalised the problem, he went to the United States, he persuaded America to get involved.
“He went to the European Union and he came up with wonderful ideas and a way forward that would end the killing.
“John Hume is a great man, but as a journalist you’re working and writing about the moment you’re in…the Belfast bomb in a fish shop. For God’s sake, nine people dead, maimed and you’re talking to them the next day?
“I didn’t think that was right. Now with the benefit of hindsight of course John Hume was a great man, but journalists are not historians.
“And I don’t regret writing what I did at the time. However, John Hume didn’t like it but I didn’t like people being murdered and then the people who committed those crimes going into talks with elected politicians, democrats, afterwards.
“That’s my explanation. If you always want to be right well then you’ll write nothing at all.”
When Mr Hume first held talks with Gerry Adams in the 1988, the discussions were facilitated by the late redemptorist priest Fr Alec Reid.
His intention had been to convince the IRA to stop their violent campaign after years of conflict had destroyed thousands of lives.
The talks finally became public in 1993, with Mr Hume facing a backlash including from his own party who felt he was lending legitimacy to Sinn Féin.
Coverage was also critical, particularly from the Sunday Independent where Mr Dunphy had contributed as a freelance journalist.
In later years, many credited the secret talks for laying the groundwork for the IRA’s 1994 ceasefire which opened up the possibility of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and power sharing at Stormont
