John Hume Documentary to Screen on RTE One - Interview with Director Maurice Fitzpatrick

Released in cinemas last November, In the Name of Peace: John Hume in America will air on RTE One next week on Tuesday, August 7.

Directed by Maurice Fitzpatrick, the documentary will explore the decades-long campaign by Nobel Prize winner John Hume to secure peace in Northern Ireland. It details how Hume, inspired by Martin Luther King and rising from the riot-torn streets of Northern Ireland, enlisted an army of heavy-weight international heads of state to the cause.

Fitzpatrick talked to Hot Press's Peter McGoran about the film. “I thought this was a very new approach to looking at John Hume and looking at recent Northern Ireland history,” the director said. “There’s a tendency in history to highlight the 1990s and to suggest that a great deal of peace work suddenly sprang up during that period. But Bill Clinton would be the first person to tell you that the build-up of a well-mobilised Congress, which was committed to peace in Ireland, actually happened decades earlier."

Clinton is interviewed in the documentary along with fellow former US President Jimmy Carter, British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Major, as well as various Irish leaders. The film is narrated by Liam Neeson and scored by Bill Whelan (Riverdance).

“It’s certainly no easy thing to get a US president,” Fitzpatrick told Hot Press. “In some senses, I’m glad the film took as long as it did, because it gave me time to do that groundwork. I had to make the case to Liam Neeson to narrate the film. Then I had to seek out Jimmy Carter, who probably hasn’t spoken about Ireland in terms of policy ever on camera. So that was all very difficult. It wasn’t that anyone was resistant, they were very supportive, but it was a diplomatic mission to get it all together.”

John Hume In America received positive reviews upon release with Jennie Kermode of Eye for Film calling it 'powerful', and saying: "Packed with information and alert to the importance of details, this is an impressive example of the historical documentary art."

The film can be watched August 7 at 9.35pm on RTE One. Once can learn more by seeing the trailer and reading Peter McGoran's full interview with director Maurice Fitzpatrick below.

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PETER MCGORAN'S INTERVIEW WITH MAURICE FITZPATRICK

A new documentary, titled In The Name of Peace: John Hume In America, details the work of the visionary politician in the United States, and features interviews with the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. It also highlights the immense power and trust that Hume developed with success Irish governments throughout the troubles. Following its release, documentary maker and author Maurice Fitzpatrick spoke with Peter McGoran about how Hume made peace work, and his legacy in modern Ireland.

While John Hume’s career these days tends to be readily assigned to the various accolades he’s picked up in the last 20 years – Nobel Prize, Gandhi Peace Award – many commentators of contemporary Irish politics can run the risk of knowing about John Hume’s influence on peace in Ireland, but being unclear about what exactly he did to achieve it. Maurice Fitzpatrick’s film, and accompanying book, From Derry To DC, seeks to rectify that problem.

“This all began in earnest in 2012,” says Maurice, speaking in The Library Bar in Dublin. “I was in DC and I began to reach out to people in Congress and made it clear that I wanted to make this film. I also spoke to Pat Hume, John’s wife, and got her approval for it.”

Having previously filmed The Boys of St. Columb’s – a documentary which traced the lives of great Irish figures like Seamus Heaney and John Hume, who attended the same small school in Derry – and having followed much of Hume’s career courtesy of Derry journalist and Hot Press columnist Eamonn McCann, Maurice was confronted with an aspect of history which he felt had been under-explored.

“I thought this was a very new approach to looking at John Hume and looking at recent Northern Ireland history,” Maurice tells me. “There’s a tendency in history to highlight the 1990s and to suggest that a great deal of peace work suddenly sprang up during that period. But Bill Clinton would be the first person to tell you that the build-up of a well-mobilised Congress, which was committed to peace in Ireland, actually happened decades earlier.

“I think that successive American administrations, from Carter to Reagan and onwards, had all consolidated fresh initiatives on Ireland, which Hume had a hand in. That shifted the balance considerably.”

Although John Hume’s ill health meant that he himself couldn’t be interviewed for the film, his story is told by the likes of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. How difficult was it to get them in front of a camera?

“It’s certainly no easy thing to get a US president,” Maurice smiles. “In some senses, I’m glad the film took as long as it did, because it gave me time to do that groundwork. You know, I had to make the case to Liam Neeson to narrate the film. Then I had to seek out Jimmy Carter, who probably hasn’t spoken about Ireland in terms of policy ever on camera. So that was all very difficult. It wasn’t that anyone was resistant, they were very supportive, but it was a diplomatic mission to get it all together.”

VISIONARY

Even the idea that Hume could gain access to the US corridors of power, and convince significant politicians that the constitutional process was the way forward in Ireland, at a time whenever most Irish-Americans were more sympathetic to the IRA, was evidently a difficult task. He received help in the form of Congressmen like Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill, but there was clearly something about his personality that made people follow him.

“I think it was the case that Hume always thought his way through every problem,” Maurice explains. “And Northern Ireland was quite a complex problem, full of tough-talking politicians with their dogmatic refusals. What he needed to do was present a clear solution. The solution which he came to was that, with wider spheres of influence from Dublin, the EU and the US, Northern Ireland could not only achieve lasting peace, but also investment, security, and prosperity. Even his detractors have come out and acknowledged that, in many cases, his was the right solution.

“Going beyond that, he was so convincing because he had a great deal of stamina, and very sound instincts and judgements. Nothing could faze him. If you think about the 1980s, for example, when Hume’s view on the North was rebuffed from almost ever side – from Haughey to Thatcher, Paisley to Sinn Fein – he stayed extremely resolute.”

CHALLENGE FOR THE FUTURE

The fact that the seeds of the Anglo-Irish Agreement were being sown by people like Hume at a time whenever Charles Haughey and Margaret Thatcher – two staunch political opponents – were in office, demonstrates his levels of stamina. Does Maurice see that vision, that resoluteness, being absent in Northern Irish politics today?

“If there are visionaries in Northern Ireland today, I haven’t seen them,” Maurice says. “But apart from visionaries, what is really required in Northern Ireland is dedicated politicians. I think we have the opposite at the moment. We have politicians who are, for a variety of different motives, pulling back from the process. I think Northern Ireland would greatly benefit from politicians being far more historically aware and far less inclined to shore up their support. So in that sense, the historical vision that Hume had is lacking.”

Electorally, the SDLP has been overshadowed by Sinn Fein in recent years. Hume’s language – which Maurice terms ‘Humespeak’ – has also been subsumed by Sinn Fein and crops up in much of their party policy. But whereas Hume always appeared earnest in his desire of peace, many in Northern Ireland are distrustful of the motives of Sinn Fein. In his book, Maurice includes comments made by Gerry Adams at speech in 2014, where the Sinn Fein leader appeared to let his mask slip by saying that, in his view, point of the peace process was to “break the bastards [unionists]” with equality.

“It would be one thing if people actually absorbed Hume’s language about equality, rather than use it for these other aims,” says Maurice. “I think there’s a real challenge for parties in the North to show that they actually embrace Hume’s principles in an earnest way. And, beyond that, there’s also a challenge to the Northern Irish electorate with regards to who they want to take the peace process forward.”